The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina (72)

Ana Cruz turned the same shade of red as Rey’s rose. “Ay, sinvergüenza.”

“Shameless but honest,” Rey said.

“We’re a little weird, too,” Marimar added, and further explored the exhibits. She leaned in to look into the eyes of a taxidermized mermaid that was surely the skeletal remains of a human and possibly a shark somehow Frankensteined together.

Half an hour later, they’d bought several comic books for Rhiannon in the front room, and Professor Aguilar returned with an old-fashioned movie reel. He set it up on his projector, turned off the lights, and ran the footage.

The scene had been pulled from local TV and had no audio. The news anchor had a serious pornstache and the same drab brown suit everyone seemed to wear in the fifties. Behind him was a black-and-white striped, two-pole circus tent. A mouth made of fire ate its way out. Performers and people ran while a sad-looking firetruck tried to douse the flames. Clowns and stable hands fruitlessly ran for buckets of water. Makeup melted down their faces into grotesque sadness and fear. People picked up children, others ran. Smoke billowed and took shape, like the fire was a living thing. Fury made real. Right before the segment cut out, a woman ran across the camera. Everyone, except for Kennedy Aguilar, took a sharp breath.

“That’s my mother. She never said that she was there that day,” Ana Cruz said. She brought her hands up to her face, one pressed against each cheek in shock. Rey had always wondered why people did that. As if holding one’s own face would make a shocking terrible thing not true. As if you were the only thing stopping yourself from breaking apart.

Still, as he watched his great-grandmother shout, he knew what she was screaming—her daughter’s name.

“Why was your mother there?” el profe asked Ana Cruz.

He shook with giddy disbelief as he turned the light back on. Ana Cruz stared at the frozen scene with disbelief. The Montoyas knew that no one wanted to believe, even when they witnessed the truth.

Marimar picked up the poster they’d brought with them, and pointed at the young woman riding a crescent moon. “She was there to see her daughter. Our grandmother. Orquídea Divina.”

Now it was el profe’s turn to look shocked. “I need to sit down. This is fascinating. Truly my rarest discovery yet. Other descendants of the Spectacular! Of course, all of this information has taken me years to collect. It’s a passion of mine, you see.”

“Why are you so surprised?” Marimar asked.

“Because so many lives were lost that day. Orquídea was listed as deceased, even though her body was never recovered. Along with her husband, of course.”

“Of course,” Rey repeated.

“Did her husband work in the circus?” Tatinelly asked.

“Work in the circus? You really don’t know…” el profe took off his glasses and cleaned them with a pocket square. He smiled so hard, the vein on his forehead sprouted. He walked twenty paces to the other side of the room where he quickly flipped through a black album on a display stand. “Here we are. Bolívar Londo?o III and Orquídea Divina Londo?o.”

He stepped aside to let the small family gather around. It was like looking into the past. Orquídea had her hair pinned in a stylish, elegant chignon with a brooch on the side. The wedding dress was simple, with lace sleeves, a tapered waist, and a floor-length skirt. Even in the old photograph, the beads and pearls on the material looked beautifully done. She held a bouquet of roses and flashed the same smile that contained a hundred secrets.

“Damn,” Rey said. “Her first husband was sexy.”

Marimar reached out and flicked his ear. “That is so inappropriate!”

“I’m a married woman,” Tatinelly said, “But he is foxy.”

Ana Cruz shrugged at Marimar, but they couldn’t deny it. Bolívar and Orquídea were a stunning couple. From the shine of the fabric, she could tell his suit was velvet, cut and tailored to his Roman sculpture figure. He wore his hair, too long for the age, curled like wisps under his top hat. He was smiling, too. The smile reserved for someone who knew that they’d just been given the world. He gripped the iron lion’s head cane with one hand, and Orquídea’s waist with the other. A ring on his finger caught the light.

“Where—how did you find this?” Marimar asked, her voice trembling.

Rey looked up to ask what was wrong, but her brow was furrowed with confusion, her eyes glossy with unshed tears.

“My grandmother made the wedding dress. Her name was Mirabella Galante. A seamstress who’d come to Ecuador from Catania, Sicily, and found work at the Spectacular.”

Ana Cruz snapped open a lace fan and tried to cool the air around her sweaty face. El profe had to run and get her a chair. They marveled at how intertwined a part of their past had been and they had never truly known.

“What does this mean?” Tatinelly asked. She touched the back of her hand to her damp forehead. Rhiannon, whose flower had returned to the blue of a bruise, offered her water bottle to her mother.

Only Rey seemed to notice Marimar hurry out the door. He followed after her. She took the stairs to the top of the cerro Santa Ana, climbing the remaining 265 steps. By the time they reached the summit, he found her gripping the railing. The humid river air wrapped around them, made the flags wave straight and true.

“What is it?” he asked. “And don’t say nothing because you look like you’ve seen a ghost and we have seen too many fucking ghosts to be scared of them.”