I turned away from her, my whole body shaking.
“Well?” she asked. “You understand what I’m asking. Don’t pretend not to understand,” she snapped.
I turned back to her. She was pressing her lips together and glaring hatefully at me.
“I did nothing, Tía Isabela,” I said. “I was walking from the bus, and he came with his car and told me to get in.”
“Told you?” Sophia asked, smirking. “I doubt that he told you.”
“Why do you doubt it, Sophia? It doesn’t surprise me,” Edward said. “You think you’re the only girl he’s with these days? Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Shut up, Edward. At least he’s with a girl.”
Edward’s face reddened. Then he relaxed and smiled. “Why don’t you tell Mother why you didn’t go home with Bradley and why he was alone in the first place?”
“What does that mean?” Tía Isabela asked.
“Let Sophia tell you.”
“Sophia?”
“Go on, Sophia. Tell Mother why you weren’t with Bradley today,” Edward taunted.
“It’s nothing. I was with some of my girlfriends, that’s all. I don’t need to have Bradley around me all day long, but I don’t need someone else chasing after him, either, someone who lives here,” she added, pointedly looking at me. “Especially my long-lost, sweet, innocent, poor, and helpless cousin, who turns out to be not so helpless after all.”
I understood most of what she was saying.
“No,” I said, shaking my head and looking at my aunt. “It’s not so, not…true.”
“Of course, it isn’t. How could Delia chase after him?” Edward asked. “She’s not in our school. When would she have seen him?”
“She saw him here.”
“That was just the one time.”
“Boys need to see a girl like her only once to know what she’s like.”
“That’s crap, and you know it!” Edward screamed at her.
“You don’t know where or how this girl was brought up, Edward,” Tía Isabela said, sitting back and nodding at me. “I do. Sophia’s not all wrong.”
“She’s way more than all wrong, Mother, and so are you.”
“That’s enough! I won’t have it. I won’t have sexual promiscuity in my house.”
“Unless it’s your own,” Edward muttered, and Tía Isabela slammed her hand on the table so hard all the dishes and glasses jumped.
“Get out of my sight!” she screamed at him, and pointed to the door.
“I think I’m entitled to have my dinner,” Edward said calmly, and continued to eat.
Tía Isabela looked as if she would soon be having smoke pour out of her ears. I was shifting my eyes from one to the other so quickly I thought I’d get dizzy. How could Edward be so defiant? Was it because of what Señora Rosario had said, that he had inherited the property and wealth, too?
Tía Isabela stared a moment, nodded to herself, and then rose, keeping her eyes down.
“I will not remain, then,” she said, and marched out of the dining room.
“Good work, Edward,” Sophia told him. “You drove our mother away from her own dinner defending this tramp from Mexico.”