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Finding Four Rivers on a map was nearly impossible, as the roads were still mostly gravel,
gold laurel leaf pressed seamlessly into the surface. Not just to keep the magic in, but to keep danger out.
no one—not her five husbands or her descendants—really knew her.
2nd husband settled with her
crisp, regionless English.
about Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” and his use of fucked-up families.
Marimar had never reciprocated.
Why
Orquídea was so many things: evasive, silent, mean, secretive, loving, and a liar.
She’d moved there for high school, after her mother’s tragic and untimely death.
The only reason he used Montoya instead of Restrepo was because it was slightly easier on the English-speaking American tongue.
His mother had dropped out of high school to chase after a soldier whose motorcycle had gotten a flat on their road. His father, the soldier, had been an army grunt who’d been killed in combat when Rey was eight.
He had a black mustache though his thick wavy hair had gone salt white.
Juan Luis piped up from the crowd in his prepubescent squeak.
Some people just had a talent for things, but they were born poor or ugly or unlucky, and all they could say was “look at me” and try their hardest.
Séverine Pasteger liked this
its crocodile face and reptilian humanoid body less than three feet tall. It had the patterned belly of a turtle. She noticed neither sex nor belly button. Its webbed hands ended in sharp yellow claws, but not as sharp as the toothy smile it flashed.
And for the first time in centuries, the river monster wept. They were, after all, family in some way.
It was as if there was something jagged within her, a bruise that she had passed down to all of her kids, and maybe even grandkids.
metaphor for generational trauma
Séverine Pasteger liked this
Five of them in total. They shared a family trait of beige skin, black hair, and haughty sneers. They all looked like they’d escaped out of an old photograph from the sixties.
“What is it like to live without rage in your heart?”
You’re just a needy fuck.”
the first Montoya to be delivered at their hospital.
The grass around their family cemetery was the only part of the property that wasn’t affected by the drought.
“We didn’t do this. We didn’t make her do this. She came this way. In fact, she’s the reason we’re like this.”
She never corrected her guests when they assumed Orquídea was another housemaid.
But the first cruelties Orquídea learned were the ones Isabela doled out herself.
anyone who laid eyes on her could see that she was spoken for by fate.
A spider, perhaps, letting him tangle himself in her.
The trees looked like witch claws coming out of the dirt, but Chris said they looked more like chicken feet.
It would take seven years to build her new house, because something always stopped construction.
He had met a nice girl, a baker, and they’d go on to have three kids, each named after famous baseball players. But before that, she noticed a new tattoo on the inside of his wrist. A twist of ivy.
The Montoyas were now hers to protect and it started with the house.
It was good for Rhiannon to be around family, since Mike’s family never came by and seemed to forget to invite them to birthday parties and camping and barbecues.
They called her Jefa, and I became Jefita.”
She didnt even Get her own name!
Why wasn’t she sick? Or the others?
as if they gathered enough anecdotes, enough smiles and memories, they’d be able to complete the pieces of Orquídea Divina Montoya.
Her mother had always said that when a man kissed your eyes shut, he is lying to you.
“And yet is that not what your marriage was? A deal with a man you barely knew.”
He was so sweet, barely a year old.
Why don’t we ever talk? Silence is a language of its own in this family. A curse of our own making.
It’s like you were waiting for someone to give you the world you deserved before I came along.”
After all, belief was like glass—once broken it could be pieced back together but the fissures would always be there.
his voice as possessive as it was mournful.
Orquídea’s weakness was her family, and they’d led her back to the very person she’d given everything to run from.
But that was the way of missing people. You wished for them, you longed for them, you forgot them. Then you wished for them again.
