Rain droplets fell like pins against the car window. Small and ineffective at obscuring Xiomara’s vision, they traveled down the glass as far as the wind could push them, leaving disconnected trails of water. She stared into the lines and the way they warped the image of any passing foliage, street, or car on the other side of the glass. She wanted to melt into it herself, blur and escape just as quickly.
“Are you listening to me?”
Her father’s voice brought her back to reality. He sighed into the cell phone, already knowing the answer to the question.
“Sí, Papi,” she lied. Xiomara switched the phone to her other ear, putting space between her and the glass. The rain continued downward. The rideshare driver clicked his signal and turned down another street.
“Mentirosa.” Papi chuckled. A quick little sound to let her know he wasn’t mad at her. He already knew she didn’t want to go there. What kind of person was excited to be surrounded by reminders of the dead? It was not at all an unreasonable assumption. But the truth of the situation was worse. Xiomara didn’t want to pretend to be polite and cordial with the very same people who’d done nothing but harass her mom with rumors and lies. She didn’t want to hug and give a kiss on the cheek to the same people who would slander her mother’s character to anyone who would hear them. Did Papi know this? Of course not—and truthfully, that was by design.
Xiomara didn’t want to go anywhere near those people. But Papi insisted. After all, her grandfather Papi Ramon had died, and there was a reading of the will. Xiomara had to go, because it wasn’t like Mami could.
She was dead too.
So for just an hour or two, Xiomara would have to grin and bear it. Kiss her aunts and uncles on the cheek and sit still long enough for the lawyer to read out the will.
“Xiomara?” Papi was hesitant.
“I’m still here.” She shut her eyes and sank into the leather. She knew this voice all too well. It was the one he put on when he wanted to calmly broach a subject she wasn’t comfortable with.
“Are you sure you don’t want to me come?”
“No!” Xiomara blurted. The last thing she wanted was for him to deal with the fake concern and well-wishes of her two-faced relatives. Papi was too naive. He would believe it to be genuine, and she didn’t want to tell him what they said about his wife when she was still alive. Everything from Mami draining Papi Ramon’s wealth for a selfish lifestyle to implying Mami had cheated on Papi. No matter what, Mami had made sure these rumors never made their way back to him—she never wanted him to feel like he’d married into a troubled family. With her gone, it was Xiomara’s turn to shield him. Mami never had to ask her to, but Xiomara didn’t want to let all those earlier efforts be in vain.
Still, it made Xiomara’s blood boil to remember the very first time she realized her extended family couldn’t be trusted. She was around five years old, and for one reason or another, her tía Aury was babysitting.
“Are you sure that man is really your father?” Aury had asked.
Xiomara had been very confused by the question, and even more confused by the way her aunt was giggling between her teeth, like she was circling around a really funny joke.
“You can be honest with me. I won’t tell anyone!” But then the phone had rung and Aury had busied herself with a conversation.
way Mami’s face pinched before she excused herself to get to the house phone. Xiomara wondered what about her made everyone run to phones, but then she heard Mami shouting. It started a whole family-wide fight, with Papi Ramon getting involved as a mediator.
When he asked Aury why she would say something like that to a child, her answer was simple: she didn’t. Mami must’ve made that up just so she’d have an excuse to pick a fight.
“Or maybe Xiomara lied,” Aury had said, throwing the young girl under the bus. “Josefina didn’t raise her right.”
It was the last time Aury was allowed to babysit Xiomara, something she apparently never wanted to do in the first place.
Xiomara cleared her throat now and returned to Papi.
“It’s fine. I can handle it. By the time you get here, it’ll be over anyway.”
“Okay,” Papi conceded. “But as soon as it’s done, hurry back. There’s supposed to be a storm tonight.”
Xiomara’s eyes skated up to the sky. The hovering clouds indeed looked ready to bring down the heavens.
“I will,” she said. “I’ll text you as soon as I leave. Love you. Bye.” She hung up as soon as she could. If she stayed on the phone any longer, Xiomara was sure that Papi would make up an excuse to come anyway. He wasn’t an overbearing father by any means—but when it came to a death in the family, he wanted to make his condolences known, even if it was to the abusive in-laws.
And as much as Xiomara had loved Papi Ramon, she knew that her relatives didn’t deserve any sympathy.
The rideshare driver glanced at her through the rearview mirror. He’d been doing that almost since the moment Xiomara climbed into the back seat. If it weren’t for the fact the man seemed to have more wrinkles than he had the sense not to stare, she would have thought this was the start of a kidnapping. Or at least the beginning of some toxic masculinity about to rear its ugly head. Instead, the wrinkles just reminded her of Papi Ramon.
“Sorry for your loss . . .” the man said. His thick Dominican accent colored the sentence. “You are one of the Abreus, yes?”
Only technically, she wanted to say. But it didn’t matter to them that Xiomara had her father’s last name, Castillo, because she was connected to a greater man.
Xiomara could see in his eyes that he knew exactly who she was—or at least who her family was. It wasn’t the first time a stranger knew her family’s name before she knew theirs, and it likely wouldn’t be the last time. A-B Millennium was a multimillion-dollar corporation that started building its wealth since before Xiomara was born. Its roots began in the Dominican Republic, financing cars and businesses, and then grew enough to create a second base of operations in New York City. It meant that Mami’s childhood home was farther north—in Yonkers, rather than the city itself—where the houses were spacious and the family could have a bit of privacy.
Not that the privacy lasted very long. With the creation of the Abreu Scholarship, whose mission was to send young Latinos to college for free, the family became a beacon of hope and a shining example to every immigrant, telling them that no matter where you were from or where you were headed, there was always a way to find success.
I should have never taken those promotional photos when I was a kid. Regret piled on with each moment of recognition.
“Your grandfather was a good man,” the driver continued.
I know, she thought. “Thank you.”
Soon, the car slowed to a stop. Xiomara exited the car and stood in front of the large two-story home, walls painted dark wine with a faded gold trim around the windows. The overgrown lawn pushed cracks into the pavement, and dandelions took residence in the added space. A broken window was boarded up on the second floor. Xiomara’s mouth fell open. This couldn’t be it. Not the house she remembered. She was so shaken that she actually looked down at the rideshare app on her phone—it pinged her at Papi Ramon’s address. She looked back up at the ramshackle state of the house, shaking her head again. Her grandfather had been a man who valued appearances, always wanting to look his best, and that generally extended to his home.
But Papi Ramon was dead. And before that, he had long been sick. It was only right that his home would match his condition.
cold drizzle sapped Xiomara’s body heat slowly, and she cursed herself for not wearing a thicker coat. Going to school in California the last couple of years certainly changed her sense of appropriate clothes for chilly weather. She jogged to take refuge under the archway of the front door and lifted a hand to knock—then froze. Something about the house gave her immense pause, the feeling of a field mouse at the entrance of a bear cave. Or a lion’s mouth. It wasn’t just that she was no longer welcome—if she entered, there was no guarantee she would escape.
It had been a while since she had been to see Papi Ramon. Her last visit to this house was after Mami’s funeral, and Xiomara just couldn’t bear to be around more reminders that she was gone. Which now made it seem like a cruel joke that she had to return, when the only person worth being there for had already been buried. Xiomara glanced at the square bit of plastic perched above the door frame. A circular glass center was fixated on her like an eye.
Right. She had forgotten they’d installed a camera after the break-in all those years ago.
Suddenly, there was movement behind the sidelight. Before Xiomara could brace herself, the door was unlocked and open.
“Xiomara?” A familiar face greeted her first. “Were you just waiting out here?”
Naomi’s brows knit together in confusion. Not at her standing outside, but like she didn’t know why Xiomara was there at all.
Xiomara tried to hide the prickle of hurt in her chest. “No, I just got here. Am I late?”
The young Haitian-American shook her head. “Compared to everyone else, you’re pretty early.” Naomi stepped aside, allowing Xiomara entrance into the family home. The slightly older woman’s face relaxed into a neutral expression. From the corner of her eye, Xiomara studied her. Naomi was an old friend of the family, one she spent a significant amount of time with from childhood up to her teen years. Yet it had been so long since the two had been together that Xiomara felt she was looking at a different person entirely.
Naomi’s dark skin was porcelain smooth, save for the tiny moon-shaped scar behind her ear. The large forehead that she’d had as a child was less pronounced; Xiomara could see she had grown into it.
A spark of guilt ignited with the surprise of seeing Naomi again. A few years ago, Xiomara had gotten a call from Papi Ramon. It was about the break-in that had occurred. His television had been stolen, as well as a handful of old jewelry belonging to Xiomara’s grandmother. He wasn’t hurt, but Xiomara knew that there was something he wasn’t telling her.
“Do you remember Julia?” he had asked. Of course she did. Julia was Papi Ramon’s housekeeper. Xiomara liked Julia because although she was a no-nonsense woman who kept the house orderly, she was always kind to the young girl even when Xiomara’s own family wasn’t. Julia was also Naomi’s mother, and the reason the two had become friends in the first place.
“Julia was killed.” Papi Ramon tried to hide his sniffling by forcefully clearing his throat. “You should reach out to Naomi. She . . . doesn’t have a father, you know, and she shouldn’t be alone.”
Xiomara’s ears were ringing for the rest of that conversation, and she felt a distinct pain in her core. She processed a single detail later—that, mercifully, Julia’s death was quick. A single bullet pierced an artery, and she bled out in the hallway on the first floor. It wasn’t until an hour later that Xiomara’s uncle Rafael had shown up to find her.
Not much else was said. Xiomara remembered hanging up. She remembered looking up plane tickets to fly back for the funeral, only to get a stomach bug the day before boarding the plane. She remembered telling herself she would call Naomi and apologize for not being able to make it.
And now she remembered never making that call. Once the fever broke, Xiomara simply forgot about the recent tragedy and focused on regaining her health.
Since then, Xiomara had wondered about Naomi, but had also thought she had missed her chance to reconnect from that first missed flight. Except Naomi was here now for Papi Ramon’s funeral.
If Xiomara thought she had a hard time coming back to her mother’s childhood home after her death, she couldn’t imagine what it meant for Naomi to be in the same place her own mother had died. Had been killed. Maybe that was why Naomi seemed to now be keeping her at arm’s length.
It was clear their childhood friendship had all
but withered away.
“Is everyone already here?” Xiomara shrugged off the thin coat she wore and folded it awkwardly over her arms. It was less of a question and more of a feeble attempt to resuscitate their relationship.
“Not everyone.” Naomi locked the front door. “Just your aunts and, uh, Rafael.” The uh hit the back of the woman’s throat like an ugh, but Xiomara couldn’t figure out how to ask why she’d reacted like that.
Without another word, Naomi quickly strode away toward the kitchen. The length of the hallway ended at the start of the dining room, where Tía Aury idly sat, doing something on her phone. She was dressed in matching peach blazer and slacks over a sleek beige button-up, a sharp contrast from Xiomara’s black jeans, gray shirt, and cardigan. It was like her aunt was running a light-hearted press conference for a country club rather than in a period of mourning.
As Naomi passed by, Aury’s eyes darted up once, twice, and then she broke into a toothy grin. Xiomara stiffened, knowing what would come next.
“Xiomaraaa!” Aury’s voice boomed loudly. Her chair screeched as she pushed it back and made a beeline to her niece. She wrapped both arms around Xiomara in a half-hearted squeeze, engulfing her in a thick cloud of fruity perfume and planting a kiss right next to her ear.
“How are you?” Aury asked. “Are you looking for a job yet? We could always use more people in Alluria.”
Alluria was the women’s empowerment skin-care company that Aury had created. Founded by women, for women, it boasted cruelty-free products, partnerships with charities to end domestic violence, and generous maternity leave. A place truly crafted with women in mind, it promised to provide endless opportunities for growth for “average but extraordinary working women.”
That was the copy, at least.
It was a noble sentiment . . . that had never made any sense to her. Average but extraordinary? Which one was it? Regardless, Xiomara did not want any part in the company, which was almost certainly a pyramid scheme. She thought back to the way Aury had said it. “In Alluria.”
Not “at.”
“I’m okay. I’ve still got a couple of job interviews.” Xiomara forced a polite smile, then glanced around the home. “Is anyone else here yet?” On the other side of the hall, Tía Marisa leaned against the wall with a phone pressed against her ear. She waved from afar, with an ecstatic smile that Xiomara could tell was less for her and more for whoever was on the other end of the phone. Aury returned the wave and smile with her own. The moment Marisa turned away, Aury’s eyes went sharp. Her voice dropped into a disdainful whisper.
“I hope she doesn’t get her heart broken again.” Aury’s lips pointed to her sister. “She loses her head every time she does. Remember the time her old boyfriend broke up with her after cheating on her and she drove his car into a river?”
Xiomara didn’t have to be reminded. The oldest daughter of Papi Ramon was also the messiest. It didn’t help that the story—which she told in a series of Instagram posts—launched her into influencer infamy. Then a movie was optioned to retell that story, and Marisa got it in her head that she was going to be a movie star . . . until she found out that Sofía Vergara had been cast in her role.
The movie never went into production due to a series of events that caused Marisa to be placed on house arrest with a restraining order set against her. Whatever the reason, Xiomara had learned it was better not to get on her tía’s bad side.
“How long has she been dating the new boyfriend?” Xiomara asked.
“With her, who knows? But you know, the longer the relationship, the worse she blows up at the end of it. Just thinking about it makes me need a drink.” Aury twisted on her heel and went back to the dining room. “Naomi! Get me a glass of wine. And come get Xiomara’s coat.”
Xiomara let out a slow breath. The sticky chemical smell of the perfume remained lodged in her throat, along with her own mounting irritation. “No, it’s okay. I can handle it!” she shouted for Naomi’s benefit.
Where’s the lawyer? Papi had told her to get to the house by 2:30 p.m. She assumed this meant the reading of the will was exactly at 2:30, so she arrived a little early. Unless . . .
Xiomara leaned back against the wall once the realization hit her. Two thirty was probably what everyone was told because no one was ever on time. A lot of her family—like her cousins, Yaritza and Henry, were always “fashionably late.” So did this mean that the actual start time was 3 p.m.? Had she arrived a whole hour early for no reason?
Goddamnit. This was the downside of avoiding her family for so long: she’d forgotten a lot of their idiosyncrasies when it really counted. Maybe Xiomara could hide in one of the rooms until everyone else arrived. It was a large house to accommodate a large family, so if she really wanted to, she could avoid just about everyone until the reading began.
With an actual plan, Xiomara turned toward both ends of the hall. On one end, Aury sat at the dining room table, right between the storage room and the kitchen. In the other direction, Marisa stood in front of the steps to the second floor, which also happened to be across from Papi Ramon’s study. Between the two of them, only one would talk her ear off, but that didn’t mean that Xiomara liked Marisa any better. When the woman wasn’t attached to a man, she made every other woman her enemy. Xiomara remembered how Marisa made excuses to be alone with her father when Mami was alive. The sheer audacity of the woman made Xiomara want to crack open her skull and see what had gone wrong.
That settled it. The only other place Xiomara could find solace would have to be the library. The memory alone both lifted her spirits and calmed her nerves, birthing a near-instinctive feeling that said, yes, go to the library—she would be safe there.
Luckily, it was right across from the front door, just a few feet away from her. The tiny room initially functioned as a coat closet in her mother’s days. Then when Mami and all her siblings grew up and moved out, Papi Ramon turned it into a little library—just for Xiomara. Her cousins were never very interested in reading and rarely visited the house as often as she did anyway. It was just a bonus that it was the only way he could get her to stop running around and causing trouble for Julia.
Xiomara wondered if her old books would still be there. Or had Papi Ramon slowly gotten rid of them, the way he’d slowly removed all the coats?
A door squeaked open. To her right, Xiomara spotted Rafael exiting the storage room, rolling cobwebs and dust off his clothes. Like
Aury, he glanced at her once, twice, and then smiled with all the warmth of a burning campfire instead of an all-consuming conflagration: cozy and contained and careful not to overwhelm her.
“Hola, Xiomara. ¿Cómo tú tá?”
Approaching him first, Xiomara sank into his hug. Unlike Aury, Rafael wore the lightest touch of cologne that complimented his natural scent. It was an odd comfort but a welcome one considering her sensitive nose was beginning to pick up on how old the house smelled. Like wet moss and fungi.
“Hi, Tío. I’m fine.” To her own surprise, she sniffled. She didn’t think she was on the verge of tears at all, but being bombarded with so many emotions had the effect of wrenching them from her.
“It’s going to be okay.” He patted her back. Over his shoulder, Naomi’s head poked out of the kitchen. Her eyes fell onto Rafael’s back, souring for a moment before disappearing again.
Rafael pulled away. “How’s school? Are your grades still okay?”
Xiomara’s smile became strained. “I graduated last semester.” Not that she expected him to know that. She kept away from him just as much as she did from her aunts. He was mildly better than Aury and Marisa by virtue of having been a little nicer to Xiomara’s mother—but when those two tried to tear Mami apart, he hardly ever had come to her defense. Maybe it was because he thought it was all just a catfight. Maybe he thought he was too much of a man to get in between women. Regardless, Xiomara knew that if any of the women in her family started treating her the same as they did her mother, she could rely on no one’s help but her own.
So it was best to keep everyone at arm’s length.
“That’s good to hear.” Rafael took in a deep breath.
“Is something wrong?” Xiomara asked.
He shook his head, but as he gave a sweeping look around the hallway, she noticed how wide his eyes were. Like he was doing his best to keep from crying. He cleared his throat forcefully and brought his shoulders up. “It’s just been a while. Being here, you know . . .” His words hung in the air. It was clear to Xiomara that Rafael was also not prepared for the emotions they were going to be battling
all evening. Aury and Marisa may have quickly moved through the mourning period, but Xiomara and Rafael seemed to still be taking up residence in it.
She could sympathize with him.
She wasn’t going to, though.
“Why were you in the storage room?” Xiomara peered around him. The door was already shut, and Rafael hadn’t budged since Xiomara approached. If he was hiding something, he wasn’t doing a good job of not being suspicious about it.
“Ah, I was just looking for something.” He waved her away and turned back into the room. “Something from a few years ago.”
“Do you need help—” Xiomara tried to ask, but Rafael had already closed the door behind him. He probably hadn’t heard her, she decided. Yet the lack of creaking floorboards clued her in that he hadn’t stepped away from the door at all. He simply waited in silence. Xiomara turned away, somehow feeling like she was intruding on his privacy.
Whatever. She wasn’t here to dissect every odd movement of her extended family. She was here to find out what Papi Ramon had left her—or hadn’t left her—and go home. With any luck, she’d be back in her own childhood bedroom at Papi’s house before sunset.
“He’s been in there all afternoon,” Naomi said, sidling up next to Xiomara.
“All afternoon?” She raised an eyebrow. “He got here that early?”
“Mm-hm. Won’t even tell me what he’s looking for so I can tell him where to find it.”
Xiomara blinked, perplexed by that statement. “Why would you know?”
“Because I’m the home aide . . . ?” Naomi gave her look that said, no one told you?
Embarrassment lit Xiomara’s cheeks aflame. It was bad enough she’d never gotten around to calling Naomi, but now she was exposing how little she knew about her former friend.
“Oh.” She swallowed her guilt. “When did that happen?”
“When Ma died,” Naomi said, so nonchalant that Xiomara took an extra moment to process that. She imagined the turn of events that had brought them here. Mami had died, and Xiomara couldn’t stand the house, so she’d left behind not just Papi Ramon, but Naomi. Then Naomi’s mother was killed, and unlike Xiomara, she didn’t have an extended family to lean on. It had been three years since that call should’ve been made. Naomi would’ve been freshly eighteen then, and in need of some income to take care of herself. ...
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