She shrugs and looks uncomfortable. She searches for the words in English, then finally gives up. “No sé. Pero pienso que es importante.”
“She says she doesn’t know but she thinks it’s important,” translates Victory, my little bilingual.
I nod and go to the phone. My heart is thudding as I walk down the hall to our bedroom. I am always afraid when the phone rings while Gray is away. I’m always waiting for the call. I remind myself that if anything were really wrong, they’d come in person.
“Hello.”
“Annie.” It’s my father. He sounds tense, urgent. He’s not supposed to call me. In fact, I’m not really supposed to call him, either. But every once in a while, like the other day, I can’t help it. In recent years we’ve become a little careless. Part of the overconfident phase I’ve been going through.
“Where are you calling from?”
“From a friend’s place.”
“What’s wrong?”
“There was someone looking for Ophelia today. He came by the shop, said he was a cop. But he wasn’t. A bald, beefy guy making a show of himself with a big gun in a holster.”
“Okay.” This is the hard part. I don’t know if he’s lying or not.
“Seriously,” he says into the silence. “No bullshit.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him that my daughter has been dead for over five years.”
“Okay.” This seems to be the only word I can manage. I realize that my whole body is tense, that I’m gripping the phone too hard.
“He didn’t believe me. He wasn’t just casting for information; he knew something. He got all friendly with me, said there was a reward, a big one, for any information about you. I went crazy on him, started to cry and shit about how you were dead and how dare he play these kinds of games with an old man. Then he left in a hurry.”
“But he wasn’t a cop.”
“No way. You can always tell a cop, even the bad ones. They think they got the law on their side. This guy was too dirty even to be a dirty cop.”
“Okay,” I repeat again, not wanting to say too much.
“Be careful,” he says, and hangs up.
I sit for a second with the phone in my hand. I’m not sure what to think about what he’s told me. Ophelia has been dead for so long. After so much time I’d come to believe that everyone had forgotten her except me. I hang up the phone and then pick it back up, punch in a number I know very well.
“Hello?” says Drew.
“Can you come by later? It’s Annie.”
“Sure,” he says after a second’s hesitation. “Something wrong?”
“I don’t know.”
Drew always looks at me as though I’m an unwelcome solicitor at his door asking for a donation to a charity in which he doesn’t believe. I don’t like the woman I see reflected in his gaze. She’s someone unworthy, not to be trusted. But maybe I’m just projecting, as my doctor might say.
He sits at our dining-room table, a bottle of Corona nearly disappearing in his big, thick hand. His brow furrows with deep lines as I tell him what my father told me. He is a heavier, harder version of Gray. He has the same storm-cloud eyes without any of the wisdom or kindness I see in his son’s.
“Could just be someone fishing,” he says with a shrug. He takes a long swallow of his beer, puts the bottle down heavily on the table. “Unfortunately, the circumstances of Ophelia’s death wouldn’t hold up to any real scrutiny. We never expected anyone to come looking.”
I feel a little jolt at hearing that name from him. I hate the way it sounds coming from his mouth, the way it bounces on the walls of this house.
“But there might be a few people who haven’t forgotten her,” he says when I don’t say anything. He rests his eyes on me, and I fight the urge to shift beneath his gaze. I hear the television playing in Esperanza’s room; she’s watching one of her novelas. I can tell by the staccato of Spanish and the strains of melodramatic music. (¡Ay, Dios! Esperanza will exclaim about one of the characters. She is so bad! ) Outside, a strong wind bends our palms, whispering through the fronds. I wish I hadn’t called Drew.
“I’ll have someone look into it,” he says finally.
I realize I haven’t really participated in the conversation, though he doesn’t seem to