The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina (43)

“Don’t go, ni?a,” Jefita said. “I’ll have no one if you go.”

Jefita. She’d had Jefita. She held her friend in her arms and allowed herself to cry for the life that was never hers. The one she’d leave behind without a trace.



* * *



Orquídea arrived at the port breathless, eyes scanning for him.

There he was, dressed in a dapper green suit. He stood apart from his crew, like he’d been waiting for her. When their eyes met, Orquídea felt that tug beneath her ribs. This was her present, her future. Hadn’t that been her destiny all along? The girl who’d been born unlucky, a soul lost to the seas.

Damn the stars and damn luck. Damn everyone and anything who thought her insignificant. Orquídea Montoya was going to rewrite her fate.





14

EPHEMERAL BEINGS




After the fire died down and the ambulances took the Sullivans to the big hospital in the next town, and the animals returned to their hiding places in the valley, after the Montoyas dispersed once again across the country, and Enrique called to remind her that this wasn’t over, Marimar stood among the rubble with Rey.

Orquídea had not prepared them.

“What are we supposed to do?” Rey asked. He was out of cigarettes and out of booze and the moment wouldn’t allow him to go in search for either for a while. “You heard what Orquídea said. She was hiding from someone. Scared. Do we tell Sheriff Palladino?”

“And say what? File a report for a man with no name who might be a danger?”

Rey deflated with a frustrated sigh. “I don’t know, Mari. Maybe this is why Orquídea never left Four Rivers. Maybe we would have been safe if we had stayed.”

“If she had been safe, she wouldn’t have become this.”

They turned in the direction of the ceiba tree among the rubble. The valley whistled, carrying away ash and embers in a strong breeze.

“I’m open to suggestions,” Rey said.

There was only one thing to do, Marimar knew. “Clean, like Tía Silvia told us to.”

“Have you heard from anyone? Nice of them to leave us with the mess.”

Marimar shrugged. She didn’t remind him that Orquídea had left her the house and so this was her mess. She was afraid if she did, he might leave, even though she knew he wouldn’t. She had one text message from Juan Luis that said, “Sick funeral.” And one from Tatinelly reminding her to keep in touch. What would her in-laws say when she showed up with her baby girl, a pert little flower growing out of her forehead? Florecida gave her an invitation to come live temporarily in Key West, but Marimar had declined.

“It’s just you and me, kid,” she said, and he grinned. That was the same thing he’d said the day after his mother’s funeral when they sat in the living room with a bunch of sympathy food from neighbors and coworkers. Just you and me.

Rey would leave five months later, but he stayed for her. He stayed because he couldn’t bare the idea of going back to New York and trying to work at his desk and tally up numbers and yell at clients for trying to expense their third jacuzzi. He just couldn’t, and Marimar saw that, too. She was afraid of being alone eventually, and so, to make her cousin stay as long as possible, she went to get provisions.

While he was renting a tractor from old man Skillen twenty miles down the road, Marimar went out and bought a case of wine, three bottles of bourbon, six cases of cherry soda, a college student’s semester supply of 30-cent ramen packets, and locally made bison jerky.

Rey brought his own provisions. He returned with two men, a tractor, and an industrial-sized garbage bin. “Bitch, you owe me two cases of wine.”

The men in question were Christian Sandoval and Kalvin Stanley, two boys she’d gone to middle school with. Even though Chris had been two years older, she’d dropped a Valentine’s Day card in his locker and by lunch he’d been shoving his tongue down one of the Mary Somethings right in the hall for everyone to see. It wasn’t a heartbreak for Marimar, more like prickling herself on a sewing needle, but it still stung.

Typical of Four Rivers, Christian and Kalvin hadn’t wanted to go anywhere after graduation. There was nothing wrong with the community college in the next town, and Four Rivers had everything they needed. A house. Work. Free pie from the diner, though that would get old in a few years, when their looks went and the world beat the charming out of them, whatever small quantity they possessed.

Chris and Kalvin spent most of their days alternating between the Home Depot and the salvage yard. At twenty-one, they were all corded muscle that came from hauling sheetrock and steel and lumber. They were just as dumb and beautiful as they’d been in school, but now that they had nowhere to go, they actually made small talk with Marimar and Rey. Tragedy. Wow, New York? What’s it like? Wow, no way. Wow, so you’re like back back? You hear about Coach Vincent? Talk about tragedies.

As the Wow Guys began removing the scorched rubble, the remaining Montoya cousins sifted for anything salvageable. Even in the afterlife, Orquídea Divina was making them sort through her things to find answers.

“So, while I was in town,” Rey said, “I discovered that the girl who tormented you in elementary school is now on her third child and her baby daddy just got picked up for indecent exposure at the mall two towns over.”