When I Knew You (18 page)

Off screen Irena's voice sounded concerned. "We don't have to talk about it, Grandma."

Estella crumpled the tissue, tucking it away somewhere out of site, then took a deep breath and straightened, putting her glasses back on. "No, Mija. I want you to have this story because someday you'll want to tell your children. This story is your story too, you know."

"I know, Grandma." Irena's voice was low.

"So like I was saying, your grandpa got a letter from Mr. Davis. Everyone knew that Javier was his illegitimate son, but back in those days people didn't talk about things like that. Mr. Davis was the Patrón. El Patrón. And he was good to his people, they say, so they let it go. When Javier came to Chicago and we met, I didn't care about any of that. But he did. Deep inside." She put her hand to her heart.

"When he got that letter he was so excited." Estella's voice cracked. "I told him not to go. That I didn't care about the land, I didn't want to live in Texas. It's too damn hot. Lupe, your mom, she was little and we were getting started with our own lives. We were about to move out of my parent's house, about to get an apartment on the North Side of Chicago. What did we need with some ranch in the middle of nowhere in Texas? We were doing fine."

Estella looked away, gazing at something off screen. Tears began to flow; she didn't bother to dab them.
 

"It wasn't enough for Javier," she said, her voice trembling. "It wasn't just the land, you know. For him, it was about his father finally acknowledging him as his son. Javier said Davis had married his mother some years before but had never admitted to being
his
father." She closed her eyes. "Pride. That is what killed him. His stupid pride."
 

She sniffed, then looked back up to the camera. "So he left. He took the bus. I got three letters from him. Then nothing." She swallowed. "Nothing. I sent letters, tried calling some people, but no one knew where he was. It was like he had disappeared into the desert. He never came back to me." She raised her hand to her face. "He never came back."

Irena reached over and stopped the playback.

We were all silent.
 

"Irena started filming this when my mother was diagnosed with cancer," Lupe said quietly. "She was dead in just a few months." She straightened her shoulders and blinked away fresh tears. "And here's why Irena thinks I'm wasting your time, Kati. Your time and your mother's. Our family suspected that Javier had abandoned my mother and me. That he found another woman in Texas. Our family hired a detective to find out. This man."
 

She pulled out a card and handed it to me. It was yellowed with age, plain with a name and an El Paso address for William Alacon—Willie's father, apparently.
 

"And he said it was true, mom," Irena said, closing her iPad and shoving it roughly inside her bag. "He said he found him and he was living with some other woman."
 

Lupe raised a finger in protest, and I had the feeling they'd had this argument many times.
 

"Except he didn't have a very good photo, only a black and white, and a name. Sometimes I think my grandfather never wanted Javier found." Lupe leaned toward me. "But then I started to wonder. What if the man the detective found wasn't Javier?"

"Wait, wouldn't Estella have recognized him, or known it wasn't him?" I asked.

Lupe and Irena looked to Gustav, who had remained silent all this time.
 

"The family told her Javier had died," he said. "They were afraid she'd be devastated if she found out he had left her for another woman, that perhaps had never loved her. They felt this was a kindness."

"I found the report from the detective when I was clearing out family papers after my mother died." Lupe said, waving Irena over. Irene brought her a large leather purse. Lupe pulled a manila folder out and handed it to me.
 

"My mother must have suspected something all those years. Because she asked me, before she died, to find out the truth. Then I came across an article about a young Texas politician, Trent Bonita. I dug a little more, since he had the same last name as ours, figuring he must be a distant relative.
 

"The article said Trent was a rising star, he was the darling of the political machine in the state. Then I read his father was Javier Bonita, who owned some big ranch. That's when I contacted Antonia, to try to research if the land was what my great grandfather had supposedly deeded to our family."

I flipped through the contents. There was a report from Detective Alacon, old color photos of a young Estella and Javier, along with a more recent article about Trent Bonita, which had an inset of a dated photo of his reclusive father as the young land baron, Javier Bonita. I pointed to the weathered face in the article, his eyes narrowed as he squinted into the sun.
 

"If this Javier Bonita is not who he says he is, then who is he?"

"That appears to be a very dangerous question, Kati," Gustav said.
 

Lupe nodded. "And it's the same one Antonia asked."

Chapter 21

After a few minutes of digging through the articles we went into the kitchen, a big beautiful room with a wrap around counter. The oven buzzed and Gustav rushed over with a pair of pot holders to take out a pizza.

"Frozen, I'm afraid," he said. "I'm not much of a cook." He set it down on a cutting board and searched the drawers for a cutter.
 

"So I take it you don't live here?" I asked, aiding in the search.

"No, this is my niece's home. Her husband builds airplanes. As a hobby. There's a landing strip in the back. Everyone in the neighborhood flies." He pulled out a teal colored pizza blade and held it up triumphantly. "Aha! As I was saying, my niece and her husband are off on a trip and won't be back for another week."

Irena had found some glasses, and Lupe returned from a pantry with cans of soda. I tracked down plates and napkins. As we sat down I asked my question again. "Why did you call my mother?"

Lupe looked surprised. "Because of her reputation."

Gustav handed me a slice. "Kati, your mother was pretty well known for researching land grants in the area. She was writing a thesis about challenges to ownership in oil and gas fields. She was going to get include her findings in her dissertation. She'd been doing the work for years."

"When I asked my attorney," Lupe said, "he claimed your mother was the best in the state. And the price was right." Lupe said.

"What price?" I asked.

"She did it for free." Lupe took her slice from Gustav. "She said we were related somehow. I never found out how."
 

"I believe your grandmother knows why, Kati." Gustav took out a fork and knife and started cutting his pizza. "But Antonia probably would have done it anyway. She rarely charged people."

I glanced at Lupe and Irena. I'd never seen anyone eat their pizza with a fork and knife before. Irena smiled wryly and picked up her pizza and started to eat. Lupe and I did the same.

"She was like that," Gustav said between forkfuls. "She worried at knots. Things that didn't finish neatly, didn't fit the record; they nagged at her. That's what I told her. She could not help but worry at knots."
 

I thought of Antonia at the table, counting the pennies, determined to understand. Maybe that was the part of my mother that had remained when she lost everything else. Maybe she was always a woman who was determined to untangle one thing or another.

"Is the locket here?" Lupe asked.

I'd forgotten I was wearing it. "Yes, I did. I didn't want to lose it." I unlatched the chain and handed it to her. I thought of the woman with the light eyes. "Who is the woman in the photo?"

"It's my great-grandmother," said Irena, opening the locket. "The lock of hair is from Javier when he was a baby. He was a strong baby, used to pull his hair right out of his head, then start crying. At least that's the story I heard." She snapped the locket closed. "Javier gave this to my mother when they married, had it engraved for her. He said it was his most prized possession."

Lupe rubbed the locket between her fingers, then handed it back to me. "You keep it for now. You and Antonia might be able to use it to find the truth."

I felt my mouth go dry. "I don't know what I can learn. I'm not an expert like she was. I don't even understand any of her notes, or any of the clues she left."

Lupe looked at Gustav for a moment, then turned back to me. "When your mother called me a month ago, she had complete confidence in you."

"I'm sorry Lupe. She..." I searched for the words. "She hasn't known me for a very long time."

"Take it, Kati," she insisted. "I believe she had her reasons for trusting you with all this." She placed the locket in my hand and closed my fingers around it. It reminded me of my mother giving me money for lunch, closing my hand into a fist so I wouldn't lose it on my way to school.
 

Gustav and I watched as Lupe and Irena pulled out of the driveway. I felt his hand on my shoulder and I looked back at him, my strength beginning to crumble.
 

"How am I going to find her?" I said miserably. "Where is she?"

Gustav was silent and shook his head. His phone rang in his shirt pocket and his brow furrowed as he answered. He walked ahead of me into the house and I shut the door behind us.

"I understand," he said, then hung up the phone.
 

I sat in the living room. The final envelope was still on the table, filled with information about DNA. I was about to slip my fingers under one corner to review it again when Gustav came back in the room.
 

"Kati, I'm afraid we must leave. I have a gentleman who is..." he pursed his lips as he thought. "Who is keeping an eye on certain people and it looks like it's time for me to go."

"What?" I was confused, and more than a little panicked. "Gustav, I thought you came back to help me. I need you to help me find her."

He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "Right now my being with you is more dangerous for both of us." Headlights strafed the front window behind him. He looked over his shoulder, then bent down to start gathering all the paperwork. "I'll call you if I can. But for now, we've got to leave."

We shoved everything into my backpack and walked outside. A dark sedan with New Mexico plates idled in the driveway. The windows were tinted so dark I couldn't make out who was inside. Gustav put his hand on my shoulder as I headed for the car.

"You will find her, Kati. You will unravel what is happening." He looked at me with an intensity I didn't expect from him. "She believed in you. She always believed in you."

"She was a fool." I said miserably.

"Your mother was many things, Kati," he said. "But she was never a fool."

I drove along the highway for a while, heading east, eventually stopping at the park high up on Scenic Drive. The city stretched out in a dusty carpet from the base of the mountain, orderly streets cross hatching the desert. In the distance, Juarez curved around the ribbon of the Rio Grande. Across the border tall white letters were scrawled on the mountain, urging everyone for miles around to read the bible. Dusk was slipping into the sky, brilliant orange creeping into the fading blue.

My head was swimming with images: Lupe's mother on the screen, her eyes filling with tears; Eliah at the fire, the man I thought was a harmless lovesick guy, flames reflecting in his eyes; Antonia listening to her voice on the tape in the dark hotel room.

The tapes. I remembered the pink shoebox in the hospital, Margie saying Antonia wanted me to hear what was on them. If there were more tapes, if the man hadn't taken them, they had to be with Abuela.
 

So many roads led back to Abuela.
 

"That's it, mom?" I said, exasperated, running my hands over the piles of papers I had spread on the dashboard. "I'm supposed to unravel what you were working on from all of this?" I buried my head in my hands, trying to think.

It's got to be here, Kati. She was so close. She said she was so close.

I ran my hands through my hair. I looked at the envelopes, the papers, the articles I'd printed. I turned the locket over in my fingers, looking at the inscription on the back.
Siempre mi corazon. 1960.
I hung it back around my neck.
 

Something niggled at my brain. A whisper of an idea.
 

I thought back to the day I met Gustav. When we were waiting for the man to jump from the pole. We'd already spent a day and a half with him and the rest of the staff of the half way house. The retreat was a gift from a corporate foundation that was funding the group. They were in the middle of strategic planning, considering expansion.
 

The woman, Carol, and I were talking through some of the challenges they had getting started.
 

"At the end of the day," she had said, "we have to break it all down, ignore all the noise all around us, and figure out how to take the next step without losing what makes us special." She had bent down and picked up a small, unremarkable pebble from the stone pathway. "How do we keep from being just another rock on the path? How do we know what will make us shine and what will make us just like everyone else?" She had dropped the stone back onto the ground. "The problem is we can't always figure out what is noise and what's real."

"That's pretty common in an organization at this stage," I had said, thinking about a few startups we'd had visiting the property the month before. They struggled with the same thing. "I tell you what. It's not on the schedule, but let's do an organizational inventory."

She had looked skeptical.

"I don't mean a physical one. I mean an inventory of your organizational goals and assets." We had continued that way for a few hours, with her core group joining in to decipher and untangle what made them unique, what they wanted to continue, and what resources they needed.