The Lemon Orchard (6 page)

Julia held on to that hurricane memory. While Bonnie wandered through the lemon trees, Julia headed for the pool and dove in. The water cooled her skin, calmed her heart. Seeing Lion had undone her in ways she’d never expected. Visiting his house alone had made her feel like a child again, as if she’d never had Jenny. And seeing him get old, so obviously in love and longing for Graciela, had made her sad. More than anything, she still felt troubled by the talk she’d had with Roberto earlier. Five years without Jenny, and for him five without Rosa. She swam hard, doing laps, burning off the emotion. It was a saltwater pool, and closing her eyes, she could almost imagine that she was swimming in the ocean.

Coming up for breath, she treaded water, glancing around for Bonnie. Not seeing her, she whistled. The air felt soft on her skin. She smelled lemons and pine, and listened for the sound of her collie nosing through underbrush. Instead she heard human footsteps. They stopped just outside the circle of light, and she felt someone watching her.

“Hello?” she said.

“I didn’t want to disturb you.” She recognized Roberto’s voice before he appeared, Bonnie at his side.

“You’re not,” she said, although she felt self-conscious in the bright pool. It was late, at least 11 p.m., and she knew he rose early. “Did the lights wake you up?”

“No,” he said. “I was waiting . . .” He hesitated. “I wasn’t sleeping. I heard Bonnie outside my cabin.”

“Sorry about that.”

“Don’t worry for me,” he said. “But for Bonnie. The coyotes are out at night. I’m afraid one of them could take her down.”

“Thanks for getting her,” she said.

“No problem. Want me to put her in the house so you can finish your swim?”

“That’s okay,” she said. “I was finished anyway.”

He’d walked closer to the pool, and the sparkling light reflected into his burnished face. His hair looked black and, although short, untamable. She swam to the steps, pulled the towel around her shoulders.

“Did you turn on the porch lights?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “I saw you drive out, and thought you might be back after dark.”

She nodded. She was primed to feel intruded on—she’d been so independent all these years, hiding out from the world, never expecting someone to keep the light on for her. But his tone was soft, and she felt very glad to see him. She wondered whether he felt their earlier conversation was as unfinished as she did.

“I thought you might have gone home to sleep tonight,” she said. “The wind stopped blowing.”

“It’s true,” he said. They were surrounded by silence—the trees were still, the branches and leaves unmoving. Even the waves at the foot of the cliff seemed hushed.

“So why didn’t you go home?” she asked.

“I guess I wanted to stay on the property until you get used to it. It can feel very empty here alone at night.” He smiled. “Besides, Bonnie needed looking after.”

“I won’t let her out alone at night again, I promise,” she said. “Are coyotes the only predators?”

“At night there are many,” he said. “
Búhos
 . . . owls, but Bonnie’s too big for them. But mountain lions, bobcats,
cascabeles 
. . .”

“Cascabeles?”

“Tch, tch, tch,” he said, shaking his index finger.
“Serpientes . . .”

“Rattlesnakes. We saw them in the desert.”

“The desert?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Field study for my master’s degree.”

“Well,” he said, “they hunt on hot nights.”

“Thanks. We’ll be careful,” she said, starting toward the house. He walked her to the door. His shoulder was close to hers, and she felt heat coming off his skin. “You should take a swim on your way back to the cabin,” she said. “The water felt really good.”

“Thank you, but . . . ,” he began. They had reached the front door; she waited for him to finish his sentence, but he stopped himself and didn’t seem inclined to continue. Her mind had been racing ever since their talk by the cliff, but swimming had calmed her down.

“Roberto, did you stay here tonight because you wanted to talk?” she asked.

He didn’t reply, so she sat on the top step and he had no choice but to sit beside her.

“Yes, maybe,” he said once Bonnie had turned in narrowing circles and settled at their feet.

“Today, on the cliff path,” she said. “Jenny and Rosa.”

“Sí,” he said. “Our daughters. I asked, I thought . . . it is too hard for you to talk.”

“I thought the same about you,” she said.

“Rosa is lost,” he said.

“Lost” could mean so many things. Parents said their children were lost: to drugs, to the streets, to the wrong friends. “You can help her, can’t you?” Julia asked. “You’re her father. She needs you.”

“I think she doesn’t need a father like me,” he said.

“Of course she does!”

He shook his head, looked away. His face was in shadow, but she could see it etched with worry and shame.

“You don’t understand,” he said. “
I’m
the one who lost her.”

“What do you mean?”

“You mentioned the desert. Which one did you mean?”

“The Sonoran.”

“You know it?”

“Not really. I was there with a professor studying migration patterns . . . never mind. Why, Roberto? What happened?”

“We crossed from Mexico into Arizona,” he said. “Through the desert. I let go of her hand, just for a minute I thought. She was hot and tired, and I told her to wait by the boulder, in the shade of the big rock, and I went ahead. We were supposed to meet a driver who’d take us to a safe house, and I wanted to find the road.”

She listened, feeling chills.

“I got picked up,” he said. “By the Border Patrol.”

“But didn’t you tell them about her? Wouldn’t they have gone back to get her?”

“At first no one believed me—thought I was lying to distract them, maybe escape, I don’t know. Finally, when they took me to the detention center, I got an agent to listen. He was the boss, Señor Jack Leary, and went to where I said,” he said. “But she wasn’t there.”

“Oh, Roberto, no,” Julia said.

“After I got processed and deported, I crossed back on my own. No ‘coyote,’ no one to guide me, I found my way to the same spot, the same boulder. But Rosa was gone.”

“No!” Julia said. “Where?”

“I have no idea. It’s five years, and I know she’s gone, but I dream of her looking for me, circling that rock and waiting for me to come back.”

“When I first asked, you said she was in Mexico.”

“Sometimes I hope she is,” he said. “That she survived, and she’s with a good family.”

“What about home in Mexico? What about her mother?”

“Her mother and I were young when Rosa was born. She left us both. Rosa doesn’t know her. My grandmother was mother to her.”

“Wouldn’t Rosa have told someone where she was from?”

“She was only six during the crossing. I taught her the name of our town, she knew it, but my grandmother, no one in my family, has ever heard anything.”

“Oh God, six years old.”

“And Jenny?” He pronounced her name “Yenny.”

“Sixteen.”

He took her hand then, waiting, and she felt ready to tell him.

“She died in a car crash five years ago. With her father.”

He held her hand tightly, waiting.

“She was driving. It happened on our road, at the end of our driveway. She was a good driver, but she missed the turn. The police think she did it on purpose.”

Roberto put his arms around her. She leaned against his body and smelled his sweat and let him hold her. No one had in a long time—she couldn’t stand being close to anyone—but she felt words moving between them, stories of their daughters passing from her heart to his and back.

They were so silent she could hear moths in the night-blooming jasmine vines that grew up the house columns. Distant waves crashed on the rocks below the cliff, relentless and discordant. Julia couldn’t help doing the math, adding the years, and when she closed her eyes and leaned her head on Roberto’s shoulder, she could feel twenty-one-year old Jenny and eleven-year old Rosa sitting on the steps beside them.

Roberto stayed for a long time. Julia didn’t want to move. The longer they sat there, the more she could feel their daughters, just like in her old dream of Luna and Maria and the man with the scar seared into his face. She glanced up at Roberto, traced his cheek with her fingers. It felt smooth, no evidence of a burn.

“I used to have this dream,” she said. “From the time I was young. Two little girls in Mexico, always in danger, and a man nearby to protect them.”

“There’s no one to protect . . . ,” he began.

“But in the dream he was so real. So good. I’d feel scared for the girls . . . maybe I was one of them. But I knew he’d protect them. Us.”

“You dreamed of Mexico?” he asked. “Why?”

“It means something to me, to our family. Hasn’t John ever told you?”

“Señor Riley?” he asked. “No.”

She hesitated, debating whether to tell him her family legend—it even connected to John’s reasons for being in Ireland now—but stopped herself. The protector was just a figment of her dreams. He hadn’t helped Jenny, and he couldn’t help Rosa. Bringing him up to Roberto would just make her sound as crazy as she sometimes felt.

A coyote called from the hills and another answered. Bonnie growled, struggled to her feet, and Roberto caught her by the collar.

“I’d better get her inside,” Julia said.

“Yes,” Roberto said. “Keep her safe.”

“Thank you,” Julia said, opening the door.

He nodded, watched until they were inside and she’d bolted the door. She watched him through the window, making his way back toward the cabin, and she waited until he’d disappeared into the shadows before turning off the porch lights.

chapter three

Julia

The weeks went by slowly. Julia felt lazy and quiet, as if the molecules of her body were knitting together, healing the parts of her that had stayed so raw at home in Connecticut. As September rolled into October, she slept a lot, everywhere but in her bed: in a wicker chaise on the oceanfront terrace, on a blanket on Leo Carillo Beach.

After their talk, she and Roberto kept their distance. She had guarded herself for so long she felt strange and exposed—not only had she told him about Jenny, she’d listened to his story about Rosa. It haunted her—not only the horror of losing her, but the fact that nothing was resolved. He’d had no body to bury, no certain knowledge of her death.

Julia had spent a summer in the desert, south of where Roberto lost Rosa. She’d focused on that part of the world because of Uncle John, her time spent in California, her early familiarity with families who had made their way north from Central America. Meeting Roberto brought that desert time, nearly all of it spent with Jenny, back to her.

Julia had had five years of insomnia, but this time was different. Usually she relived that last morning: breakfast with Peter and Jenny, plans for riding lessons and Super Bowl errands, the ease of it all, the astonishing ordinariness of that last day. And the truth, impossible to bear even after all this time, after the proof of it, that there had been no signs that it was the end, that life as they’d all known it was over. Jenny had smiled. Julia remembered that every sleepless night: Jenny’s pretty, tired smile at the breakfast table.

Peter believed—or acted as if he did—that first love was no big deal, Jenny would get through it, outgrow her feelings for Timmy, learn a lesson and be stronger for it. Julia had wanted him to be supportive of Jenny—stay up talking as long as she needed, take her side against Timmy. Jenny’s heart was breaking, and she had never needed her father’s love more. Peter raced off to work every day, armed for battle with his briefcase, but at home he had seemed to lose track of what they needed. Not just Julia and Jenny, but the three of them, all together, as a family.

Peter wanted to think Jenny was fine, that horseback riding would take her mind off the breakup. When Julia had gazed at her daughter across the table that morning, she’d expected to see dark crescents under her eyes, worry and anxiety and a wish the phone would ring, a constant vigilance, hoping and waiting for Timmy to come back. Instead she saw Jenny smiling, with something like relief.

All those sleepless nights when Julia had remembered Jenny’s smile, she’d asked herself: if Jenny could look that way at breakfast, even for a few seconds, with laughter behind her eyes, and real humor, how was it possible for her to feel such despair just two hours later that she’d push down on the gas so hard she’d hit the wall going fifty or more?

These last weeks in Malibu had given her moments of distraction from those thoughts. Roberto’s story about his daughter touched a soft, painful spot in Julia’s heart. It kept her awake, thinking about Rosa and where she could be. She thought of that moment, sitting with Roberto, when she’d felt Jenny right there with her.

How close she had seemed, how real. It was almost as if the story of this little girl, separated from her father, had made Jenny materialize. Nothing in life had soothed Julia all these years, until then. She wished there was some way to help him find some comfort, too.

That morning she got up at dawn. She fed Bonnie and stood in the cozy kitchen waiting for the coffee to finish brewing. Staring out the window, she couldn’t even see the fountain ten yards away: the fog was so heavy it swaddled the house and every tree in the orchard, made every object invisible to everything else.

Her aunt and uncle’s kitchen was old-fashioned in the extreme, dating back to when her uncle and father had been boys. The wooden furniture was rustic, with a few pieces painted turquoise and bright yellow to match small square floral tiles set among the larger terracotta ones.

The stove and refrigerator were vintage Maytag, eggshell enamel with rounded corners. Open shelves above the tiled sink were stacked with red, blue, and green pottery plates and bowls. Ornately tooled, tarnished silver trays were displayed on a hutch containing cookware and drawers of silver flatware.

Julia stood in front of the corner bookcase. Floor to ceiling, it contained cookbooks and plastic three-ring binders. While Bonnie finished her breakfast, Julia stood with her coffee mug staring at the books. They covered decades, if not a whole century—some looked glossy and brand-new, others had titles worn away by time and salt air—and many were in foreign languages.