The Lost Recipe for Happiness - By Barbara O'Neal Page 0,136

and Elena did not mind. Her sister sang an old song that one of their brothers liked to play on his guitar, about a man who chased his wife into heaven to kill her and her lover a second time.

“Where’s Edwin?” Elena asked, or thought she did, but no one answered. There was no sound at all except that soft, gleefully mournful tune. High, high in the darkness, four stars shot across the sky, and the next thing Elena knew there was a man bending over her, swearing in Spanish.

So long ago, Elena thought. Her spine felt watery and she bent to press her forehead against the tree.

After a time, she sensed the presence of her sister.

Isobel stood nearby. “It looks different in the day,” she said, looking around. In the bright noon light, her braided hair had a sheen like a waxed floor. “None of us knew a single thing. It was so fast. It made it hard for us to know what happened.”

In the middle distance, where the acequia bent toward the fields to the south, there were four other figures. Waiting, Elena knew. There was Edwin with his fall of shoe-black hair, and Albert and Penny, as chubby as always. A little girl, watery, holding Edwin’s hand. Elena found herself sinking to her knees, in the cool mud that saved her life.

There in the dark, she’d held on to her sister’s hand with all her might. “Don’t leave me alone, Isobel!” she had cried.

“I won’t leave you,” Isobel had promised.

And she had not.

“Why did all of you die and I didn’t?” Elena asked now.

“It wasn’t your day,” Isobel said simply.

“It shouldn’t have been yours.”

Isobel smiled softly. She bent and kissed Elena’s head, right at the part, and tears like a volcano gushed up through Elena’s esophagus. “I have to go now, Elena.”

“Please,” she said, and held out a hand. “I don’t want to be alone!”

“You aren’t alone anymore.” She moved away on strong sturdy legs, wearing the striped shirt she’d borrowed from Elena’s closet that night. Elena watched them through a wavery glaze of tears, the family that had stayed with her until she found her own—brothers in Patrick and in Ivan, a sister in Mia, a daughter in Portia. And her mother, waiting there in the car.

And Julian.

Julian.

Elena bent her head to the earth and let her grief pour out, her sacred tears watering the ground. She wept and wept and wept, all the tears she’d been holding for a lifetime. Then, when she was finished, she lay on the ground and released it all to the earth. To the heavens.

When she could breathe again, she stood and brushed herself off. At the line of crosses, she paused and tidied it up, plucked away a stray weed, and straightened the flowers, then went back to the car.

Maria Elena had fallen asleep with her head against the glass, her dog curled in her lap. With a vast tenderness, Elena bent and kissed her cheek. “I love you, Mama,” she said. “I’m sorry I have stayed away so long.”

Maria Elena opened her eyes, and for a long moment, she blinked in confusion. “Elena? I wasn’t dreaming?”

“No, Mama,” she said. “You weren’t dreaming.”

Mama kissed her hand. “Good. I been saying a lot a prayers for you, you know.”

“Thank you.”

On the way home, she read the script. It didn’t take long. It was a tale of a woman tortured by the loss of her family, long ago, and how she made her way to a whole life again. When Elena finished, she closed the folder and lightly pressed her fingers against it, and looked out the window, letting it fill her up.

It was a mature ghost story, scary, but also tender and wise. And it wasn’t really about Elena and her losses at all, but like everything else he wrote, it was Julian’s attempt to make sense or make peace with his mother’s murder.

So much love, she thought, gazing down at the craggy tops of mountains. So much love he had in him.

FORTY-FOUR

Julian was writing in his office when he heard Elena come in. He put his pencil down and walked to the mezzanine, where he could see the entryway. She hobbled into the hallway and bent to give hugs to Alvin and the pup, who came racing out to see her. Portia, too, came leaping down the hallway, an elfin creature who said something chirpy to Elena and took her coat. Elena said, quite clearly, “Please don’t mind when