Before The Rain Falls Page 2

  He did not plan to be here any longer than he had to.

  “And we’re on drought restrictions,” she continued. Her skin sagged with spotted folds that indicated a life of sun exposure and cigarettes. “Keep your showers to five minutes.”

  Mick found the room at the end of the parking lot. He forced the key into the tarnished brass lock, pushing and pulling until finally shoving open the door.

  He was certain, now that he was captured by its unrelenting grasp, that humidity was a natural disaster worthy of the emergency aid and national outpouring that was bestowed upon more traditional afflictions like earthquakes and hurricanes. While it did not cause homes to crumble to their foundations, the same could not be said for visitors from Boston, who enjoyed moderate summers and blessedly cold winters. Never again would he curse the ice he scraped off the windshield as he hurried to cover a story.

  Mick tossed his Tumi suitcase onto the bed. It landed next to a leftover newspaper, three days old, suggesting, disturbingly, that the room hadn’t been cleaned since the last occupant.

  He read the headline: One hundred eighty-two days and counting since the area had seen anything close to rain, and the temperature felt as if it were keeping pace with that number. The accompanying photo showed rosaries and holy cards strewn on the ground outside the church as people begged for salvation from this particular hell. But, like the once-green flora that surrounded it, the hopes were eventually abandoned, and the sacramentals lay forgotten.

  It was just too hot to pray.

  Mick searched for the air conditioner and found a note attached:

  AC BROKEN. REPAIRMAN DUE IN THE MORNING.

  UNTIL THEN, PLEASE USE THE FAN. MANAGEMENT.

  He rolled his eyes and turned on the television. It flickered low-resolution images of a ballet recital broadcast over local cable lines.

  He checked his watch. Eight fifteen now. Two hours past dinnertime, three if he were still on the East Coast. The ache in his stomach confirmed it. Surely there must be a bar nearby and a bartender to talk to. They always had the best information. And the sooner he got his story, the sooner he could leave.

  He took a swig of room-temperature water and imagined that it was a beer, dripping with condensation that he could trace across his forehead.

  Now or never. He couldn’t procrastinate any longer.

  Mick slid an envelope out from the bottom of his suitcase, creased under the weight of his clothes. It contained printouts of stories by lesser papers, mostly regional ones, and the sparse results of the intern’s research. He ripped open the packet, leaving jagged lines along its edges.

  It all boiled down to this: a portrait was found in a thrift store and was thought to be leaking tears. The image was that of a young girl about four years old—Eula Lee, whose father owned the fish cannery that had been the town’s largest employer at the time. Her sister had murdered her years later. Della Lee had gone to prison and recently returned to the family house after seventy years of incarceration.

  It seemed that all was dead and buried, so to speak, and the town had spent the last few decades more concerned with an endangered economy than the sororal antics that few were alive to have witnessed. But news of the crying saint had brought believers to the town for a short time. And for that time, Puerto Pesar enjoyed a regional notoriety it had not known in two generations.

  Then, all too quickly, the heat, the drought, and skepticism sent the pilgrims right back to where they came from.

  And sent Mick his Hail Mary pass.

  Had one mistake, one reckless grasp at advancement, been worth banishment to a Hades that seemed so out of place in a civilized country? And could any kind of salvation be found in a convicted nonagenarian and the portrait of a long-dead girl named Eula?

  CHAPTER THREE

  Puerto Pesar—Today

  Paloma Vega fidgeted in the house that was once again hers to call home, but she felt like a stranger. Ten years living away had produced a bona fide New Yorker who was already nostalgic for Thai food that could be delivered in the middle of the night and sirens that mellowed into an urban lullaby.

  She liked noise. It calmed her, made her feel steady in a world that was moving swiftly around her. Growing up in Puerto Pesar had been so quiet that she could hear her own restless heart beating. Its rhythm ached for something more. That came to fruition when she graduated from high school and received a letter from her father in Connecticut.

  He and his wife had just divorced. She’d never wanted him to contact his daughter, the product of a long-ago spring-break fling. But he’d always thought of Paloma and had set up a trust in her name years ago. And there was enough in it to pay for college, and maybe grad school.

  Her only hesitation was leaving her sister, Mercedes, who was only six at the time. Paloma would miss their nighttime routine of reading before bed and all the time they spent together, but Abuela encouraged her to take this unbelievable opportunity. Nineteen and free, she left for a new future.

  Now she was a few months shy of thirty. A whole different person whittled out of a decade. Four years at NYU and four more at Columbia for medical school. A two-year residency at Lenox Hill Hospital with a job offer from them for a permanent position. Her father was proud. But she wondered if, as a board member, he’d pulled any strings.

  It was hard to know if you were truly good at something when the way had been paved for you.

  “Where does Abuela keep the bleach? And the funnel?” she shouted.

  Mercedes adjusted her earbuds and nodded her head to a beat that Paloma couldn’t hear. She wanted to give her sister the benefit of the doubt. To believe that she just hadn’t heard the question.

  She tried again. Something more relatable.

  “What are you listening to?”

  But Mercedes shrugged and left the room.

  Paloma sighed. There was no manual for Things to Talk About with a Sixteen-Year-Old. She’d actually looked online. In the last week, she’d tried to engage her in anything she could think of. Movies. School. Now music. She didn’t ask about boys, though. She still wanted to think of Mercedes as the girl who rode a bicycle that had plastic streamers cascading from the handlebars. Not the one who’d just gotten her driver’s license.

  Who was this creature with the dark eyeliner and darker mood?

  Paloma gave up and opened cabinets around the house, finding everything except the items she was looking for.

  Abuela’s own mother had been a product of the Depression, and she had learned to hoard items for reuse. The green movement didn’t arrive in Puerto Pesar as a politically correct trend but as a matter of necessity, and thrift was no stranger to this house. Plastic bags and aluminum foil were meticulously rinsed and folded. The dish towels were threadbare, their once-colorful party images of Fiesta San Antonio frayed into near oblivion, a decade passing since they were new. The toaster looked like one of those replicas that could be found in upscale catalogs that advertised retro styling, but this one was an original, a wedding gift to Abuela. It had outlived her husband by twenty years and counting.

  At last, Paloma found them on a shelf in the carport. She wiped her forehead with her arm and worried, not for the first time, whether she’d stayed away from Puerto Pesar for too long. Four visits in ten years. Not often enough to witness the intricacies of her sister growing up or her grandmother growing old.

  Puerto Pesar. Family. There was something comforting about returning home, even if you’d always dreamed of leaving it.

  But she’d done what any girl from a small border town would do when her upper-class father offered her a way out: escaped. She’d been too young to think twice. Too starry-eyed to feel guilty.

  Until recently.

  The administration at Lenox Hill Hospital agreed to hold her new position for a month so she could go home and help Mercedes take care of Abuela after her heart attack. Paloma caught a plane the next day, nonstop to Houston, then an impossibly long bus ride. With every mile, she willed the tires to spin faster. That was a week ago. Abuela was able to come home yesterday after recovering at a hospital in Harlingen and had already spent the day cooking enough caldo de pollo to feed an army.

  Paloma knew better than to dissuade her. This was the woman who had raised her while her own mother flitted in and out of town. Who added homework to the school’s load in the name of better education. Who supported her plan to move east and go to medical school.

  It was simple: Abuela needed her, even if she denied it. So here she was. If an eternity were at her disposal, she could never repay her grandmother for all she’d done, raising Paloma and then Mercedes, while holding down three jobs to do it. But Paloma was quickly realizing the toll her absence had taken on her sister. How had she not seen it before? And what could she do about it with three more weeks here?

  Paloma took a drink from the quart of water she’d set on the counter. Four of those a day. One gallon. Stave off the dehydration that came with the indomitable heat.

  She returned to the task at hand. She’d promised to clean the drain line to the air conditioner after dinner. It, too, was a relic, and although Paloma had offered on four separate occasions to buy Abuela a new, energy-efficient unit, her grandmother insisted that the original worked as long as it was maintained. She stood over the piping, watching the bleach chug its way into the interior, and grimaced at its pungent scent. Catching the excess droplets with one of the kitchen towels—and eradicating what was left of the aged fiesta revelers in the process—Paloma gave them a final resting place in the trash bin.

  “What is that you are throwing away?”

  Paloma turned and saw Abuela standing there in her frayed bathrobe, arms folded.

  “An old towel, Abuela. I’m ordering you some from Williams-Sonoma. You need new ones.”

  “You don’t have to do that, mija. That one was just fine.”

  It wasn’t worth arguing. It was easier to change the subject.

  “How about some warm milk before you go to bed?”

  “That sounds good. I’ll start a pot.”

  “No. You’re supposed to be resting. Let me do it.” She pulled out some kitchen chairs and led her by the elbow. “Here you go. Sit on this one, and put your feet on that one. Remember, you have to elevate them. Doctor’s orders.”

  The refrigerator door was covered in photos of Paloma and Mercedes through the years—pigtails, braces, graduations from kindergarten on up. But one was unfamiliar to her. It was a saint card, the kind that Abuela liked to hand out to trick-or-treaters along with the candy they wanted. She kept a vial of holy water in a reused perfume bottle in her purse along with a stockpile of Saint Michael cards to protect against evil.

  But this one was different. Paloma pulled off the magnet that held it in place. It was a very young girl with long brown hair wearing a blue taffeta dress. A golden halo had been drawn above her head, and her name was printed at the bottom.

  EULA LEE—SANTA BONITA

  The back was blank.

  Eula Lee. Paloma remembered the stories—legends, practically—of the murder. And she heard that Della Lee was just released from prison after all this time. She must be ancient. She’d have to ask Abuela about it.

  But first, she wanted to talk about Mercedes. There had to be some way to connect with her sister. Maybe Abuela would have the answers. Paloma poured the milk into a kettle and turned up the heat. When it was ready, she poured it into two mugs. Flea market finds, if she remembered correctly. She joined Abuela at the table.

  “She’s going to lose her hearing with all those drums she listens to,” her grandmother said as Paloma set the mug in front of her.

  Paloma traced her finger along the vinyl tablecloth, the green leaves scattered in a patternless display, and a hole revealing its sinewy cotton batting. “She might, Abuela, but she didn’t listen to me when I told her. I even showed her an article about it.”

  “I don’t know where I went wrong, mija. I was too strict with my own daughter, and look how that turned out. So I lightened up with Mercedes. Didn’t push too much. But it didn’t make a difference. If she had two pennies to rub together, she’d be off on that road, just like her parents. Stubborn, that one.”

  Abuela looked out the window to the dusty street that led to the highway. The one where her daughter had driven off with her latest boyfriend, leaving behind the latest child. Where the semi that had hit them as they raced onto the on-ramp ensured that this departure was the last one.

  Paloma wondered how Abuela managed to even get up in the morning with memories like that. What did life promise except more of the same? Hard work. Heartache. She’d have to think of some special things to do for her grandmother while she was in town. Maybe buy a new tablecloth. Or introduce her to flavored coffee.

  “You know that she wants to go to California?” Abuela went on. “That she wants to change her name to Madison and to color her hair blonde? She doesn’t even want to be Latina. That’s why she won’t go outside. Doesn’t want to get any tanner than her God-given color allows.”

  “That’s not true, Abuela. No one is going outside if they can help it. It’s too hot. And she’s a teenager. You know these ideas come and go, and I’ll bet all her friends feel the same way. Remember I wanted to be a dancer and a flight attendant and a business owner before I wanted to be a doctor?”

  The older woman shook a wrinkled finger. “You haven’t been here, mija. You just watch—that girl is going to run off with the first boy who promises her a ticket out. Breaks my heart.”

  You haven’t been here. The words pierced her, echoing exactly what she had been accusing herself of.

  Paloma patted her grandmother’s hand and laid it back on the table. The older woman’s skin felt paper-thin. Abuela was getting old. Paloma leaned in, a habit she’d acquired this week as she’d realized that Abuela’s hearing was not what it used to be. “But I’m here now. Maybe things will be different.”

  “Three weeks. It’s going to go by too quickly. Much too quickly, my darling.”

  Paloma smiled at the old endearment. Abuela had always said that when she put Paloma to bed as a little girl, and it slipped in throughout her teenage years. She missed it. No one in New York talked like that.

  They curled their fingers around each other’s, the older set dotted with liver spots, each one earned as another year of worries came and went. The younger one was somewhat lighter, almost the identical shade of her father’s, and smooth from meticulous applications of lotion she applied after the antiseptic soap that she used in the hospital.

  Abuela continued. “But never mind about that. You grew wings and flew off, and I’m proud of you for it. Maybe you’ll set an example for your sister. But what about the rest, mija? I worry about you. It’s all well and good to have your career, but not if you don’t have love. Do you ever slow down long enough to find a man in that city of yours?”

  “Abuela.” Paloma squeezed her hand and sighed at the refrain that her grandmother asked every time they were on the phone. Still, she hated to disappoint her. “There’s no rush. I’m not even thirty yet.”

  “Next birthday, though. And then what? A few years to get settled into your new job, a few more to get married. What about babies? You girls wait so long now and then have problems getting pregnant.”

  She did want those things. But there was never enough time. Not if she wanted to establish her own practice someday. She needed this position at Lenox Hill to gain more experience and to add to her résumé.

  “All right, Abuela. Work. Husband. Babies. I’ll put them on the to-do list. But right this minute, I’m just happy to sit here with you and try not to melt in this heat.”

  Her grandmother pushed her chair back and cleared away the mugs before Paloma could stand up.

  “I’m going to bed, mija. Don’t forget to lock the doors and windows. And turn off the porch light, please.”

  “I will, Abuela. Sweet dreams.” Paloma kissed her on the head and watched her until she made it into her bedroom. The roles were reversed. There was a time when Abuela would have been the one to send her off with a kiss and a prayer. It occurred to Paloma how full-circle life could be.

  But how could she take care of her grandmother from New York? Paloma pursed her lips and did a quick mental calculation of her new salary, minus taxes, rent, and other expenses. There should be enough left over to have a nurse look in on her a few times a week.

  And she still had to determine what help, if any, Mercedes provided to their grandmother. So far she’d seen little on her sister’s part, but she’d brushed it aside with the excuse that Abuela had been in the hospital for the last week, and Paloma just hadn’t been around before that to see how Mercedes might be helping out.

  As if on cue, Mercedes came into the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of Big Red out of the refrigerator. Without a word, she headed toward the front door.

  “Where are you going?” asked Paloma.

  “Out.” Mercedes put her hand on the doorknob and didn’t look up.

  “Out where?”

  “You’re not my mother.”

  “You’re right. But I’m your sister. I should know where you’re going to be. Especially at nine in the evening.”

  Mercedes muttered something and headed out, slamming the door behind her.

  Paloma thought it sounded like “some sister.” But she didn’t want to believe it. That would hurt too much.

  A quiet took over the house. Paloma looked around the living room, every corner reminding her of things she never thought about anymore. The table where she’d played Candy Land with Mercedes, always making sure that her little sister got the Queen Frostine card, advancing her toward the win. The recliner, where Mercedes would tell Paloma to lie down so she could examine her. It made Mercedes giggle to realize that she could hear their heartbeats through the Fisher-Price stethoscope.

  Ironic that Paloma had become the doctor. Did it ever cross Mercedes’s mind to pursue something like that?