A Family Daughter by Maile Meloy

Author:Maile Meloy
Language: eng, eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2006-01-28T16:00:00+00:00

40

IN THE LATE AFTERNOON, everyone from the estancia drove in two cars into Buenos Aires for the funeral. The mood was subdued, and Abby watched the ranchland go by outside the tinted window. Then they were on the freeway on the outskirts of town, with giant apartment complexes and dilapidated row houses hung with laundry, and then they were in the city, on a wide avenue canopied with trees. Outside the basilica and the cemetery there were milling tourists. Stalls sold leather bracelets and photographs of tango dancers.

Inside the church, they filed into a pew. Magdalena had been left at home; she hadn’t seemed at all wistful about not driving on a bad road for the funeral of an employer who had never been particularly nice to her. The shrines on the walls of the church were ornate and gilded, and to Abby’s right was a seated statue of Christ, looking gravely disappointed, with the crown of thorns on his head and his elbows on his knees in brooding thought.

A few gray-haired tourists passed through the church to visit the Franciscan cloisters, stopping to gape openly at the funeral. One of them, in snakeskin cowboy boots and a gray suit, with a turquoise ponytail holder in his white hair, slid into the pew next to Abby. “What’d I miss?” he asked, in an American accent.

“Nothing so far.”

“Name’s Freddie,” he said, grinning to reveal two missing front teeth. “I’m Josephine’s half brother. I guess from your face that they didn’t tell you about me.”

“No,” Abby said, wondering if there would be more complications with the will. Saffron was at the other end of the pew.

“I knew Josephine on and off,” Freddie said. “Our father wanted us to be friends. Saffron invited me, which surprised me a little. I’m a healer, so I can tell that my niece is very angry.”

Abby nodded.

“If Saffron wasn’t so resistant to me, I could heal her,” he said. “I’ve healed people who weren’t even in the same country as me, but it’s easier up close.” He paused, studying Abby. “Like if there was something wrong with you right now, it would be easy for me to heal you. You don’t seem resistant.”

“I think I’m all right.”

Freddie shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

“How are you the half brother?”

“Josephine’s father had an affair,” he said, “with my mother. I got my healing ability from her. But she was an actress and couldn’t be known to have a baby out of wedlock. So I grew up with another family. But my real mother had real abilities, real sensitivities. I’ve read a lot about her. You’ve heard of Jean Harlow?”

“Yes,” Abby said.

“No one knows this,” he said. “They said she was on salary strike from MGM in 1934, but she was pregnant with me. It would have been a great scandal. I know she felt terrible about leaving me with that other family. But it wasn’t her fault, she was trapped by her circumstances. She had kidney disease, you know, so having me was probably what killed her so young.

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