It brought a blush to my face to answer, but her eyes were like doctor’s eyes, searching for signs that would reveal what was going on inside me.
“He liked everything I wore,” I said.
She smiled. “I’ll bet he did. And afterward, you had dinner in Newport Beach?”
“At a steak restaurant on the beach, yes.”
“Good. Since you and Adan are doing so well, I think I will take you with me to the fund-raiser for his father next weekend. It is a dinner at one of the bigger hotels here. There will be more than a thousand people. We’ll sit at the Bovio table, of course. I’m going to take you for a new dress, something more appropriate, and shoes to match. We’ll do it on Wednesday.”
Finally, she glanced at Sophia’s empty chair.
“And where is our own little princess this morning?”
“I have not seen her, Tía Isabela.”
“She did come home last night, didn’t she?”
“Yes.”
Inez began to serve breakfast. Señora Rosario brought in the newspaper.
“Will Sophia be going to the fund-raiser, too?” I asked.
Tía Isabela lowered her paper to look at me.
“Whatever for?” she replied, and returned to her newspaper. “Besides, it’s a thousand dollars a plate.”
“A thousand dollars! For a plate?”
She lowered the paper again and smiled. “Yes, Delia, you’re in a different world now, a world you could never imagine. In time, like me, you’ll forget you were ever in that dirty little Mexican village. It will seem like someone else’s bad dream.” She snapped the paper.
“That will never be, Tía Isabela,” I said defiantly. She heard me but chose to pretend she hadn’t.
After a while, Sophia entered the dining room, wearing a long shirt and slippers, her hair disheveled. Tía Isabela looked at her askance.
“That’s not a proper way to dress for breakfast, Sophia.”
“I just got up!” she cried. “And I’m hungry.” She turned to me, smiling. “You had a phone call. I heard your phone ringing and ringing. That’s what woke me up, actually, so I answered it for you.”
I grimaced. I had asked her never to answer my phone again.
“Who was it?” Tía Isabela asked first.
“Adan Bovio. I told him you were down at breakfast and would call him when you were finished,” she told me.
“You didn’t say anything nasty to him, did you, Sophia?”
“Oh, no, Mother. Heaven forbid I ever do anything like that to Adan Bovio.”
“It would make me very unhappy to hear you had done anything to interfere. I am quite fond of the Bovio family.”
“Oh, we all know that now, Mother.” She picked at some toast.
“Where did you go last night, Sophia?” Tía Isabela asked her.
She looked at me. “We ended up at a movie and had some Chinese food,” she told Tía Isabela, and then she smiled at me. “Goodness knows, I wouldn’t want to get in anyone else’s way.”
Tía Isabela glared at her and then turned her suspicious eyes toward me for a moment. I looked down, and she returned to her paper, mumbling to herself.