Sara nodded, understanding her point. “And Papá wants more.”
“Yes. He had a steady job building houses here, right? But he wanted more than he could ever have in Mexico, and that’s why he went to the United States. There’s nothing wrong with his ambition. Your mom doesn’t fault him for that. She realizes that what makes him happy is not what makes her happy. She’s accepted that it’s okay for the two of them to go their separate ways. They’d be miserable together, just like he was already miserable before he left. Everyone could see that. You did too, admit it.”
Sara lowered her head. Yes, she knew he was unhappy.
Linda continued, “He’d blame her for holding him back, and she would fault him for not paying attention to what she thinks is really important.”
“But he left us,” Sara argued. “He went away and never came back. Doesn’t he have obligations to us?”
“He’s doing what he can, isn’t he?” Linda said. “He sends money. He’s not rejecting you and Emiliano. That’s not what the divorce is about. If anything, he’s showing you how important it is to do what you really like.”
Sara thought about it. Linda’s words made sense to her, but she knew her brother was struggling with Papá’s decision. “Emiliano sees it as a rejection.”
“You have to help him think differently.”
“How?”
“By doing what your mami’s doing. Understanding that the divorce is for the better. That there is love, but love is not enough. Then eventually Emiliano will understand.”
Sara put her arm around Linda’s shoulders. The two girls were quiet for a long time. Two cardinals perched on the branch above them. “You better not poop on us,” Linda warned them.
“How’d you get to be so wise anyway?” Sara asked her.
“Telenovelas,” Linda answered.
Sara smiles, remembering Linda’s words and seeing her mother rock gently to the rhythm of the music. Then a man’s hand stretches out in front of her. “May I have this dance?”
It is Elias, staggering a little as he speaks. Sara can tell that he’s made several trips to the open bar, in addition to the champagne and wine served at the tables.
“Elias, I’m a terrible dancer. I would kill your feet. But you’re very kind to ask.” She’s as nice and polite as she can be, especially with the whole table looking at them. The male ego, Elias’s especially, is fragile.
“Come on. Just one dance, please.” Elias goes down on one knee. “Please.”
“Okay, okay.” Sara stands up, pulls Elias from the floor and then steadies him with her hand on his waist. She lets go of him when he seems stable enough to walk by himself, and they proceed to the dance floor.
“You are radiant tonight. Like the sun,” he says as they start dancing.
“That’s the margaritas speaking,” Sara says, stepping back to create a respectable distance between their bodies. She tries to block out the words of the beautiful love song. There’s something incongruous about the pure kind of love that the lyrics are proclaiming and dancing with Elias.
“You know what I like the most about you?” His voice has a slight slur to it.
“Hey,” Sara says, trying to change the subject. “You know that camping trip with the Jiparis next Saturday? I was thinking of getting some pictures of the kids setting up camp and maybe a few of them hiking at night with the stars shining above them. What do you think?”
“Stop talking shop for a minute. I want to tell you something.”
Sara is surprised at the brusqueness in Elias’s tone. It’s the alcohol, she reminds herself. Humor. Get through the dance with humor. “Okay, but keep it clean.”
Elias giggles like he thinks she’s joking. Flirting, maybe. “You’re not going to believe this, but what I like the most about you, what I really, really like about you, is your dedication.”
Oh, God, Sara thinks. He’s going to get sentimental on me.
“I mean it,” he continues. “You’re different than all the other women … I know. You … you’re committed to a cause. To those girls who are, who have gone missing. Who turn up dead after a while. There’s not that many women like you.”
She turns her head slightly so she doesn’t have to smell his breath. “There’s lots of women like me. You just need to look at women a little differently than you usually do.”
“No, no. I’ve looked. Trust me. In this very room”—he lets go of her hand and makes a circle in the air with his index finger—“I probably looked extremely close at half a dozen women. Including women you’d never guess.”
“Wonderful.” She exhales and tries to listen to the words of the song.
“I’m not trying to boast or anything.” Elias takes her hand again and squeezes it. “I’m saying that to show you how I see you is different. You know how I found out that I care for you?”
Sara stops dancing. “I think I want to sit down.”
“No, wait. Let me finish what I want to say!”
The volume of his voice makes people glance in their direction. Sara starts dancing with him again to dispel the attention. “Elias, you’ve had too much to drink,” she says. “You’re my colleague. Don’t say anything that will make it hard for us to work together.”
“You know what they say, drunks tell the truth. Just let me finish. I knew I had feelings for you when I noticed I was worried about you.”
“Worried?”
“Those articles you write. The threats you get. I’ve never been worried about anyone before. You understand? It hit me that I was falling in love with you when I worried that something might happen to you.”
The song ends, but Sara stands still, looking at Elias. It isn’t his declaration of love that startles her; it’s the way he says that something might happen to her. Up until then his speech has been sweet, dramatic, with the kind of exaggeration peculiar to inebriation. But those last words were cold and totally sober, and they sounded very much like a threat.
Someone at El Sol is working with Hinojosa. Someone went into Juana’s office and deleted the hotline e-mails. Someone knows that her life has been threatened.
The band starts playing Ricky Martin’s “La Vida Loca” and people begin shaking and jumping all around them. Sara lets Elias take her in his arms again, and they continue dancing softly. Her mind is spinning, but her reporter instincts tell her one thing: Being close to Elias, as painful as it is, may be an opportunity to gather information, or to convey information to the people who are threatening her. She should go along with him, pretend she knows nothing.
“What should I do?” she asks. “About the articles I write?”
“You need to stop. Write about those Boy Scout kids, about all the happy things going on, like Felipe says. There’s nothing you can do about the missing girls. Leave them alone.”
“I’ve stopped,” she says as convincingly as possible. “I’m not doing anything about missing girls. No articles. No investigations. Nothing. I’m done. From now on, happy stuff.”
“Good.” He pulls her tighter against him. “Please don’t do anything that puts you or your family in danger.”