The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina (45)

She told Rey her theory, that those hadn’t been ghosts but something more, but he brushed it away. Maybe he wanted to think that their mothers had come to see them, that the dead had risen to give Orquídea a glorious send off. But they weren’t taking her anyway. She was still here, living, but transformed.

“Maybe he’s in the photo album or her letters,” Rey suggested.

They did not get a record player. But they did investigate the matter of Orquídea’s secret first husband. Marimar had an idea to invite the Montoyas back when everything was clear and the house rebuilt. But this couldn’t wait. The salvaged items were kept in one of the sheds. They found pictures of their cousins’ graduations, Tatinelly’s wedding, baptisms. Rey held up a memorial card with a prayer on the back. “This is from my mom’s funeral. My dad’s sister must have sent one.”

“I don’t even have one.”

“You don’t have an altar, you heathen. It’s like she kept the moments she never got to attend because she wouldn’t leave Four Rivers.”

“Couldn’t leave,” Marimar reminded him.

“What about this one?” Rey pointed at a handsome Black man in Marine dress blues. “It looks aged.”

“It’s a photo, not cheese.” But still she flipped the photo to read a name on the back. “Holy shit, that’s Martin. What’s he, like eighteen? I barely recognized him without the sensible jean shirt and Cowboys baseball cap.”

For each husband, Orquídea had a photo from when they were young, and another from their weddings. She’d worn a different dress every time, which Rey respected and Marimar thought impractical for the grandmother she knew. She looked happiest in her fifth wedding, though, and Marimar gathered the photos back into the box for safe keeping. But as she closed the box, she noticed the lining paper peeling.

Carefully, Marimar tugged the paper back so as not to rip anything. There, pressed tightly against the metal tin was a photograph torn in half. There was Orquídea, so young and beautiful. A man’s hand gripped her tightly, possessively. It was all that was left of him.

“Found something.”

Rey looked at the black-and-white photo for what felt like hours, tracing the seam where the rip was. “There’s that.”

There’s that. A torn photograph from her first wedding and nothing more. Marimar had also hoped to find more pictures of her dad. But those two men had been completely removed from the family, like they’d been cut with an X-Acto knife. Or maybe they were amputated. Remove a limb to save the whole organism. She wondered, is that what Orquídea had done to herself? She’d said that she was doing this for her family, to protect them. They had to protect their magic. But from what? From whom? Who could possibly want this curse?

After a month of clearing the debris, Kalvin and Chris took away the industrial garbage bins. Everything Orquídea had built was gone. The land was clear save for the ceiba tree.

Three months after that, Rey woke up to Gabo’s crow and announced, “I need to leave.”

“I know.” Marimar said. They sat at the top of the hill like they did most days at sunset. Rey with his cigarette and Marimar with her can of cherry soda. “Do you think they’re going to take you back at the firm?”

Rey shook his head. “You don’t really get a six-month bereavement when your grandmother dies.”

“She’s not dead.”

“She’s a tree.”

“The tree is alive.”

He took a drag and sighed. The rose at the crook of his thumb was a sharp red that beautifully contrasted against his light-brown skin. Sometimes, when he just sat there, he’d touch it the way Marimar would twirl a strand of hair or bite her fingernails. Like it was an extension of himself that had always been there. Maybe it had and they had only ever just noticed it after Orquídea’s transformation.

“So, what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” he said, shoving his hand in the pocket of his jeans. “I made her a promise. I hadn’t intended on keeping it but I’m more afraid of her finding me postmortem.”

“Use my old room as a studio.”

“Come with me,” he said, wavering in his resolve. She felt it too. They hadn’t been apart since she was thirteen and showed up at the apartment with a duffle bag. “We should stay together.”

“I think I need to be here right now.” Her cheeks were cold, and she felt a pressure behind her eyelids.

“I wish I could be in two places at once.”

She rested her head on Rey’s shoulder. “Are you going to call Shane and try to get back together?”

“He didn’t understand why I had to stay for so long. He won’t understand me now.” He flashed his straight white teeth. Marimar thought that he had his mother’s smile. She thought that maybe they were going to be okay.

As he got in his truck and dug in his back pocket for his lighter, he gasped so loud his cigarette fell out of his mouth. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. I can’t believe I forgot this.”

“What?”

“I wanted to show you this the night—” But he didn’t finish, only handed Marimar the old theater ticket. She didn’t see why it was important, the ink had long faded leaving behind the ghost of the word Spectacular! and an eight-pointed star, just like her father’s ring.