Shall I Stay (Los Morales #1)

5. Rico

I put my very particular gift for balancing multiple hot drinks to good use as I stand way too long on the sidewalk and repeatedly ring Lena’s doorbell.

Based on the millisecond I’ve known her, I would be surprised if she’s an over-sleeper. My best guess is that severely underestimated jet lag reared its ugly head and had her up at all hours.

I did not brave morning traffic and the breakfast rush line to let her sleep. We need to get this meeting over with, decide on a research course of action, and get the wild-goose-chasing out of the way. I have life-squandering to get back to. I’m sure she has souls waiting to be crushed at the altar of success.

I’m about to move to text tactics when her muffled, breathless voice comes out of the doorbell intercom. “I am so sorry. This is so unprofessional. I need to get ready. But don’t wait in the street.”

She buzzes me in.

I carefully inch through the door with my hands full and startle a little when I glance up to find Lena in front of me.

And yep—my jet lag guess is confirmed. She stands in the foyer that leads to the bright living room, bedraggled and wrapped in a huge white comforter. Going by her squinting, at the moment she doesn’t appreciate the natural-light capabilities of Spanish colonial windows.

An inevitable grin spreads across my face. She pulls the comforter tight around her and lifts her chin defiantly as she states, “I am a highly capable, independent woman.”

Struck dumb and rooted in place, I try to reconcile yesterday’s pristinely grumpy Miss Jet Set with today’s tousled, grumpy Miss Jet Lag. I can’t decide which is more intriguing.

She rubs her eyes while holding up the comforter and asserts, “Pull up my credentials. I am the real deal.”

I’m able to stifle another grin and mercifully keep it together, withholding any comment until I’m in the clear of saying something that will make her defensiveness worse.

Lena eyes my breakfast offering with a bit of a sleep-disoriented gaze. Straightening and smoothing back her dark hair, she adds, “For the record, I have taken care of myself since I was sixteen.”

Fine. Miss Jet Lag—more intriguing, more cute.

I finally get out a reply as I walk past her to the coffee table that’s most immediate. “All very interesting and duly noted.” She doesn’t say a thing as I slide an armchair over to the table and start unpacking the paper bag. “It’s good I brought you a mallorca sandwich and a legendary Cortés hot chocolate—signature breakfast of the independent woman.”

The sight and smells of sustenance end her posturing. Lena waddles over in her comforter shell and slumps down on the white sofa, monochromatic companion of everything else in this space.

The warm, sweet bread bun, stuffed with layers of salty ham and melty cheese, is promptly snatched from my hands with a mumbled gracias. Miss Jet Lag could not care less about all the powdered sugar evidence that mallorca will leave on her.

After a couple of contented bites, Lena exclaims, “ Ay, pero this bun is an ensaimada! We have this in Spain.” She swallows and is going back in for another mouthful when she adds, “Actually, Puerto Rico probably has this because of us. But I had never tried it as a sandwich.”

“Well, we like to make everything better by stuffing it with something. But thanks for the reminder that we owe so much to the mother country. Where would we be without you and imperialism?”

First eye-roll of the day—not that I’m about to count them. It’s technically combined with a long blink since Lena seems to be blissed out on breakfast. I take sips of my hot chocolate and wonder how food can be inhaled so quietly.

I take in the apartment and its impressive colonial refurbishing. It’s a shame to interrupt her moment with that mallorca , but I comment, “This rental looks great. Are you liking it?”

After a forced gulp, she answers, “Yes . . .”

“I think it suits you, no? Both modern and old world. Sleek but with a warm edge. Contained yet layered.”

Enter uncomfortable silence.

As I wonder where that too-personal nonsense came from, Lena stands up as if stepping out of a trance. She looks down at herself and wipes sugar off her lap. The comforter trails behind her as she shuffles away down the hall and calls back, “Eh, thank you for breakfast. Give me a minute, and I will catch you up on the project.”

It looks like drawing unsolicited parallels between strangers’ personalities or styles and interior design choices is a recent addition to the many ways I make things awkward. I’m usually unfazed by what comes out of my mouth, but this time I scoff at myself as I clear the coffee table. I walk to the kitchen to throw away the remains of breakfast because I am Abuela’s grandson.

I enter yet another room of contrasts with modern cabinets opposite rustic wood-shuttered windows. In spite of her fatigue, Lena was busy last night. Binder after hefty binder that someone tabbed to their heart’s content cover the long rectangular table.

I thumb through the clearly extensive, detailed research findings. Aristocratic pedigree charts, ship manifests, colonial route maps—she is the real deal.

Lena clears her throat, and I look up. She adjusts the strap of her wristwatch as she walks into the room.

Miss Jet Set is back and distinctly more armored than yesterday. Hair tamed into a tight low bun, she displays sophisticated, deceiving ease in her matching cream-colored set and platform espadrilles.

But the shoring of defenses shows most obvious in her “underestimate me, I dare you” eyes. Guarded and alert, they show no evidence that jet lag threw off her circadian rhythm and kept her up with binder tabs all night.

I blink and go back to appreciating the impressive research. I should probably stop reading into those eyes. Cut-throat ambition and return-flight-booked are two reasons to not lose myself in her intriguing subtext. Miss Jet Set will fly out of here once this is all done.

“Hopefully bringing all of this with me proves worth it,” Lena says. I glance up at her as she finishes putting in an earring and gestures at the multi-tabbed binders.

We make eye contact, and a quick nod is the best I’ve got. She holds her hands in front and adds, “I am sorry for the delay. Please, take a seat. I have so much to catch you up on.” I’m halfway to settling into a chair when she starts, “So, Navarro might have gone over the basics of the project with you, but I will start from the beginning.”

I relish a little too much in how I don’t have to sneak glances but can observe Lena directly. She widens her stance and places her hands together, forming a diamond shape. All she’s missing is a lectern as she begins. “The Pimentel family are aristocratic business magnates from Madrid that have contracted ancestry genealogical research services to solve a centuries-old mystery in their family tree. I was hired to catalogue concrete findings of what happened to the last in the De Guzmán-Velasco family line.”

She flips open a binder and immediately finds a family tree chart she shows me, pointing out a name when she continues. “Alonso was the third son of Baltasar de Guzmán, Conde de Oliveras from Sevilla. From a letter the family has saved for generations, we know that in the year 1540 he was sent on the galleon vessel La Concepción to the new Spanish colony of San Juan Bautista.”

“That today is called Puerto Rico,” I add.

“Exactly.”

I lean back and place my hands behind my head. She eyes me and pauses to ask, “Do you need to write any of this down?”

I must be guilty of an absurd lack of color-coded pen and pad—and correct posture.

Pointing meaningfully at my temple, I grin. “Don’t you worry, profesora. ”

She lets out a long-suffering sigh, but goes on. “These were the only details the family had. But their ancestors were originally from Sevilla, and the city has the Archivo General de Indias, with its wealth of Spanish historical document preservation.”

I nod. “Yeah, they even have ol’ Columbus’s journal.”

Her eyes light up. “Yes! And since Sevilla was a major trade center and only authorized port for New World expeditions, it correlates with how this noble family was involved in colonial transactions. They would be open to sending their son on such an early voyage.” Her stance relaxes, and she leans over the table, gesturing excitedly with one hand. “Thanks to the AGI, I was able to uncover further correspondence that shows why Alonso was sent over the Atlantic to a barely established settlement.”

“‘Barely’ is right. There were less than five hundred colonists on the island at the time.”

Lena agrees and quickly flips the binder to a scan of what looks like a centuries-old letter without using the tabs. Guess those are purely for aesthetics, then.

I drop my arms to the table, lean closer to where she indicates, and try not to breathe in too much of her citrusy scent. As I read the barely legible sixteenth-century calligraphy, I observe, “This is a letter from his father, the count, writing to who seems to be . . . another son?”

“Yes, look at the date. This letter was sent only three years after Alonso sailed to San Juan. His father laments the changed circumstances the family has suffered since then. Alberto, the second son, died during the Algiers expedition, part of the Spanish-Ottoman conflicts. And Alvaro, this first son he writes to, seems to have suffered a fall. All of these tragic events made worse by how Alonso has been missing all that time.”

Lena watches me as I finish reading and recline back on the chair once I’m done. “Well, nothing makes you regret shipping off your third son to the New World more than the possibility of losing your first two heirs. And all for”—I glance at the letter again—“pushing him to ‘straighten his path’? Seems like Alonso was the wild child, and good ol’ dad gave up on him joining the church. He thought sending him to manage family interests in the colony would give him some perspective on his privilege and get him to settle down?”

“Exactly—yes. That is what I concluded, too.” I don’t know if I should feel offended by her look of surprise. She studies me for a moment and clears her throat to continue. “Only he never saw that ‘wayward’ son again. From his death record, we know the eldest son died the next year. And then the father was also deceased only two years later, leaving the De Guzmán-Velasco family line without a direct heir.”

“What did the family think happened to Alonso?”

She leans over the table, nearly brushing my shoulder—okay, that’s an orange blossom scent, to be specific. Lena grabs another binder and opens it.

It’s a scan of a very old parchment, which she reverently explains. “So, I have the ship manifest, or Libro de asientos, of when La Concepción sailed. All the family had was the only letter they ever received from Alonso once he arrived in the Caribbean. He wrote to his mother, Inés Velasco, after disembarking in San Juan. At that point of colonial transatlantic mail, it miraculously did arrive in Sevilla. It was found among her most prized possessions.”

“So they knew he did make it to San Juan.”

“Yes—but, look.” She points to a few highlighted passages. “We can infer from his letter that Alonso resented his father’s treatment and the aristocratic way of life in Spain. He even seems to joke about it. And when he writes, he asks about and sends love to his mother and brothers but nothing of his father.”

I read aloud from the letter: “I might be abandoned among the natives, but at least I am no longer surrounded by the two-faced wolves that are society friends.” I chuckle to myself and then glance at Lena. “‘Abandoned among the natives’ sounds a lot like you.”

Awkward silence, my old friend.

My mouth insists on going on a too-personal spree. Why did it have to be with her?

Lena quirks her head and looks at me for a long moment. I meet her gaze, as I always do, even while cringing on the inside. Unflinching.

She’s probably debating whether to let the comment pass or call me out on my penchant for causing social discomfort, but in the end, she shrugs it off. “I wouldn’t say ‘abandoned.’”

I’m about to mention she never denied the ‘natives’ part but decide to also shrug it off.

She clears her throat again, but before she can continue, I go back to the letter and comment, “Well, Alonso did not seem very concerned with the rough state of the colony. He mostly writes about relishing the freedom and vastness of the ocean and being excited about the ‘possibilities of the fledgling settlement.’”

Another long, curious look from Lena. “Yes, the possibilities . . .”

I grin, wondering what might have caused her far-away look. Her deep brown eyes snap to mine but then go back to the binders. With a small shake of her head, she goes on, “Eh, bueno. Besides finding his father’s testament that shows the family’s hope Alonso or his descendants would be found someday, that was all the research I could do from Spain. As I assume you know, digitized colonial records from that time on archive platforms remain limited, and, even then, most are from 1645 or later. There is no mention of him after that ship manifest and letter. The trail went cold.”

She closes and stacks the binders. Looking over at me, she concludes with a resigned sigh, “So that is why I am here. And where you come in.”