“What?” the woman said, and he knew little had escaped her eyes. He would have to be careful with her.
“Have you seen her?” the man asked. “The boy at the ticket booth believed she might have come here.”
He stalled for time. He pretended to study the photo more closely, although he could have closed his eyes and drawn it from memory. “Perhaps I have seen her,” he said. Still, he did not return the photo. If it were possible, he would have kept it.
Her face lit with hope. The man beside her studied him, as if searching for truth.
Víctor’s mind whirled. Seeing Katherine’s picture had shaken him. He had a hundred questions. Where was she? Why had she not returned as she had promised? Had he been a fool to think she shared his feelings? He stalled for more time, time he needed to sort the implications and risks and possible accusations. He wanted no trouble, but he was hungry for news of Katherine. He wanted to know why she had disappeared so suddenly. She had promised to return, and he had believed her. And if he decided to get involved, what should he tell this couple? It was complicated. People were quick to make accusations, to jump to conclusions. What if he had been one of the last people to be with Katherine? What if they gave this information to the police? He had not been in trouble for a long time, but people had memories. Quickly, as if suddenly even holding it implicated him, he passed the photo back to her. He thought quickly and made a decision that satisfied the need to be cautious while at the same time presenting the opportunity to learn more.
“Señor Jack,” he said. “Señorita Madison,” he began.
MADISON
“Señorita,” the diver said. “Señorita Madison.” He pronounced her name as if each syllable were a word of its own.
“Yes?” Reluctantly, she slipped Kat’s photo back in her tote.
“Your sister. Does she like to go to the shops?”
Shops? Kat? Shopping was invented for Kat. She considered it a national sport. “Yes.”
“Cozumel.” The word came out flat and sure.
“Cozumel?”
“Sí, Madison,” he said. “Everyone who comes to Playa will go there. For the shopping, and for the diving and snorkeling as well. Have you looked for her there?”
“No.” It hadn’t occurred to her, but his idea immediately made sense. Wherever she traveled, Kat always returned home with some memento of the trip. Jewelry or art. An article of clothing. Or tales of an adventure. For Kat sought those as eagerly as she did any pottery or watercolor or shawl. It seemed inconceivable that at some point during one of her trips to Playa del Pedro in the past months she wouldn’t have taken at least a day trip to the island, if not to shop than for the excursion itself. She turned to Jack. “It’s possible,” she said.
Víctor again wiped his hands on the rag. She couldn’t read his face, and that made her distrustful. “Wait here,” he said and disappeared into the shack. He returned moments later with an oversize canvas bag, the once white cloth now yellowed from use and the sea. “I will take you there.”
Maddie cast an alarmed glance at Jack. “No. Please. Thank you, but that is not necessary.” She immediately understood. It was a slow day, and he saw them as a business opportunity. He wanted them to hire him. She looked back across the distance toward the pier and the ferry docked there. A line was starting to form at the gangplank. Jack reached over and clasped her hand, gave it a quick squeeze. She gathered he intended it as a message, but she didn’t know how to interpret it.
Víctor made a sign, as if brushing away a gnat. “It is no bother, Madison.” Ma-di-son. “I will go with you.” With a finality that brushed away her protests, as if they were agreeing instead of objecting, he set down the canvas bag, tapped the lid on the can of resin, and set the brush in a second can filled with clear liquid. He locked the shack and placed a CLOSED sign on the door.
“What do you think?” Maddie whispered to Jack while the diver was closing up the shack.
“I might be totally off the mark, but I think he might know something he’s not telling us. Or isn’t ready to tell us. Let’s see if we can learn more from him on the ride to the island.”
An obese iguana scurried past, back to its place beneath a boat. “I’ll be back, Kuko,” the diver said, the way one would tell a dog to stay. He started for the pier, and after a moment’s hesitation and another whispered consultation, Maddie and Jack followed.
There were two ferries to the island, Víctor explained. A water-jet catamaran and a smaller hull craft. “We will take the slower one,” he said. “It is cheaper.” Maddie started to argue, but again Jack squeezed her hand and she fell silent. The ferry held a cabin with two rows of seating and more seating on the open deck as well as a bench along one side. They chose the bench. She was glad he was at her side and knew she wouldn’t have gone to the island with Víctor if she had been alone. The diver stood, looking out at the horizon, where the relentless azure sky melted into the sea. Maddie recalled the expression she had seen on his face when he had looked at Kat’s picture. She stirred, ready to press him, unwilling to wait until they landed on the island.
At that moment, seemingly unmindful of the other passengers, Víctor began to sing, the same sorrowful tune he had been singing when they had approached his shack. Jack winked at her. She settled back on the bench and pulled the guidebook out from her tote, pretending not to know Víctor. Any questions she had would have to wait until they arrived on the island. The horn sounded and she felt the ferry begin to pull away from the pier. Jack leaned back against the rail, closed his eyes, and turned his face to the sun. She opened the guide to read about the island where they were headed.
She’d read only a sentence when she had to close the book. In spite of the calm water, she felt queasy. She swallowed and shut her eyes, which proved a mistake. She opened them quickly. She bent forward, swallowed as the sickness rose in her throat.
“Take a deep breath.” The diver was at her side. To her great relief, he had stopped singing.
“I’m fine.” She forced the words out, swallowed again, prayed she would not be sick in front of him.
“Are you okay?” Jack asked, his face grave with concern.
She swallowed, tried to nod.
“Deep breaths,” the diver repeated.
She felt the color drain from her face, tasted the sourness of sickness in her throat. Not here, she thought. Not now. Falsely confident, she had left the Xanax back at the hotel. She heard Jack and the diver conversing in Spanish. Jack nodded at something Víctor said and moved aside to make room for the diver to sit on the bench beside her.
The diver reached for her hand.
“What are you doing?” she hissed and tried to pull away.
“It’s okay, Maddie,” Jack said. “He’s going to make your nausea go away.”
Víctor pressed his fingertips into the fleshy pad between her thumb and first finger, held the pressure for a moment of two. Slowly, as he applied the pressure, the nausea, so threatening moments before, faded. “Better?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, surprised. It was as if the sickness had never been. “What did you do? How did you do that?”
“Mi abuela. My grandmother.” He got up and Jack slid over and reclaimed his spot next to her.
“She taught you that?”
“She was a curandera. A healer.”
Maddie closed her eyes, testing, but neither the threat of a panic attack nor the nausea returned. She reopened the guidebook, needing to reestablish her composure.
He pointed to the book. “You are interested in knowing about Isla de Cozumel?”
She shrugged. What she was interested in was finding Kat.
“It means the Land of the Swallows. It was sacred to the Maya.”
“Really?” Jack sounded genuinely curious.
“It was a ceremonial center where they worshipped Ixchel. She was the goddess of fertility and childbirth, the moon and the sea.”
“Are there ruins there?” Jack asked.
“Temples?”
“One or two. They’re small. Not like those in Tulum and Chichén Itzá. Is this your first trip to Mexico? Or perhaps you two came here on your honeymoon?”
Maddie caught Jack’s smile and wondered if he was remembering the flight attendant who had also assumed they were honeymooning. “We’re not married,” she said.
“Just friends,” he said.
“Ah, sí, friends,” Víctor said.
Wild for a change of subject, Maddie said, “I’ve been to Mexico before. Not to the Yucatán, but to Oaxaca and Guerrero.”
“Why there?”
The ferry passed a two-person kayak, leaving it rolling in its wake. “To study the work of the masks made there.”
“You have an interest in masks?”
“Yes. I create them. That’s what I do.”
“In my country,” he said, “the magic of the mask makers is powerful.”
“You should see Maddie’s work,” Jack said. “It’s magnificent. And brave.”
She flushed at his words. “What about you?” she asked Víctor. “Were you born in Playa del Pedro?”
“Yes.”
“Do your parents still live there?”
“I did not know my padre,” he said. “And my madre died when I was very young.”
“I’m so sorry,” Maddie said.
He shrugged. “Tell me, Ma-di-son. Tell me about your sister.”
Seeing Jack’s nod of encouragement, welcoming the opportunity to pursue the sense that he knew Kat, she put her guidebook back in her tote.
“You say you think she came to Playa?” Víctor said.
“Yes,” Maddie said. She searched his face and saw there an intensity that surprised her.
She vowed to be cautious, careful of what she told him.
TIA CLARA
Tia Clara knew there was nothing to comfort her, to ease the sorrow in her heart and the pain of what lay ahead. She stared across the room where the canary sat motionless on the bottom of the wire cage, its head tucked beneath a green wing, as if asleep. For a day it had refused to eat. The fortune-teller couldn’t help but wonder whether it was the power of the foreign mask maker that was making the little bird sick. Or was it, at last, her past catching up, as she had always known it would?
Memories tormented her. It had begun earlier, when she had caught sight of Víctor. To her surprise, he had been with the gringa and another man. The three of them had been boarding the ferry to Cozumel. Víctor had been smiling at the woman. The sight of him had caused her soul to fill with blackness and had given rise to old memories. How much Víctor looked like his padre. And hadn’t she and Manny also taken the ferry to Cozumel? Or perhaps not. She could not remember boarding a boat with her husband, and surely that was not something she would forget. She had always distrusted the sea, for it knew everything. If you lost your soul, the water would carry it away. For this reason Tia Clara always stayed away from the open sea. No, she had no memory of the trip, only a familiar sense or sensation as she had watched Víctor walk up the gangplank onto the ferry with the scarred woman. But it had been a long time ago, and this she knew about memory: It was not a straight, flat road. You could not look over your shoulder and see the clear and shimmering view of its truth. Even for her, she who knew so much, it curved and dipped, deceived and held back. Memory, she knew, was only as true as the mind wished to make it.
“Eat,” she urged the motionless bird. Molted green feathers littered the floor of the cage. As if she could nourish the bird by feeding herself, she prepared a cup of hot chocolate and a sweet roll she had brought home from Solano’s bakery. She broke off a piece of the roll and took a bite and then crumbled a tiny bit. The bird did not move when she opened the cage door and dropped the tiny crumbs at its feet.
While the chocolate was warming, she burned a chunk of copal and tried to console herself by remembering her madre’s words. No hay mal que por bien no venga. There is nothing bad from which good does not result. Although she knew these words were meant to soothe weaker souls, they could not deny the fact that there existed some evil from which no good could ever come. Still, she repeated the sentence twice. The buzzing of a fly caught her attention. As she watched, it flew closer, over the roll, and, even as the fortune-teller was raising a hand to brush it away, it landed on the edge of the cup of chocolate. Tia Clara sank down on the old wood chair, but the fly did not stir. Even the youngest child knew what this meant. A dead relative had returned. She knew at once whose departed soul had entered her house. It was too late now to alter that which had been. There was no magic that could change the damage of so many years before.
She moved on swollen feet to the shelf above the sink and took down a box. She sprinkled the doorway with salt. She knew evil spirits were persistent, but she hoped this could hold them away so they could do no more damage.
MADISON
The pier at Cozumel was crowded with vessels moored gunwale to gunwale. The ferry slid into its berth. They waited until almost all the others had disembarked before rising from the bench. Víctor tossed his canvas bag out onto the pier while Jack helped Maddie out. At once they were approached by taxi drivers, each shouting above the others, vying for their attention, offering rides to hotels and beaches and tourist sites, but Víctor motioned them away. “First we will have coffee,” he said, “and then we will begin with the shops.”
She caught Jack’s eye and shook her head. She didn’t want to waste time and wanted to start canvassing the shops. But Víctor had already claimed a table at a sidewalk café. He was steering the course of the day, and she was unsure how to wrest control back.
Jack reached for her arm. “This is the first café on the way from the pier,” he said. “If Kat stopped for coffee or wine while waiting to get a ferry back to Playa, this would be the spot. It’s a good place to start.”
A good place to start, but to no avail. No one recognized Kat from the photo. Maddie refused anything more than coffee—her stomach held the memory of her earlier nausea—and finished her drink quickly, impatient to begin, but the diver took his time. Finally, unable to wait any longer, she got up. “I’m going to start asking around.”
Jack pushed his cup away, threw some pesos on the table, and stood. “I’ll join you.”
“Me too,” Víctor said.
“You finish your coffee,” Maddie said. “We’ll start on the shops across the calle.”
The diver ignored this and left the café with them. The streets of San Miguel were laid out in a grid. It was past the high tourist season, but the town was still busy. They began on Avenida Melgar, and then on to Avenida Juarez, stopping at taco shops, a bookstore, T-shirt stores—ubiquitous in every resort town she had ever been to—dive shops and fruit stands and kiosks where sisal baskets were displayed. As they encountered the owners and clerks at each store, she showed Kat’s photo while Jack—or occasionally Víctor—spoke to them in Spanish. “If we had another photo of Kat, we could split up and cover more territory,” Jack said. Maddie was glad they had only the one picture. She wanted to be the one to search the face of everyone they spoke to, looking for a sign, a fleeting expression, a shadow crossing the eyes, something betraying a flicker of recognition. She wouldn’t miss an opportunity to pursue even the slightest interest. She no longer feared appearing rude or pushy. It wouldn’t stop her, as it had when she’d approached the old fortune-teller in Playa. After trying the shops, they approached hotels and small guesthouses, but the answer was the same at each. No one recognized Kat.
Disappointment was a stone in her chest. She felt duped that the diver had led her to believe that someone here might have recognized Kat from the picture. They had lost hours in the futile search. He had only wanted their money after all.
Víctor regarded her for a long moment. She had the strong feeling, as she had had on the ferry, that he was debating whether or not to tell her something.
Fueled with her new determination, she asked, “What is it? You seemed so
certain that Kat would come here. Was it because you knew her? Just tell me that. Did you see her here? Did you see her on the ferry?”
She was usually good at reading expressions, but even as he held her gaze she was unable to interpret his. Was she seeing fear? Or was he simply annoyed at her questions?
“I’m sorry I could not help you,” he said.
“We might as well return to Playa,” she said to Jack.
“No. Not yet, Jack. Madison.” Ma-di-son. “There is one more place we must go.” Without waiting for their reply, he approached one of the taxis and gave the driver directions. He motioned for them to join him.
“Are you up for this?” Jack asked. “You seem really pissed with him.”
Maddie walked toward the taxi. “What could one more dead end possibly matter?” She didn’t mention her suspicions, nor the fledgling hope that perhaps the diver would now reveal more.
“Where are we going?” Jack asked as he slid in next to Maddie.
“You will see.”
The driver left the city center and drove along the coast. Farther from the town, they passed a row of resort hotels, and Maddie wondered if perhaps Kat had stayed at one of them, but the taxi continued without stopping. At last they pulled off the highway. A sign indicated that they were entering Chankanaab Park. The taxi stopped at the edge of the parking area, beside a row of huge kapok trees.
She raised her eyebrows. “What is this place?”
“It has the best snorkeling on Cozumel.”
Perhaps not a dead end after all. She remembered how much her sister loved to swim. “You think Kat might have come here?” But if Víctor did not know Kat, how could he have known how she loved swimming? Still, she allowed herself to hold on to that sliver of hope.
Again, she felt him consider his words, deciding what to say. “This is for you,” he finally declared, his arm motioning to include them both. “You cannot leave the island without experiencing it.”
Anger flushed her face. “You brought us here for that? To go snorkeling?”
The Orchid Sister Page 17