The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina (27)

Then, a skinny rooster clucked through the front door leaving a trail of blue feathers.

“Gabo!” Marimar shouted, unable to believe the creature was still alive.

The twins trailed in after. “Come back here!”

“You’re supposed to be making up the dining room.” Marimar felt a hundred years old as the words left her mouth.

“I’m trying to save him,” Gastón explained. Or maybe Juan Luis. She never could tell them apart.

“Yeah, Ma wants to cook him. Says it’s a mercy kill since otherwise he’ll be left all alone when Orquídea is gone.”

The bird cocked his head to the side like it knew they were talking about him. He was little more than skin and feathers, and Marimar wondered if, like the protections and wards around the house, Gabo the rooster was just another thing that had protected Orquídea and her valley.

“I need a refill,” Rey said as he leaned the mop against the wall and left the hall, laughing.

“Okay, take Gabo and leave him in the shed,” Marimar suggested.

“That’s where dad’s killing the pig!” Twin One said.

“Right,” she said. “Put him in the guest room upstairs. No one would bother Mike.”

“Probably because he looks like a blobfish,” Twin Two said.

“No, blobfish are round and pink. He’s like if a blobfish and a giraffe had a baby,” Twin One said.

Marimar spotted her very pregnant cousin waddling down the stairs. If she heard the twins talking about her husband, she didn’t comment.

Juan Luis and Gastón made the sound of a scratched record. They snatched up the ancient rooster and Juan Luis (probably) cradled it like a baby.

“Tati, hey,” Marimar said.

“I was just coming down to get Mike something to drink. He—”

She stopped in front of Marimar and faltered, unable to find the right words. He can’t handle this? He can’t handle us?

“Yeah,” Marimar finished for her.

At that moment, Rey stepped back into the hall with a crystal highball glass in hand, complete with a sprig of rosemary and ice. Marimar snatched the drink and ignored the incredulity dawning on his face.

“Mike can have this one,” Marimar said. She handed it to the twin who wasn’t holding the rooster and winked at them both. “Take this up to Tati’s husband. And keep Gabo safe.”

They shared the Montoya grin that held a thousand secrets.

“I guess I’d better go and make a new drink,” Rey said. He extended his arm to Tati. “Orquídea wants to see you.”

Marimar took a step back when she saw the outline of a foot pushing right through her cousin’s shirt.

Tati rubbed her belly. “Oh! I thought she was talking to Enrique.”

“He’s off somewhere being an anthropomorphized bag of dicks,” Rey said.

With Rey and Tatinelly off to see their grandmother, the twins trying to protect the family pet, and the others cooking up a storm, Marimar needed to do her part. She needed to get to work.

For a long time after moving to New York, all Marimar wanted was to push away memories of the house and Orquídea Divina. The brutal love of the city served as a barrier to the constant reminder of her mother’s tragic drowning, or the valley and the orchards with their glistening ever-ripe fruit. But the memories inevitably found her, because putting Four Rivers out of her mind and heart was like trying to live day to day with a blindfold and her hands tied behind her back. Marimar thought she was done with Four Rivers, but Four Rivers wasn’t done with her.

Now that she was here, she couldn’t avoid it. Marimar remembered splitting her nail down the center trying to claw out the laurel leaves on the door. “This is your fault!” she’d screamed, blood spilling on the floorboards. “You didn’t protect her. You killed her.” Marimar remembered the way Orquídea’s palm had stung against her cheek, and the stillness, the silence of the house as Orquídea sat in her goddamned chair and drank her goddamned whiskey and settled into that deafening silence that could last for days. They never even said goodbye.

Pena Montoya had drowned. Marimar accepted that now, but she hadn’t wanted to believe it then. She’d needed someone to blame, and that was Orquídea. She’d loved her grandmother. Wanted to possess her magic, too. She’d wasted seven years simmering in her anger and all it took was a few hours breathing in the dusty air, seeing her grandmother in this state, and she was homesick enough to forgive.

She wondered, did everyone have such a fraught relationship with the places they came from? Did anyone else have a grandmother who might as well have been a legend, a myth, a series of miracles that took the shape of an old woman?

Orquídea wasn’t an old woman anymore. She was transforming, and Marimar couldn’t help wondering if that meant she would transform, too, one day.

She picked up a broomstick and swept away the layers of dust and decay that gathered in every corner of the downstairs rooms. Green and brown-striped snakes nestled in ceramic bowls and on the carpet, faded from exposure to the sun. She remembered Rey saying that he’d been bitten by one.

“Shoo!” she hollered.

Their eyes snapped open at her like Marimar was the bother and hissed as they slithered outside through the holes in the walls created by Orquídea’s vines.