When I Knew You (19 page)

After the process was done and they had a solid plan that would take them well into the future, they decided they needed to make the leap literally as well. We had headed back to the ropes course to complete their retreat with a leap of faith from the telephone pole, the most challenging of the course obstacles.

I thought of Maurice making the leap, I could see him flying out, reaching with great determination and a good bit of style to ring the bell. It was the day Gustav had visited and announced that Antonia was back. I felt like it was a lifetime ago.
 

Again, I scanned the papers on the dashboard. It's here. It's all here. But I can't see it.

I started the inventory, pulling all the photos I had gathered, putting them in separate piles. I placed all the photos of Javier Bonita—the one with Estella and the ones from the articles my mother, Lupe, and I had gathered. There was a resemblance between them; and with the black-and-white picture, I could see how easy it would be to confuse the two. But in the wedding photo with Estella, Javier had light green eyes and a full, joyful smile. The article of the land baron described his eyes as very light blue, almost gray. I stared closer at the pictures, but with the squint it was impossible to discern their color. He definitely didn't have that easy smile, either.
 

My mother had been looking into land deeds having to do with Javier Bonita. As far as Estella was concerned, something had happened to Javier. Javier had gone missing sometime after he went to Texas. But according to Detective Alacon, Javier didn't disappear; he abandoned his wife and daughter in Chicago to start a new life in Texas.
 

Flipping through the photos, I spotted the one from the Trent Bonita campaign for governor that I'd downloaded at the library. It was a simple headshot, the candidate in front of the Texas flag, a tiny flag lapel pin shining on his dark suit jacket. Trent Bonita's eyes were a sparkling light blue. Which didn't mean anything, other than somewhere along the way he'd inherited blue-eye DNA.
 

I pulled out the article about the dig on the Bonita ranch. It was a little over two months ago, a few weeks before Antonia woke up. Trent had his unfortunate photo opp, digging up someone who had been buried on his family ranch. In the article there was a white pickup truck in the background, door slightly ajar. I remembered watching the archived news coverage at the library, the elder Bonita getting out of that truck, waving away cameras.

Javier Bonita. Somehow, when Antonia looked into the deeds, this Javier got worried. And when powerful people get worried they react to protect themselves. It didn't make sense that someone like Javier Bonita would worry that his abandonment of his family in Chicago would be exposed. Abandoning a family wasn't exactly career limiting in Texas by any stretch.

No. There was something bigger old man Bonita was worried about.
 

There was one photo missing. Eliah Trevino. Who the hell is Eliah? There was nothing on the tapes—at least the one I had—about him. But Antonia was convinced that Abuela did know him.

Abuela. Abuela was chatting with Eliah. Granted, he could have charmed his way in, but with everything going on I couldn't imagine her trusting a stranger at the door.

I couldn't put it off any more. I had to see her. I gathered the photos and tossed them and the envelopes back in my backpack and headed for home.

Chapter 22

I parked a few houses down the street. As far as I could see only Abuela's car was in the driveway. I didn't think Eliah knew what I was driving, but I waited a few minutes just in case. In the end, I decided to go through the spaces between houses and jump the rock wall in the backyard. I could see Abuela sitting at the kitchen table through the sliding glass door to the back porch. A tall glass of tea was in front of her, and she kept glancing down at the cordless phone.

I waved at her, not wanting to startle her. She looked relieved to see me, a small weary smile lightening her face. She put her finger to her lips, asking me to be silent, then pulled the door open and I walked in. She embraced me warmly and I instantly regretted my earlier suspicion of her. This was my Abuela. She'd given everything to me, she'd come to our home to take care of Antonia and me, ending her own independent life in her house across town. Because that's what you do in a family. You take care of each other.

She held me close, whispering in my ear. "He has her. And he is listening. Don't say anything. Not a word."

I could feel her tears on my own face as we stood here, holding each other.

"Is he here?" I whispered. I felt my hands starting to shake.

Abuela broke our embrace and shook her head no. She took my hand and we walked to the back bedroom, Antonia's room. All the drapes were pulled and the bed was neatly made. Abuela went over to the dresser and grabbed the dry erase board. We sat on the bed and she wrote a note.
E called after you did. He told me he had Antonia and that he knew you'd called.

I nodded, then took the board to write her back.
Who is E?

She looked confused, then wrote
The tall man.

I stopped her. I pointed again to my question.

She stared at the words for a moment. She erased her previous words and wrote.
E is Javier Bonita's son.

I was confused. All the stories I read about the would-be governor, Trent Bonita, listed him as an only child.
 

I took the board from her, and erased it slowly as I thought it through. I wrote.
How do you know?

She looked away from the board and I followed her gaze. There was a photo on the wall of Antonia in college, standing with a group of friends. Everyone was smiling except Antonia, who's attention was on something off to one side. Abuela walked over to the dresser under the picture and opened the bottom drawer. She pulled out the pink shoe box and a folded yellow sheet of paper and set them next to me. She took the board and wrote
Javier Bonita died. A monster took his place.

She walked to the closet and pulled out a dark blue tote bag, putting the box and flyer inside.

I wrote quickly.
You need to leave. It's not safe.

She placed her hand on my cheek for a moment and shook her head.
He won't harm me. Find Antonia.
 

How do you know that?
I wrote.
 

The phone rang and we both froze in place. She opened the door and looked out. It opened on the side of the house, into complete darkness. The phone rang again. She pulled me into an embrace.
 

"We are both in danger here. Meet me at the hall," she whispered in my ear. She put the bag over my shoulder, gave me a kiss on the cheek and pushed me out into the darkness.

I got into the dark truck and drove to the pool of light under a lamp post down the street. The yellow paper was a flyer for Bingo Plus on Montana Street. Abuela, I assumed, had circled the seven p.m. start time and wrote "Esther" in her flowing script along one side. It was already eight, but the bingo hall was open until ten tonight, according to the hours listed on the flyer.

I opened the box, finding a small stack of bills, maybe a couple hundred dollars. Did everyone in my family horde cash, I wondered, thinking of Antonia's cash in the lining of her purse. I shoved the cash and the flyer into my backpack and headed east, trying to focus on where I was going.

The parking lot was packed at the huge bingo hall, the bright happy colors of the giant letters on top of the building aglow in the bright spotlights. I stuffed my hair into my baseball cap and headed for the front door.
 

"B seven!" The bingo caller's voice was deep, filling the giant open room. Long brown folding tables were lined up in rows like tables in a grade school cafeteria, and from what I could see, there had to be at least a hundred people inside.
 

"Can I help you?" A young man with vivid red streaks in his hair and a nose ring was sitting at a table by the entrance, stacks of bingo cards in front of him along with a small metal lockbox. He had simple geometrical shapes tattooed on his hands, and a set of mathematical equations. "We started an hour and a half ago, but I can probably still get you in. Do you have your own daubers?"
 

He gestured to a collection of fluorescent colored inkers on the end of the table which were, in turn, surrounded by a frightening array of multi-colored troll dolls.

"Um, well," I said, adjusting my backpack, "actually, I'm looking for Esther?"
 

"She's in the back, but I can't leave the table." He turned to his side and leaned down. For the first time, I noticed a little girl, probably about five-years-old, sitting on the floor, playing with a half dozen troll dolls. "Go get Tia, Colette."

The little girl jumped to her feet and took off at a run. He looked after her, shaking his head.
 

"She runs everywhere. My mom wants her to be a singer on Broadway, but I think she'll make a better track star."

Little Colette returned a minute later with a large woman in a lime green knit shirt and matching capri pants and sandals. When she saw me, she walked faster, then grabbed my hand, leading me without a word to an office. I looked back and noted that Colette was settled down with her troll dolls which looked like they were lined up for a race.

The office was small, but neat, with boxes stacked along one wall and posters of various bingo card patterns and designs hanging in black frames. A scent of roses filled the air and I spotted the plug-in air freshener, next to a gold-colored troll doll and dauber.
 

"I'm Esther, a friend of your Abuela. You're Kati, right?" She examined me closely as if she was checking me over like a winning bingo card. " Yes, yes, you look so much like Antonia."
 

"Yes, I wasn't sure if—"

"Sit down," she said abruptly. Esther grabbed her purse off the desk. "Diane—I mean, your Abuela—she will be here soon and she said you two needed total privacy." She mimed zipping her lips, then continued in nearly a whisper. "Don't worry. I get how these things go. You'd be shocked by the things that happen in that hall. Shocked. I mean it. This won't be the first time we had a secret meeting in here, and it won't be the last." She nodded toward the door. "I'm going to grab a smoke and keep an eye out," she said with a wink, then walked out, closing the door behind her.

After that exchange, I found myself wondering if this bingo hall was tied in with the Mexican Mafia or something. The muffled sound of the caller leaked through the walls and I heard a shriek of "Bingo" and the collective groan of the crowd.
 

We'd played the Mexican version of bingo, Loteria, when I was a kid at the church festivals. I recognized all too well the agony of only needing the corazon when someone next to you suddenly shouted bingo.
 

The maroon loveseat and matching chair across from the desk looked inviting, but I was still too wound up to sit down, despite Esther's insistence. I was checking my phone for the tenth time, when the door opened and Abuela came in.

"Kati!" she said, rushing to me.

"I wasn't sure if you were coming," I said, holding her tight, feeling like I was nine-years-old all over again.

She pulled back and looked at me as if searching for something in my face. "Kati, I don't think we should stay in here for long. But there's something very important I need to tell you. It's about Javier."

"Javier Bonita?" I asked.
 

"Yes," she said. She unzipped her jacket and sat down on the loveseat. I sat on the edge of the chair.
 

Abuela looked away, her hand over her mouth for a moment. Then she took a deep breath and met my gaze. "I—I never thought I'd have to talk about this again, and definitely not with you," she said. "Then I wasn't sure I'd be able to tell you in time."

"Tell me what?" I grew uneasy as if I was about to enter a dark, forbidden place.

"I knew Javier Bonita," she said. "Because once, I was in love with him."

"What?" Shock ran through my body like a wave. "In love with the richest man in Texas?"

Her brows furrowed and she looked disgusted. "That man, he is not Javier, Kati." She held her hand up to stop me from saying anything. "First, let me tell you the story. All of it. Because if I don't tell you now, I might never tell you. Maybe it will help. I always thought it was better to forget, but now, I'm not so sure." Her hands were in her lap and I noticed they were shaking.

 
I got up from the chair and moved next to her on the loveseat, taking her hands in mine. She had always been so strong, always knew what to do when my entire world collapsed. "I'm listening, Abuela."

She exhaled slowly, then began her story. "When I was young, I was very foolish, Kati. I was a silly romantic girl with crazy ideas of love.

"Don't get me wrong. I did love your Grandfather, very, very much. When he died, you and your mother kept me going. But my love for him, it was a different kind of love than the one a girl has when she's young. My love for your Grandfather was more... I don't know," she looked around the room as if searching for inspiration. "Maybe the word is practical?" She twisted her wedding ring, which she still wore after all these years.

"But when I was young, love was different. Love was just like the novelas," she said, laughing a little.

"Abuela," I said, rolling my eyes. "The novelas? Really?"

"Oh, yes, Kati. It was all drama and craziness," she said. "When I was young, I lived in Chicago. I don't know if you remember me telling you about growing up in Pilsen. I know I didn't tell you about Estella Zuniga. Estella and I were second cousins, but she felt more like a sister to me. She taught me how to braid my hair, and every week we'd got to the store and get ribbons to weave into our hair. Her hair was long and thick, like a horse's tail, and you could weave an entire rainbow of ribbons in it. Our families got together every Sunday after church. We were very close all through elementary school, she was kind to me even though I was a few years younger. It was like that right up until she got to high school. That was when Javier Bonita came to our school.