The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina (9)
And Reymundo only smiled, because he knew in his heart what the answer would be. “He’d say that you’re a homophobic fucking asshole, Mr. Green.”
He never saw Timothy again after that, and no one fucked with him either. Rey knew who he was in his bones. He’d lose himself often, but he had memories, lodestones to guide him home.
Now, as he dug through stacks of taxes and poorly kept receipts, he was overcome with a worry that hadn’t been there before. His skin didn’t fit, his clothes were too tight. There was something so wrong, so bone-deep he couldn’t scratch it hard enough to get rid of the feeling. He looked around the office, dark except for the green glass lamp on his desk. It felt like someone had pumped oxygen into the room. He thought about calling for the intern, but his eyes fell on the letter he’d tossed aside. It had begun to smoke.
Rey cursed loudly and, in an attempt to pick it up, knocked over a stack of folders. He played hot potato with the envelope as the wax seal melted off in a quick burst of flame.
He stomped on the letter, the envelope having burned off while somehow leaving the cardstock inside perfectly intact, save for the black smudges from his fingertips.
He read the words and muttered, “Fucking hell.”
It was after midnight, and when the buzzer rang, he knew who it was. He gathered all his things and texted his boyfriend to say he had a family emergency and would be gone for a couple of days. He’d have to call Jasmine first thing in the morning. At least Krishan was still there, waiting to clean up his mess.
When Rey got downstairs, Marimar was leaning against the side of the building, holding a brown paper bag.
“She almost set my office on fire,” he said.
Marimar shrugged and bit into her bagel. “A pigeon broke into our apartment.”
“Did it also catch on fire?”
“Nope.”
“Most grandmothers send five-dollar bills in Hallmark cards or tin cans full of toffee.” They walked to the corner and he hailed a cab and gave the address.
“Who do you know with grandmothers like that?” she asked incredulously.
“I don’t know, but they have to exist.”
“Stranger things exist, I guess.”
They got back to their apartment and packed. Before 2 a.m., Rey and Marimar were in his old truck, the one he’d kept from his dad and was usually parked in a little lot near the East River. A gaudy skull hung from the rearview mirror beside a wooden rosary that had belonged to his paternal grandmother.
“I say there’s no way the old witch is dying,” Rey said.
Marimar bit the skin around her thumbnail raw. Orquídea would slap her hand when she saw her. The engine came to life and they peeled into crosstown traffic.
“Only one way to find out.”
* * *
Tatinelly tried to keep cool, balancing a bowl of ice cream on her belly. The flavors had been scooped out from four different pints—pistachio, cherry chocolate swirl, vanilla rhubarb, and passion fruit sorbet. It was the only thing she could stomach on her eighth month of pregnancy. Olympia, Oregon, was not known for its warm weather, but on that spring day, a heat wave descended out of nowhere, trapping the soon-to-be mother with the struggling air conditioner unit.
She rested her head back against the arm of the sofa and sighed. The baby hadn’t kicked in a couple of days and she’d tried everything to stir her because that silence made her nervous. Her doctor, a young man who’d never carried a baby himself, told Tatinelly that everything she was feeling and not feeling was perfectly normal. But this was her and Mike’s first child (first of many, she hoped) and every pinch, ache, or fever dream made her worry.
Tatinelly Sullivan, née Montoya, grew up an only child, and though she’d had many cousins, at a certain point, everyone in her family just left the house they’d grown up in and never went back. It was difficult to explain to Mike the house where she’d come from. The things her father and grandmother had believed in. Stories of real, true wishes, and women who divined the stars, of slippery mermaids, and enchanted rivers. Stories about ghosts that could enter the house if they didn’t lay down enough salt. Fairies living in the hills of their family estate in Four Rivers, disguised as insects. Magic things. Impossible things.
Mike had been born and raised in Portland. He was tall, wiry in a way that gave the impression of having been stretched. He’d played baseball and basketball in high school, and every morning he rode his bike on the trails that led into the woods for thirty miles. The best part about Mike was that he didn’t change. She could go through his routine blindly, like muscle memory.
It was silly, but the night of her graduation from Four Rivers High, Tatinelly had made a wish. She didn’t want much. She wasn’t like Marimar, who wanted the world to explain itself, or like Rey who, burned with fire and color inside, or her younger cousins who wanted fame and money. She wasn’t even like her dad who had wanted to be the mayor of a town that didn’t exist anymore.
Tatinelly wanted a good life, a good husband, and a baby. That was it. That was enough.
The moment that wish left her lips, the magic her grandmother had talked about felt real for the first time in her life. She saw signs everywhere. For Texas, of all places. That night, she left a letter to her family, fit her worldly possessions in the suitcase her mother had intended for world travel, and trekked up the steep road that led to the highway. The first car she’d seen was an SUV, driven by a woman heading to Texas.