American Dirt : A Novel (2020) by Cummins Jeanine

Author:Cummins, Jeanine [Cummins, Jeanine]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

Just on the outskirts of Guadalajara, inhaling the fragrance of chocolate, Lydia stops dead in her tracks. Her hand flies up to her mouth. Lorenzo turns to face her.

‘Yeah, so I guess the daughter read that article your husband wrote,’ he says.

‘Oh my God,’ Lydia says.

‘You didn’t know this?’

Lydia’s voice falters.

‘Yeah, somebody sent her the article, and when she read it, she freaked out and killed herself. Left her papi a suicide note. Shit was ugly. That’s why.’ Lydia’s mind races to put the pieces together while the boy sicario talks. ‘That’s why he went loco. Said you betrayed him, said your husband was responsible, said you were all gonna pay. He was really fucked-up.’

‘Wait.’ Because her brain has seized. It’s too full. Marta. Isolated memories surge up in Lydia’s consciousness one after another and then pop like bubbles. Javier in the bookstore, Skyping with his daughter in Barcelona before an exam. Her apprehension, his fatherly encouragement. Javier laughing when he told Lydia about the pogo stick Marta bought him for his fiftieth birthday. How he’d tried it out just to please her and ended up with his back in spasms. Javier’s insistence that Marta was the only good thing he’d ever done in his life. Es mi cielo, mi luna, y todas mis estrellas. My sky, my moon, and all my stars. There’s an unwelcome pang in Lydia’s chest.

‘She didn’t know? She didn’t know about her father, about the cartel?’

‘I guess not.’

‘How could she not know?’ It seems so unlikely, but Lydia immediately perceives her own hypocrisy. She hadn’t known either. The first domino of her understanding teeters and falls.

Lorenzo shrugs. ‘I don’t know. But he made your family like a straight-up vendetta. It was practically a press release for Los Jardineros. Usually when there’s a job, you only hear what you need to hear, and it’s only the people involved who know anything about it, but this time was different. Everybody in the city knew, everybody in Guerrero.’

Lydia begins shuffling her feet beneath her again, but her mind is whirring like a disengaged motor. She is blindsided. All this time, all these miles, the same futile, idiotic refrain kept presenting itself through her thoughts. This wasn’t supposed to happen. It wasn’t supposed to happen. She’d misjudged him. She had missed something. A thousand times, she’d replayed the conversation she’d had with Sebastián the night before the article came out. He’d asked if they should go to a hotel for a few days, to be on the safe side.

‘No, I think we’re fine,’ she’d told him.

‘A hundred percent?’

‘Yes,’ she’d said. ‘A hundred percent.’

How that answer has haunted her. It has followed her into sleep every night. It has twisted in her gut without reprieve. All the frivolous reasons she hadn’t wanted to go to the hotel: She hated to uproot Luca, for him to miss school, for her business to suffer. She hated the interruption to their routine. And she’d believed, truly, that Javier wouldn’t hurt them. What she wouldn’t give to go back to that moment with Sebastián, to say anything else.

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