It occurred to her now that during that trip she and her mother were likely mere miles from each other. Together on that tiny island. Would her mother have known she was there? She felt about her mother much as she felt about Puerto Rico itself: mysterious and unknown entities. Her only certainty about either was that they, somehow, were both a part of Olga.
* * *
THE MORE TIME Olga had to recontextualize Reggie King with the information her brother had given her, the more uneasy she felt. Still, he was her only conduit to information. She texted him a series of question marks. Reggie sent a nada por ahora in reply. This grated her. Not the lack of answers, but that she was reliant on him in the first place. Discovering that her mother had given Reggie a way to reach her—something her own children had been desperate for—had quietly crushed her. It saddened her that the most important woman in her life was effectively a stranger. To her, but not to everyone.
By the time Matteo woke, Olga was parked on her sofa, transfixed by the news. Though the storm had barely begun its cross-island journey, on all the morning shows they heard Gayle King and Matt Lauer and Pat Kiernan and even Rosanna Scotto all saying the same things—Puerto Rico was “likely destroyed,” the phrase feeling like a shot in the heart each time she heard it. A strange sense of dread welled up in her chest.
For so many years their mother existed as a floating entity, whose only location was inside the many envelopes that arrived from destinations unknown. Now, Olga was able to firmly fix her in a place. To imagine her with surroundings, as a real person in a physical body. A body that had inevitably aged. A body that could be washed away by floodwaters or hit by a falling tree or … It was a new sensation to not only have her mother such an active part of her thoughts, but a subject of her concern.
“Are you okay?” Matteo asked.
“I don’t know,” she said flatly. “My mother is there.”
“What?” Matteo said, surprised. “I thought you—”
“It’s … it’s pretty new information. Well, to me at least.”
After their reconciliation at the wedding, Matteo hadn’t pressed too hard on why she had gone dark in those days before. He took her affirmation that it would not be a repeated mistake at face value. In the moment, Olga had been filled with relief. But now, overwhelm consumed her and she needed, she recognized, help unpacking all that had transpired. She danced carefully around the details.
“One of my mother’s … associates came to see me last week. At my office.”
“Okay. Is that normal?”
“Anything but. Apparently my mother needed my help.”
“Is she okay? Like, physically?”
Olga laughed. “I mean, I don’t know about mentally, but yeah, she doesn’t need a kidney or anything like that, if that’s what you mean.”
“So, she bounces for, like, decades and then shows up looking for a favor? I hope you told her to fuck off.”
Even though Matteo reflected back a thought Olga herself had had, she still felt annoyed.
“It’s still my mother,” she said defensively, “I’m not going to just tell her to fuck off if she comes looking for my help specifically. I’m going to at least hear her out.”
Matteo walked over to where she was sitting on the sofa and leaned down to kiss her on the head.
“Listen, Olga,” he whispered in her ear, “it’s your mom, I get it, it’s complicated. I just get upset when I think about you going out of your way at all for a woman who never did the same for you.”
There was a silence between them.
“What does your brother think?”
“I haven’t had a chance to tell him,” she replied defensively. “Besides, it doesn’t even matter. They didn’t say what she wanted and whatever it was, it’s probably irrelevant now.”
* * *
TO OTHER PEOPLE, Olga imagined her brother seemed lucky.
People often mistook fame for fortune, not understanding that even those with some renown are vulnerable to miseries. Olga felt Prieto had been born under a difficult star. Too early to feel entitled to be himself in society. Too affected by their parents’ influence to ever be avaricious. He had a child to care for and protect. Enemies that she knew of and others she knew she could barely imagine. She remembered her brother’s blood test was that morning. If her instincts were right and the results were positive, her brother’s constitution worried her. She could see no way for him to keep his life intact without bold honesty, and she wasn’t sure he had the courage that would require.