He was quiet. He nodded softly. “Por qué, Delia? Tell me why she was there.”
“To see if you would like…”
“Like what? What?” he demanded, stepping toward me.
“Chicas,” I said.
“Chicas…girls?”
“Sí, girls.”
He paused. And then he did something I did not expect. He smiled.
“What? She watched to see if I liked girls? She was testing me with you? Is that what she said? Is that what you’re telling me? She sent you into my room like that as a kind of test…like an exam?”
“Sí,” I said, nodding, even though he couldn’t see me nodding. “A test, yes.”
He was silent. Then he shook his head.
“That doesn’t make sense. Why would my mother…she’s always known who I am,” he muttered, thinking aloud. Once again, he thought I was lying. I had gone too far to stop now.
“With Jesse, she worries,” I said, trying to explain more. “She told me this. She asked me to help her.”
“Help her? How?”
“To tell her what I see, what I hear.”
“To spy on me? No,” he said, shaking his head. “My mother and I have had that conversation. We talked about it. Nothing should have surprised her. My mother did not need to watch a test.”
I started to cry. “I do not lie, Edward.”
He was silent, thinking again. “Maybe not,” he said, and smiled as another thought came to him. “Yes, maybe not. I believe she would do that, send you into my room almost naked. But not to run a test.”
“I do not understand, Edward. I’m sorry.”
“It’s simple,” he said. “My mother and my sister are the same…you know, same, similar? What’s a good Spanish word for sneaky, deceitful, sly like foxes…what? Cómo se dice sly en español?”
“Furtivo,” I said. But I was still very confused. “But por qué?”
“Furtivo,” he said, nodding. “My mother did not want me to trust you, Delia. My mother did not want me to be your…to be su primo or su amigo. I took your side too strongly against Mr. Baker and her, matter of fact. I was the one who insisted she let you stay in this room, be a member of the family, stop being a servant. I told her I would tell what happened if she didn’t do what I said. She did it, but she doesn’t like being told what to do.”
He paused to think again.
“However, she’s never been this ruthless,” he said. “There’s something else, something I don’t know, some reason she feels the way she does about you and wants me to feel the same way. Neither Sophia nor I know much, if anything, about our family. You know that. I didn’t even know about you.
“What is it? What happened years ago in Mexico? Do you know why my mother does not want to remember her family, why she does not like her own family? Por qué mi madre no le gusta su fa
milia? Sabe?”
“Sí,” I said.
“Why?”
“Mi abuelo, my grandfather, was angry when she married su padre. He said she was muerta…dead to him.”
“Yeah, I kinda knew about that, but there must be more. Why wasn’t she closer to your mother, to her own sister, after their father died?”
“She wanted mi padre to be her marido.”