The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina (73)

She walked to the ledge where the city spread out beneath them. Millions of houses and people and cars ignorant of their revelations. Marimar turned her face to the clouds, but she knew better than to pray.

“Londo?o,” she said tapping the skin beneath her flower bud. “He was wearing it.”

“Wearing what? Marimar, I don’t understand.”

Marimar opened the purse at her hip. In a hidden zipper pocket was a photo, this one he’d seen once before, seven years prior. It had been folded and unfolded several times since then. He wondered how often Marimar had looked at it and wondered at the identity of the man hidden by a flash of light. The man she believed to be her father. Who’d had a hand in her mother’s death. It was the single subject he knew not to broach with her, but here she was, carrying it with her thousands of miles away.

Then he saw it. The thing that had scared her. The hand over Pena Montoya’s shoulder. It wore a signet ring with the same eight-pointed star as the ring worn by Orquídea’s first husband.

“A coincidence,” Rey said, but he didn’t manage to sound wholly convinced. “Lots of people have the same jewelry.”

She laughed, catching the attention of too many tourists. “Orquídea said the man in this photo was my father. Why do he and Londo?o have the same ring?”

Rey shook his head. “Maybe their families knew each other. Like Professor Aguilar’s seamstress grandmother who made our grandmother’s wedding dress. Maybe something went wrong and that’s why Orquídea ran, and somehow his kid met your mom. Even as I say it, it sounds fucked.”

“It’s not enough.” Marimar turned, as if someone had called her name. But she didn’t see any familiar faces among the tourists at the top of the hill.

When he closed his eyes and took deep breaths, Rey thought he heard someone shout his grandmother’s name. Orquídea! Perhaps the same way Isabela Buenasuerte had done on that terrible night when the Londo?o Spectacular Spectacular had gone up in flames. A woman searching for her daughter. A woman searching for forgiveness.

He wanted to comfort Marimar and tell her that they’d unravel the real truth. But he knew, as the skin around his rose tightened with a sharp pain, as if there was a thorn beneath his tender flesh, he knew something was wrong.

Rey whirled around to find Ana Cruz running to them. “Come quickly! It’s Tatinelly.”





23

ORQUíDEA DIVINA’S SECOND HEARTBREAK




“What do you think about when you stand out here on your own?” Bolívar asked her one night, coming up behind her. They were headed toward Dublin for their final European show before returning home. Sometimes it was strange to Orquídea to still call Ecuador her home. The Londo?o Spectacular Spectacular had been her home. Bolívar was her home now. Even the sea, cold and tempestuous as it was, was her home.

Bastard Daughter of the Waves, the river monster had called her.

In his fox furs, Bolívar was absolutely breathtaking. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed the sides of her neck. He opened her own mink fur, a wedding gift, and slid his arms across her breasts, down her stomach, reaching between her legs to where she hissed in surprise.

“Your hands are cold.”

She turned around on the quarter deck and leaned back against the rail. The salty Irish Sea breeze beat his cheeks pink. She rested a hand over one.

“This trip makes me think of my father. I met him once. He was a seaman. Sailed in and out of my life. I just haven’t had a reason to think about him so much before.”

Bolívar bit his lip and gazed at her in that way of his. Like she was the only person on this ship. It was just Orquídea, the moon above, and the sea surrounding them.

“You said yourself you grew up on a river. That wasn’t enough to think about him?”

“The Guayas River doesn’t empty out into the ocean,” she said. When she rested her hands on his solid chest, her sapphire ring winked like one of the infinite stars above. Had he wished for it, like he’d wished for so many things? “And here there is so much of it.”

“You know I cannot stand it. How can I take away your sadness, mi divina?”

She didn’t know if he could, but she tilted her chin up to accept the kiss he was promising. His mouth tasted like wine, sweet like the dark cherry jam he liked to spread on cake after dinner. Orquídea had tried to be so careful with her heart. It had already been broken once, the day her father shoved a purse full of coins in her hands and told her not to look for him. How could she not look for him when every time she saw her own reflection, fractures of him stared back at her? The parts desperate to be loved but never feeling quite whole enough to be loved.

But Bolívar had whisked her away across the world. He’d chosen her. Yes, he’d had indiscretions, but that was life on the road, on the seas. He’d shown her she was the only one for him when he married her. Now their life would change. Why was she so afraid of telling him?

She deepened their kiss, running her hands along the waistband of his trousers. He pressed his erection against her, and when he lifted her up, she yelped.

“Are you afraid I’ll let you fall?” he whispered in her ear.

“I’m afraid of a lot of things. But not of you.”

Their corner of the deck was dark. Even the late-dinner passengers would be asleep. He looked around to make sure they were truly alone, then returned to her. His mouth on her throat, he hiked her dress up and over her hips. He pushed her lace underthings aside and eased his erection into her. He gripped the back of her knee and raised it to his hip. The pressure of him swelled and he thought he’d break apart in a single heartbeat, so he slowed. She felt her own pulse drumming in her ears, the hollow between her clavicles. He knew just where to touch her, just where to make her breathless and tight. She shut her eyes and felt the ocean mist around them. Licked the salt from his lips as he told her he loved her, needed her, and shuddered. He rested his face in her cleavage. Then he pulled out and she yanked her dress back down.