Adam smiles. His eyes stay a bit weary. “Thank you so much for the offer, Ms.Flores. But I need to check on my grandfather.”
Nadia, of course, has to push it, by offering to wrap up flan for him and William, but Adam is firm in declining. It’s clear he wants to be alone. “Nadia,” I say, getting out of the car. “I’ll bring them your flan tomorrow, okay?”
“Well. Okay.” She gives me the stink eye, as thoughIwere the one having trouble understanding Adam’s clear boundaries, and then waves at Adam. “Good night, young man!”
He nods and waves, turning the car back on and slowly driving across the street to William’s. Meanwhile, I turn to Nadia and raise my eyebrows.
“Adam already knows you’re trying to play matchmaker. So you can cut it out now.”
“Cut out what?” she asks in a fake innocent voice. But then she adds, “Is it matchmaking if I alreadyknowwhat’s coming? Eh?” I roll my eyes as we both climb the three steps to the porch side by side. Since she’s in her seventies and putting off another knee replacement her doctor has recommended for a decade, she goes a great deal slower than I normally do. I offer my arm, but Nadia hisses and lightly smacks it, as though I had gravely offended her as well as all the ancestors instead of just offering help.
“Amá Sonya came into my work and told me Adam wasn’t a good match because he has no money.”
“Ah.” Now Nadia looks sincerely offended. She and her sister, Sonya, act like they hate each other’s guts about ninety-eight percent of the time. In the other two percent, they merely tolerate one another. “So you want to take her advice? End up in a marriage like hers?”
I frown. “She is mostly alone. He’s always away. That’s what makes her happy, right?”
Nadia raises her eyebrow. “If you think your grandmother is happy, I have some seaside property in Oklahoma to sell you, amor.”
I roll my eyes. “Whatever.” I open up the fridge to pull out some cold water.
“He punched that man for you, no? That’s love.”
I abruptly place the pitcher back on the shelf. “You know that? From yourknowing? Already?”
Nadia lifts her phone. “My knowing is fast. But sometimes the Cranberry grapevine is faster. There’s a video in the WhatsApp chat I’m in with the nuns.”
“Let me see.”
“Ah-ah-ah,” she says, pulling her phone back. “Why do you need to see, if that man isn’t your true love? Huh?”
I roll my eyes. “Whatever. I’m sure it will be in the Cranberry Facebook group soon enough.”
“Sí. Theneveryonewill see his love for you!” she calls as I stomp upstairs.
After showering, and washing myface, and applying moisturizer, I don’t open up any social media groups. Instead, I pull up Matchmakr, frowning when there are no new messagesfrom @tryingsomethingnew. My littleGood morninglooks lonely and a bit pathetic now.
It takes me a long time to decide to just let it be. The last time he and I communicated, we got all spicy and both allegedly had orgasms thanks to turning each other on. What if he’s the kind of guy who abandons a woman after fooling around with her? I may have spent basically all my adult years in a supernatural hibernation in the forest, but I still know how some men can be. And if that describes him, well, maybe I don’t want to know him like that anymore.
I want to text my sisters so bad right now. Tears sting at my eyes. I need someone to really listen to me and everything I’m going through. Between Adam and this anonymous man, between Nadia and Amá Sonya trying to get in my head, I feel so confused. My thoughts are pulling me this way and that, leaving me feeling groundless and numb.
It’s like I have a pile of yarn in front of me, all wound up and tangled. Sage and Teal would be able to help me sort it.
But what good is their help if they forget I’m their sister? If they forget I need them?
This is how I end up crying myself to sleep.
17
When I awaken, I feelpretty pathetic for how sorry I’d felt for myself the night before. If I want to repair my relationship with my sisters, I need to stop being so passive. I need to figure out where I really stand with them, and stop making assumptions. I know, more than anyone, that people perceive us as feeling and thinking one way, when it’s often the total opposite of what they decided.
And honestly, I have Adam to thank for this development. Him defending me at the summer festival…it made me realize that I deserve to do that for myself.
I don’t have to go into work until the late afternoon. So, after dropping off the flan in William’s arms, as I promised to Nadia I would, I go into my room and pull out a glass beeswax candle. I wrap a piece of string around it, imagining it as the string that connects me to my sisters. I want to strengthen this string. I want to cancel the spell I had performed before, that made them each think the other was taking care of me so they didn’t have to.
I light the candle and ask the old gods to do all of this withtheir far-reaching, cosmic, old-god magic. I light the candle and watch it sway with my breath, back and forth, imagining the intention reaching my sisters in curls of flame-like golden tendrils.
Last year I told Teal that I had found a book of old family spells at my work. We used one of the spells to find our mother, who was in town to arrogantly use a part of Teal’s gift she had stolen to make art and profit from this theft. The problem was, our mother’s gift is staying unseen. She can disappear right in front of your eyes. I watched her try to do it. It’s as though she can open up a new universe to slip into, and if she doesn’t want to see you again, you’ll never see her again. End of story.
