A Fierce and Subtle Poison - Samantha Mabry Page 0,77

her dad, next to a beautiful woman with long dark hair who must have been Isabel’s mother. They were standing together in the courtyard of their house at the end of Calle Sol. They were surrounded by plants. He was in a brown suit; she was in a white sundress with the slightly bulging midsection of an expectant mother. They were holding each other’s hands, and a large gray bird was perched on Dr. Ford’s shoulder. Zabana’s free hand rested on her belly. While both the Fords were smiling, Isabel’s mother’s gaze was directed to some point off in the distance, as if at the very last second before the shutter snapped, something had caught her attention.

I’d known little about Dr. Ford’s life aside from the sad stories patched together from Isabel and the señoras of San Juan. Those stories all existed in that magical space between truth and fiction, where most of the stories about Puerto Rico existed. That magical space was what the photograph had captured: two people, one happy about his impending child, the other distracted by something from either the past or the future—something there, but not there.

I tossed the frame down and with a single twist of the key, brought the engine of the old car rumbling to life. I clicked on the headlights and the windshield wipers, pulled the column shifter down into reverse, and pressed gently on the gas.

Miraculously, the tires found traction, and the car slowly started going backward. That miracle, however, was short-lived. The car lurched and stopped. I took my foot off the gas and gave myself to the count of ten before pressing down on the accelerator again. While counting, I listened to the rain pelt the roof and tried to ignore the pain that swelled throughout my body. Each raindrop sounded like an individual ball bearing striking a sheet of metal. Together, they sounded like a sky determined to crush us to death.

A single mosquito had found its way into the car with us. I assumed most of its comrades had been kicked off the island by the hurricane. It flew in dizzy circles before landing on my arm. After I slapped it away, it changed course, flying in a series of even dizzier circles toward Celia in the backseat. It approached her arm, backtracked, approached her face, backtracked. Eventually it settled on the seat beside her. It avoided her—the way the mosquitoes all avoided Isabel.

Celia pulled the smoke-tinged blanket around her shoulders. She was shivering.

“You’re sick,” I said.

She shook her head, and tiny droplets of water sprayed across the interior of the car.

“Just cold.”

I didn’t know if I believed her. I needed to get her out of here and to a doctor. I checked everything again—that I was in the right gear, that the parking brake was off—before applying slight pressure to the gas pedal. Over the sound of the rain on the roof, I could hear the back wheels spinning as they struggled to find traction.

Again, I eased off. “Not now. Not now.” I slammed my eyes shut, opened them, and started counting again. “One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . ”

The little girl’s voice came from over my shoulder: “What’s wrong?”

That question.

I clenched the steering wheel in an effort to hide my frustration. The wiper blades skirted across the windshield, revealing the orange glow of the still-burning structure several yards in front of us.

“Five . . . six . . .”

What was wrong? It wasn’t that I was worried about us being consumed by the fire. The car was too far away and the rain was too heavy for the blaze to skip across a large swath of muddy ground. Even if the car never started, the rain would eventually stop, and Celia and I could walk together to Isabela and find help.

What was wrong was that Isabel was gone. Isabel’s mother was gone. Marisol was gone. Sara Fikes and Lina Gutierrez were gone.

“Seven . . . eight.”

I slammed my foot down on the accelerator. The tires spun furiously. I knew it wouldn’t do any good, but I kept my weight on the pedal until the inside of the car started to fill up with the stench of burning oil.

I let off the gas and sat back hard in my seat, crying out in pain from my shoulder. I balled my bad hand into a fist and slammed it down on the steering wheel in sharp,