The Smoking Mirror Read Online Free Page A

disappearance has something to do with it.”
    Before Carol could add her thoughts to this line of reasoning, someone tried to open the door.
    “Hey, Carolina? Juan Ángel? Open up,” Andrea said to them in Spanish.
    Johnny unlocked the door. “Sorry. Force of habit.”
    Andrea waved his apology away. “Kids, my sister just called from Saltillo. Your grandmother wants to see you.”
    Picking sleep sand from her eyes, Carol tried to remember Abuela Helga’s face. Four years ago she had suffered an embolism; another one had followed six months later, leaving her paralyzed on one side of her body, confined to a wheelchair and barely able to speak. A flush of shame crept across Carol’s cheeks as she thought about her grandmother, helpless, needing family to care for her, making do with just tía Sandra, the solterona , the spinster.
    When we came last summer, Mom asked me to go with her. I told her I would just stay at the hotel, watching movies with Johnny. I can’t believe how cruel I was. And Mom just shook her head sadly. It must have broken my mother’s heart.
    Biting her lip to hold back tears, Carol stretched with feigned laziness. “Okay. Are we driving there today? Let me just get dressed.”
    If Andrea noted anything strange about the twins’ behavior, she kept it to herself.
    ~~~
     
    A few hours later, they were travelling west through the Chihuahuan desert, climbing closer to the Sierra Madre Oriental. Saltillo spread before them, stone and concrete and adobe that blended with the surrounding sand and rock. Making their way through busy streets, they passed street vendors whose mobile puestos were parked in front of American chain restaurants. We’ve invaded, like the Aztecs and the Spanish did before. But this invasion is harder to fight. She remembered her dad telling her about Comanche warriors striding along the streets of Saltillo in the mid-1800s. The Mexican government had hired former Texas Rangers to hunt that tribe down. And they’ve been stuck with us ever since, she reflected, a little embarrassed. The English names disappeared as they traveled deeper into the city. The ancestral home of the Quintero family stood near its center, in the historical district, a century-old structure of caliche block and clay roofing tiles.
    Parking on the street, Andrea led the twins and their cousin into the broad courtyard, where their Aunt Sandra stood waiting for them behind their grandmother’s wheelchair. Sandra was short and dark-complexioned: more like her father, everyone said. Carol had never met the General, but photos of the brooding, serious man could be found in most of his children’s houses. His widow, once beautiful and tall, now slumped feebly in her wheelchair. Carol moved quickly to embrace the old woman, whose one lucid eye looked at her intensely.
    “How are you, Carolina?” Sandra asked with a warm but sad voice. They hugged as Johnny kissed their grandmother’s cheek.
    “Fine, tía Sandra . Happy to see you two. It’s good to be with family.”
    Smiling wistfully, Sandra nodded. “Yes, dear, it is. I’m so glad you could visit.” She squeezed Johnny, who managed not to smirk. “Here, let me show you how I’ve redecorated.”
    She guided them through the roomy home, its normal earth tones accentuated by bright splashes that had to be Sandra’s doing. Once the twins were installed in a cozy bedroom on the second floor, Carol and her aunts went into the large grove that formed a semicircle around the house. Shooing away butterflies, they picked peaches to make the creamy dessert that had become a family tradition over the years. Stefani joined them in the kitchen as they set to peeling and slicing the peaches and preparing the crust and the cream. Their talk was light and joyful, but there was an unmistakable undercurrent of loss.
    When the dish was baking in the clay oven, Carol went looking for her brother. She found him sitting on a bed in the large bedroom on the first floor