The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina (38)

“Oh, Marimar. You’re a bright, wonderful being. Do you know what I love about you?”

Marimar shook her head.

“I love that you care about people. You know how to love. I taught myself not to. Someone in my bloodline had to make up for everything I lacked.”

“How could you not know how to love?” Penny asked. “You were married five times.”

Penny’s words, innocent if rude, made everyone laugh. Orquídea sipped her bourbon, and it burned the whole way down. Her movements were getting slower. Her bones ached as they transformed into someone different. Something else. But she held on tight to her firstborn son and said what she had to say.

“Love and companionship are different things, Penny. I have made mistakes out of fear. But this?” Her eyes roamed the room to look at each and every member of her family. “This was not one of them.”

“What mistakes did you make?” Gastón asked.

“The bargain,” she said. “Forty-eight years ago, I made a bargain and it cost so much more than my silence. This is the only way I can protect you from him.”

“From who?” Rey asked.

A hard wind snuffed out the lights on the windowsills as dozens of dragonflies and fireflies flew in. They were followed by hummingbirds, blue jays, and larks. Frogs and newts. Snakes and lizards. Field mice and rabbits. They came all at once, filling the room. Some crawled into empty bowls, others perched on chandeliers and wine goblets. Penny gathered a rabbit to pet between its ears. The twins sprung out of their seats trying to catch snakes.

Florecida, who had a fear of mice, hopped up on her seat. Tati tried to calm her down, but Mike Sullivan had gone faint and fallen over his chair. Silvia sprang into action, checking his pulse and shining a light in his eyes. Penny gathered the mice out of the room. Meanwhile, Gabo crowed again, and the spirit of Luis Galarza Pincay danced with his daughters to the plucking sounds of guitars and boleros. Marimar wondered if they were truly ghosts, or if they were impressions created by Orquídea’s sadness. After all, if the dead could rise, then why hadn’t her mother come to her sooner?

Juan Luis and Gastón began to choke. They raised their hands in the air and Rey hit their backs until they coughed up identical balls of hard phlegm.

“Cool,” they said in unison and picked up the slimy things, as Rey muttered, “Disgusting.”

Enrique thundered down the stairs and rushed into the living room. A sparrow flew at him, but he swatted it away with the papers in his fist. He held a finger to Marimar like a cocked gun. “You’re leaving the house to her? She’s a child!”

“Marimar is nineteen. Aren’t you?”

“I am.”

“This house belongs to me,” Enrique said. “Why do you think we all came here? Because you were such a warm and loving mother? You show that stone thing you’re holding more affection than you ever did any of us. I’m not leaving without what’s mine. This land is rightfully mine.”

“Nothing is yours, Enrique,” Orquídea shouted. “You don’t have the first clue of what I did to survive. To make something out of absolutely nothing. I did what you don’t have the guts to do. You want to fight over a bit of dirt? It’s too late. It’s done.”

The animals in the room buzzed and croaked and hissed louder. Tatinelly made a sharp gasping sound and the house shuddered, cutting off the electricity so that the only light came from the fireplace, the dripping candles along the center of the table, and the moon shining through the window.

“Why make us come here?” Enrique asked, breathless as he slumped into an empty chair. His father’s ghost appeared beside him and rested a hand on his shoulder. “Why aren’t the rest of you angry with her?”

“We are, I think. But we can’t change her,” Caleb Jr. said.

Everyone nodded. Félix yanked off the crunchy ear of the pig and Ernesta joined Rey in opening a new bottle of bourbon.

“To the Montoyas,” they said, and clinked each other’s glasses.

“If you look closer at the invitations, there is something for each of you,” Orquídea said and gestured to the twins.

Gastón had picked up the phlegm they’d coughed up. On closer inspection, it wasn’t phlegm at all. They were seeds.

Around them, more Montoyas doubled over and coughed and coughed until they spit up seeds of their own, glossy with saliva.

“It’s done,” Orquídea repeated. The next breath she took looked pained. “When I’m gone, you will have each other. Plant them. Take care of them. These seeds are your protection against the one person I cannot fight.”

“Who?” Rey asked.

When she tried to speak, his grandmother coughed up mud. Shaking, she turned to the dead, and said, “Take me.”

The ghosts walked through her, and then, one by one, they were gone.

“Perhaps now I’ll finally have peace” Enrique said, angry tears streaming from his hungry eyes. He wiped at the corners of his mouth, got up, and threw his seed in the fire.

Orquídea stood as much as her legs would allow. Everyone, except for Enrique, moved to help her. They gathered around, but she wanted to do this on her own. At first, she wavered, her body attempting to balance on the roots that devoured her legs. When she was steady, she poured the last of her bourbon. She hummed the last line of the song. She turned to her family and raised her glass with one hand and clutched Pedrito with the other.