“Dear God.” Margo wasn’t ready for this. She’d just gotten used to the idea of it all, that something beyond them existed, but actual answers? It was kind of unbelievable.
The lump in her throat divided and grew like a cancerous cell.
Diana took the rest of the papers from her and set them down on kitchen counter, so Margo had a clear view of the documents. Diana pointed at the colored photocopy of a woman in a flowered dress, hands clasped. Behind her were the spiky leaves of a tropical plant and the outline of a two-story home with thatched roofs and balconies. The woman was dark-skinned, stern-faced, pride evident in her eyes. “This is Flora Reyes.”
“How do you know this is the right woman?” Margo pulled the photo closer to her and skimmed a finger over it. “You said it’s a common name.”
“She matches all the criteria. The PI pieced together the possible birth and marriage dates. This woman married an Antonio Cruz in 1946. Her current address is within Metro Manila.”
“Current?”
“Yes. She’s still alive. And, Ma?” Diana said firmly.
“Yes?”
“I’m planning to see her. And I want you to come with me.”
Chapter Nine
Diana watched as indignance and anger washed over her mother’s expression. This, she hadn’t expected. Her mother was emotional, but she skewed toward sadness and disappointment rather than anger, denial rather than snark. And with her current choice of outfit—a crisp white shirt with a teal iridescent bow tie, black capris, and suspenders—Diana thought her mother would cheer for her newfound discovery.
But her mother wasn’t cheering now. “Absolutely not.”
“What?” Diana frowned, confounded for a second. Her mother was always down for an adventure, until Granny had gotten housebound. And Margo had never refused her in the past. Then again, Diana had never asked for anything more than her mother could provide; she put herself through most of college with the help of her mother’s meager contributions—an artist’s wage, after all, was inconsistent and never commensurate to the work she did.
“Wait … you’re serious.”
“As a heart attack. I asked you to do the right thing,” Margo said.
“And that’s what I did. I don’t understand why you don’t want to know more. This is your father. My grandfather.”
“That’s exactly it.” She held her hand up. “This is my father. Did you stop to think that I needed more time? To process all of this? To think? You just made a big decision. You asked someone to snoop into people’s lives, not even thinking about the potential that you might change ours a million percent.”
“So you’re mad at me?”
“Yes,” she said, then sighed. “No. I just wish we could have talked about it beforehand, because this morning’s conversation was a chat, not a unanimous decision. But, you do this, you know.”
“I do what?” Diana frowned, not liking where this conversation was going.
Margo took a deep breath. “You just do. Sometimes without thinking, without consulting. You take responsibility when, maybe, it’s not yours to begin with.”
Diana bit her cheek. She hadn’t told her mother anything about her work, and yet, somehow Margo knew how to poke her where it hurt.
“I’m sorry,” Margo said, wiping her hands on her thighs. “I didn’t mean it, at least not all the way.”
“Does that mean you’re going to come with me?”
“No, dear, I’m not.” She blinked at her. “Aside from the fact that I’m not convinced it’s a good idea, I’m getting on a plane, for New Orleans, remember? For a trip that has been planned to a T.”
Diana couldn’t help it, she snorted at her mother’s gall to just drop off her stuff at Diana’s home and run away. Of course Margo had mentioned it, but Diana had thought … she’d thought her mother would come to her senses. “Right. Your bucket-list trip.”
Margo frowned at her. “Hey, tone!”
“You don’t think this trip to the Philippines is more important? Can’t your trip wait? You wanted to discover more about the country and yourself, right? What could be a better way than to actually investigate your roots? You have never even been, and this is the perfect time.”
Her mother held up both hands, voice softening. “Let’s slow down here, please. You just got the first piece of information, which might not even be accurate. And going to Louisiana is not the same as going to another country.” She gestured at the envelope. “And frankly, now I’m wondering what more is playing into this decision.”
Dread settled upon Diana. She sighed, looked away. “So you know.”
Her mother nodded.
“How did you find out?”
“The internet.” She heaved a breath. “What happened?”
“I went against policy and accepted a patient that I shouldn’t have. It caused a little bit of havoc on the floor, and then social media …”
“Social media did its magic.” Her mother frowned.
Diana shrugged it off, laughed lightly. There wasn’t any need to put her mom into a panic. “But it’s all good. Every business goes through this, and it just so happens that I’m in the crosshairs, but Aziza and I chatted, and there’s no worries.”
“So you haven’t been fired?”
“No, but I’m taking some time off, to let the dust settle.”
“And your preoccupation with our history, your need to do all this right now, has nothing to do with the dust that’s unsettled at work?”
She frowned at the implication. “Yes, okay, that’s why I’m a little on edge. But I want to go to the Philippines right now because I have time, which, yes, is due to this fiasco. What I don’t understand is why you don’t seem to see the importance of this. This is a big deal. Why won’t you come with me?”
“Because I don’t want to. Period. End of story. If this is all true, and that’s a big if, I trust my mother’s reasons for keeping this away from me. I trust that she made a decision to protect me, to protect you. I was an advocate for her wishes up to the moment she passed, and if she didn’t want me to know something, I have to believe her reason for it was good.”
Diana was dumbfounded. She had been sure that her mother would come on board after seeing the pictures, that she, too, would have been swept up in this mission to piece together the missing part of their lives. In elementary and middle school, Diana had hated that part of the curriculum where she had to chart her family tree. While others drew branches, her tree was as sparse as an eastern redbud during the wintertime.
But they were at a standstill. It was clear in her mother’s expression: Margo wasn’t going to budge, choosing her nebulous three-quarter-life crisis trip over something that could change their entire lives, over solving a mystery seventy-five years in the making.
Diana guessed she was going to do as she had always done: she would take charge.
“Then I guess you and I will go our separate ways in a few days,” Diana declared.
New Guinea