The twins nodded, aspects solemn. Then Blake Cortéz said, “It’s a lowdown shame. Had her whole life ahead of her.” He tried to restrain his grin but failed. James Sebastian snickered.
Marina was incredulous. You think this is amusing?
The twins struggled to contain themselves but broke out laughing. The women gaped. Then looked at each other in horrified perplexity at their own sudden urge to laugh. And then they too were guffawing.
Oh my dear God, we are terrible, Marina gasped, her hands on her face. Terrible. James said they probably could have got a good price for her from a museum. You are so evil, Marina said, both of you.
They all laughed until they were gasping and their ribs could stand no more. And Marina once again had to dry her eyes and blow her nose before she could resume reading the letter.
Bruno apologized for violating the privacy of the letter, but the envelope had borne no identification of a sender nor address to which it could be returned, and Josefina had no known next-of-kin to whom he could pass it on. The postal clerk told him it was the first letter ever to come for Josefina Cortéz in all his years at the job. It made Bruno even more curious that the postmark was of Brownsville, Texas, as many years ago his older sister had lived there for a few months. Even before he read the letter, he had a strange feeling it might be news from or about the twins, and he nearly shouted when he found he was right. He was very happy to know, after all these years, that the twins had escaped the gunmen Espinosa had sent after them. And of course very happy to learn of their marriages.
My most sincere felicitations to you, my dear new cousin Marina, Bruno wrote, and of course to James Sebastian. And my congratulations on the birth of Morgan James. Please convey my warmest wishes also to Blake Cortéz and his bride Remedios and for their coming child.
“The man sent pistoleros to get us?” Blake said. “Damn.”
It was clear from Marina’s letter, Bruno wrote, that the twins did not know Mauricio Espinosa was dead, and it was a pleasure to be the one to inform them that Mauricio had been assassinated only three days after his brother’s murder of John Roger. No one had ever learned who the assassin was.
Marina looked up from the letter. Three days, she said.
All this time we’ve been hiding from a dead man, Blake said.
How were you to know? Remedios said. How was anyone to tell you? You hid so well nobody could find you.
“Yeah,” said James Sebastian. “Joke’s on us.”
Bruno said Marina’s letter also implied their great trust in Josefina to keep all information about the twins in confidence, and he promised he would keep their confidence too. He said he liked his life as mayordomo and admitted that he and John Samuel had a good rapport in attending to hacienda business. But apart from business they spent little time in each other’s company and he did not feel it his duty to inform him about his brothers. He told of the brief siege of Buenaventura by the Espinosa gunmen and of John Samuel’s conviction that his brothers had been captured and killed. But neither he—Bruno—nor Vicki Clara had ever believed the twins were caught. After the siege, Bruno had gone with some men to the cove and found that the house had been burned down to the piling foundations. The dock too had been destroyed. But they found no bodies or parts of bodies nor any sign of a grave and so were pretty sure the twins had not been there when the place was razed.
The cove house, James said. Bastards.
As for Vicki, Bruno was sorry to report that for the past three years she had been in poor health more often than not. She slept little. She lacked appetite and had lost much weight. Her vision troubled her and she now wore thick spectacles to read. As they knew, she was not one to complain, but she had mentioned she sometimes got severe headaches that seemed rooted at the back of her eyes. John Samuel had at last persuaded her to have a medical examination. The doctor said her nerves were exhausted and prescribed a nightly soporific and a diet of dried fruit and boiled eggs. That was a year ago. The regimen seemed to have had no effect.
About Juan Sotero the news was cheerier. The boy at fourteen was as smart as they come and an excellent athlete. For the past year he had been set on becoming an army engineer, an aspiration prompted by a book he’d read about the road-making ingenuity of Yankee engineers under Captain Robert E Lee during Mexico’s war with the United States. John Samuel had of course been opposed to a military career for his son. He wanted Juanito to succeed him as patrón of the hacienda. It was fine with him, John Samuel had said, if the boy wanted to become an engineer, but why must he be one in the army? He could get his education at the university in Mexico City, and if he wanted to build roads he could build them at Buenaventura—God knew the place could use them. But in Juanito’s view the only thing better than being an engineer was being an engineer and an army officer. Vicki Clara was insistent that her son would choose his own vocation, though she had in private told Bruno of her own disappointment in Juanito’s choice of the army. Ever since the horse accident, Bruno wrote, things had changed between Vicki Clara and John Samuel. She was no longer reluctant to express differences of opinion with him and could be firm in defending them, and he seemed determined not to argue with her. In any case, and no matter what else one could say of him, John Samuel was not a stupid man. He understood he could neither force nor persuade Juanito to devote himself to a vocation he did not want, and so next fall Juan Sotero would attend a military school at Veracruz.
Not until near the end of his letter did Bruno tell them—in a single sentence that looked to have been scrawled in such haste it was nearly illegible—of the deaths some years earlier of Felicia Flor and his baby sons. And in the next sentence asked the twins’ permission to show Marina’s letter to Vicki, who would be greatly relieved to know they were alive and well. She was a far better writer than he and he was certain she would be happy to do all the letter writing for both of them in the future. Besides, the correspondence would be good for her spirits. He also asked if he could share the information with his sisters. Gloria Tomasina, he told them, lived with her husband Louis Little on his father’s hacienda near San Luis Potosí, and it was by means of the Littles’ close friendship with Porfirio Díaz that she had been able to end the siege of Buenaventura. His younger sister Sofía Reina still lived with their mother in Mexico City, but she had always had a keen interest in the Wolfe family and would be eager to learn what had become of the twins and that they were well. He closed with, My love to you all. Your most affectionate cousin, Bruno Tomás Wolfe y Blanco.
“We got a cousin whose in-laws are friends with Díaz?” James said. “That’s some friend to have.” Díaz had first become president when the twins were six years old.
Marina wanted to know if they would return to Ensenada de Isabel, now they knew Mauricio was dead. The twins said no. When their father died, the whole place, cove and all, became the property of she-knew-who. It wasn’t home anymore.
Well, what of Bruno’s request to share the letter with Vicki? Of course he can, James Sebastian said. And he can tell his sisters as much as he wants to, Blake said. They neither one cared whether anybody told John Samuel anything. But nobody would.
None of them could know Josefina’s death had not been so serene as Bruno supposed. For a great many years she had believed that life could produce no more surprises to someone her age, and then Marina and the twins were gone and she was astonished to discover that even an ancient relic such as herself—who had known every variety of loss and believed she had learned to endure them—could miss anyone so much. She was lonelier than she had thought it possible to be. There was a great stone weight in her withered breast that every day grew heavier until she felt it would crush her heart. As, finally, one night, it did.