after Nataly escorted their mother home, Sylvia accompanied Celeste to the bar. “A neat trick,” Sylvia said, “that both of you could spend an entire hour talking without addressing a kind remark to one another. Remind me to not do that on my 60th.”
Celeste turned on her bar stool to face Sylvia. “Miriam and Becky will always talk to each other.” She leaned forward, hugging her sister.
“Listen to me,” Celeste said into Sylvia’s ear, more forcefully than she had intended. “You have to promise me, whatever I say—whatever I say—you won’t stop talking to me. You won’t shut me out of your life. Promise me.”
Sylvia pulled back. “It’s that bad?”
“I want to know I can tell you the truth, and you won’t punish me for it.”
“Oh my God, Celeste, what did you find?”
“I don’t know where the money is. I don’t know what he did with it. And that’s not good.”
Chapter 2
After their drinks, Sylvia drove ninety minutes north to pick up her daughters at Tamara’s. Her back and stomach were beginning to ache. She wasn’t willing to take more pain meds on top of the glass of wine Celeste had ordered for her, hoping to soften the news. By the time she stepped out of the car, she was aching too much and too stiff to walk without crouching forwards. Tamara opened the door, waiting.
She was tall and elegant and wore a fashionable wrap around her shoulders. She reached out to hug Sylvia.
“You should have let them spend the night. They’re upstairs, asleep.”
Tamara released her and looked at her carefully. “You look like shit. What did the bastard do this time?”
Sylvia wanted to laugh, but only managed a small snort. “It’s what he did last time.”
“You want a glass of wine?”
“Tea,” Sylvia said, sinking into a soft armchair and waiting as Tamara fussed in the kitchen. “And aspirin,” she called out.
Sylvia closed her eyes and thought how blessed she was to have a friend who knew the worst thing about her and loved her anyway. Tamara brought in a tray with a small glass of water, a couple aspirin and a large blue and white mug.
Sylvia held the mug between her hands to warm them. And said, “‘The soul’s freedom’” and waited.
Tamara scrunched up her face. “Friendship. Anna Akhmatova.”
Sylvia smiled. Russian poetry, literature was one of their deep connections, their lawyer husbands a more superficial one. Jack liked to point out that he was all mergers and acquisitions, while Tamara’s husband was a mere litigator. Perhaps she could close her eyes, stay here with Tamara and never worry about a thing. Tamara would find a way to make it work. Tamara could move easily from wearing her power jewelry and spearheading a capital campaign for their children’s school to dancing in a track suit with the banda music at their park. Everything came naturally to Tamara. Sylvia felt as if she had to watch Tamara and the other mothers at their school, the other people at the park, to see how things were done, and then act as if she had everything figured out.
“How am I going to survive while you’re in Israel?”
“Passover’s months away. Don’t worry about it now. What did Celeste say?”
“Not months. A little over one month. Stop trying to make me feel better about it.” Sylvia sipped at the tea. Excellent, of course. “She can’t figure out what he’s done with the money. She thought I was going to hate her for giving me the bad news.” She looked at her friend and saw that Tamara was reserving judgment. “Don’t you think that’s a little ridiculous?”
Tamara raised her eyebrow. “I don’t know if that’s ridiculous. What did you tell her about Jack?”
Sylvia glanced across at Tamara, “Nothing. All she knows is that the money is missing.”
Tamara nodded. “I see she’s not the only one afraid of losing a sister.”
Sylvia struggled against the lingering pain to sit upright. “You promised,” Sylvia said. “You promised, Tamara, and if you can’t keep that promise, tell me now.”
Tamara kneeled beside the armchair and held Sylvia’s hand between hers.
“I will keep it because I love you, but it’s not right.”
“Nobody ever needs to know. Ever. You don’t understand. It would change how they look at me, think of me. Don’t, don’t, don’t let that happen.”
“And you need to do what you promised me.”
“I know, I know.”
Monday morning Celeste flew back to San Jose. Now it was over. Sylvia had taken the news about the money like the woman she was, calm and unruffled. Celeste could imagine her sitting at her immaculate kitchen counter, pouring herself another cup of coffee and planning her next step.
Sylvia and Jack had had a lot of money. Most of it was gone, and Celeste couldn’t find what Jack had done with it. In Celeste’s business, missing money meant addiction: drugs, sex, gambling. That’s the part she couldn’t tell Sylvia, because she had no proof of what Jack had done with hundreds of thousands of dollars—only that it was missing.
Celeste dug around in her bag. She opened her wallet and peered at that scrap of paper. Skye Amado Neidorf, it read. One brief, almost life, that changed everything. “This I do, in remembrance of you.”
Mercedes Amado arrived at Franklin Elementary in Santa Ana every morning at 6:30 a.m, even though school didn’t start until 8. Today she wore a softly woven linen suit, peach colored. She loved dressing up for her students. Most of her thirty-five sixth graders had mothers who were younger than her own daughters. When Mercy made phone calls home, she marveled at esas madrecitas who were often busy extricating themselves from boyfriends or in the process of pursuing new loves while leaving their sons and daughters to Mrs. Amado.
Sixty years old. She hardly believed it herself.
Each fall Mercy was happy to adopt those thirty-five sixth graders, inoculate them with her brand of philosophy and education and say good-bye at year’s end. Sometimes the infusion took, sometimes it didn’t. She had a certain reputation. Problem students were routinely transferred in and somehow became less problematic. Mercy once thought it might be interesting to follow the paths of some of her students and then changed her mind, certain that the results would only depress her. She had to focus on the class at hand, just love them for the time they were given to her.
Why couldn’t she transfer that skill to her daughters, giving them all she could for the time they were with her?
Each morning Mercy studied the photos on her desk as she prepared herself for the day. There was Celeste, her first born, graduating from Humboldt State. The cap obscured how short and spiky her hair had been, but you could see the delicate bones of her face and a small smile as she posed. That diploma had cost all of them so much, but most of all, Celeste. You could see the determination, the grimness, underneath the smile, even at twenty-two. Her sense of humor had evaporated with Skye.
There was Nataly, her baby, at her senior year’s gallery opening. Nataly’s lank brown hair straggled down to her shoulders, her face even paler in the excitement of the evening, those green eyes twinkling at the camera, at her mother.
In one, the brown heads and long braids of her granddaughters, Becky and Miriam, were capped by Mickey Mouse ears, marking the spring she had taken them to Disneyland. Miriam smiled behind Becky, her arms wrapped around her younger sister, as if protecting her from life’s unpredictability, even here at the Magic Kingdom. Becky smiled, her two front teeth missing, looking so much like Nataly at that age it always momentarily