“Do you think you are up to meeting with the lawyer today, Querida, or would you want one more day to rest?” asked Don Ramón, when she came downstairs at a steadier gait.
“Do I go there, or does he come here?” asked Jo, before answering.
“Wisely said,” chuckled Doña Lucia.
“He will come here,” Don Ramón assured her.
“Then, yes, I think I can talk for a bit—understanding my present limitations. . . .”
“At my age, that is always understood,” smiled Don Ramón.
The three of them sat rocking on the porch while they waited, talking over desultory family topics. Jo caught up on the progress of each of their children, and they both asked many questions about the development of her ministry, whether she continued using the things she had learned in community organizing (to which she had answered, “Of course, they are very much overlapping in many areas”), exactly what she did as a minister, and how her two callings meshed and differed. Suddenly, in the midst of this, Don Ramón received a cell phone call. He glanced at it and then sat up quickly and said, “Excuse me, Josefina, I must take this one—it is important to our meeting today.” He stepped off the porch and moved a brief distance away so as not to disturb Jo and his wife as they continued to chat, but they heard his voice take on a tone of reproach and a note of urgency before he closed his phone and walked back to them, frowning.
“Bad news?” asked Jo, immediately concerned.
“Somewhat,” he said. “Not terrible news, but somewhat disturbing.”
Doña Lucia simply gazed at him, waiting.
“Ricky finds he cannot come today.”
“He cannot come?” Lucia asked, astonished. “And why not?”
“He cannot work it into his schedule.”
“Cannot work it in?”
“That’s what he says.” They passed a look between themselves that made Jo pause and begin to rise. “If you both would like to talk. . . .”
They hesitated.
“I really need to make yet one more stop inside,” Jo assured them.
“I’ll make you more tea later, Josefina,” said Doña Lucia.
Jo grimaced, said thank you, and left. Té criolla is admittedly an acquired taste that few acquire, but it does—indeed—work wonders.
When she returned, they picked up the inquiry into her activities as if nothing had intervened. Their questions were intelligent, detailed, probing. Jo knew they loved her as one of their own children—she had known them, after all, since infancy—really since birth—but this was closer to an examination. But, what of that? she thought. Who cares this much about me to want to know about the details of my life besides my parents and these dear people, my extended “family”? So she answered everything they asked until a phone call from the lawyer heralded his impending advent and then a second announced he was now arriving.
“I think I can walk you down to the gate,” Jo offered. “I’m feeling better, really.”
Don Ramón smiled. Jo was hardly up to helping him push back the heavy gate in her present condition. “No need, Querida,” he assured her. “Our youngest son, Ernesto, has come to help us today. He will be staying on to assist me when the delegates arrive for the reunion.”
“Someday we will have to get that gate mechanized,” exclaimed Jo. “I don’t know why it wasn’t done years ago.”
Both Doña Lucia and Don Ramón simply smiled.
“Some of the new ways are good, too,” said Jo.
“Of course,” Don Ramón assured her. “We do have cell phones, you notice.”
Licenciado Angel Moreno Cueva de Piedra was a man Jo knew by sight, but had never really gotten to know. He came on business from time to time to talk with Uncle Sol and her father when she was here on vacation, but, since that never concerned her, they had never really spoken. He was a quiet man, gentle, and dignified, as were so many who visited Las Olas. He was somewhere in his middle age, sharing the same warm skin tone as she, her siblings, her parents, and the Romeros: lighter than Dominicans, but with a rich creamy olive complexion. Jo herself was tall and slim to normal with lovely long dark hair, a beautiful smile, and warm, encouraging eyes. She was not Daniela, of course, she had often told herself, with the features and figure of a model, or aquiline and all muscle and drive like Ruby with her short hair and flashing eyes and set chin, or sensual and promising a hint of future weight like Ben, but now altogether endearing with his expressive eyebrows, engaging, boyish smirk, pleasantly rounding face, and framed with the same smooth skin they all possessed. She was just Jo, the eldest, the one who stood in the back behind the sports star and the dashing gambler and the dazzling beauty and tried to take care of them all in her own humble way. Her siblings exhibited the best of their Taino heritage, her stepmom Lea had exclaimed over and over again, winning the young children’s hearts—both her own and Ben’s—with her praise, while Lea’s simple—and, in that, profound—loving kindness won Jo’s love.
The lawyer, on the other hand, was a small man—very small by their standards, some five foot or so—not over five foot two. He looked nondescript. He was very deferential, greeting Doña Lucia and Don Ramón with a cordial, almost old-world formality. He bowed to Jo, asking her not to rise or prepare to go anywhere because he could spread his papers on his briefcase and answer all of her questions as he was able to do so. He sat in a straight wooden chair that Don Ramón dragged over for him, scudded forward, and opened his briefcase to reveal a neat little portable desk top with an upright back in which was strapped pen, paper, and documents, all secured in with soft brown bands. Jo suspected this was the standard way he dealt with documents when he ranged about the countryside, visiting his clients. He even shifted a little around so that Jo would not be staring into a brown wall behind which he would be obscured.
“I have all these documents on computer as well,” he assured them, nodding to the computer bag he had sitting by his chair. “We could look onto the screen, but I thought you might all want to have your own copies to examine, so I printed out copies of the will for everyone. He paused and looked around. “Señor Asenao is here already?”
“No,” said Don Ramón.
“He is on his way then?”
“No, I’m afraid he’s not coming.”
“Not coming? He is not coming?” The lawyer’s mouth dropped open. “How is it that he is not coming? Did he say?”
“Just that he was too busy.”
“Too busy?”
Jo looked from one to the other. She saw Doña Lucia shake her head. All of them appeared deeply disturbed.
“This is not right.”
“No, it’s not,” said Doña Lucia.
Jo just sat and waited. She was not Ruby, full of demands, wanting explanations on the spot—and those snappy, as well!
“Should
