Delia's Gift (Delia 3)

“Pulling wool?”

“You can stop that ignorant Mexican girl act, Delia, especially when you’re talking to me,” she snapped. “I know you’re smarter than almost any of the other students who were in our classes.”

I put on my robe.

She was glaring at me with daggers in her eyes.

“I’m sorry you are so angry at me.”

I sat across from her and started to dry my hair.

“Sorry? What did you expect? I loved Adan, and I don’t mean just as a cousin.”

I stopped drying my hair. “What do you mean?”

“There was a time when I thought he and I might tie the knot. Know what that means?”

“You never said anything like that, and you were happy that he was seeing me.”

“Well, that was because he didn’t see me as I saw him, so I gave up on it and settled for a closer friendship. We got so he would confide in me as much as he would in any of his male friends. That’s how I knew he was so bonkers over you and that it was hopeless. I tried to talk him out of going back to you, telling him not to feel so sorry for you, that you were much smarter than he could imagine. I did keep him away for a while and got him fixed up with Dolores Del Ray. I had his father convinced it would be a good match, but he threw that out the window to go back with you. He’d be alive today if he had listened to me.”

Tears froze over my eyes.

She opened her purse and took out a cigarette.

“You are smoking?”

“Since Adan’s death,” she said. “Maybe I’m suicidal. Didn’t you once tell me everyone who gets close to you suffers some way, somehow? One of your other big secrets, I imagine.”

“I was being honest with you, Fani, and trusting. I thought you were my friend then.”

“I was your friend, probably your best friend.” She puffed again and looked at me, moving her closed lips from side to side as if she were washing the inside of her mouth with a new thought. “Maybe I still am or could be. It will depend on what you do now.”

“What do you mean? What will I do?”

“I hope nothing more to hurt my cousin. Señor Bovio lost the election because his son died, you know. He lost his whole great future. And let me tell you something, Delia,” she said poking the air between us with her long cigarette. “He would have been a great U.S. senator for our people. A great many people lost when he lost.”

“Why did he lose?”

“Why did he lose?” She laughed coldly. “His heart fell out of his body, and he had no energy or interest in the campaign after Adan died.”

She blew her smoke straight up and then studied me again. Her critical gazes made me very uncomfortable. I tightened the robe.

“How many months are you supposed to be?”

“It’s not what I’m supposed to be, Fani. I am about three months,” I said.

“Right.”

“I am, Fani.” She was infuriating me now. “Some women don’t show for many months.”

“Some never show,” she said.

“Why would I lie about this?”

“Why?” She laughed and waved her hand. “To be here for a while, that’s why. I’m sure it’s a little better than the Mexican village you were returning to, isn’t it?” She smiled. “From what I was told, you certainly didn’t behave like a pregnant woman the day you came.”

“What? What does that mean?”