Read Heart of the World for Free Online Page B

Her job doesn’t start till late afternoon and she knows I know it.
    â€œI have a hair appointment,” she said. “What time?”
    â€œI thought if I get there early, maybe they can do my nails.” The excuse sounded lame even as she gave it. “I guess I— You want coffee, I’ll make it.”
    I followed her into the kitchen, thinking that I couldn’t possibly choke down more caffeine, thinking that maybe if I sat in a chair with a coffee cup in front of me, she wouldn’t be so quick to toss me out the door, thinking I needed to ask questions she wasn’t going to want to answer. I watched while she flicked on the burner under the kettle, quickly rinsed two ceramic mugs in the sink, and plunked teaspoons of instant coffee into them.
    â€œIt's all I have, this powdered stuff. You’d probably rather have tea,” she said.
    â€œInstant's fine.”
    She gave me a look. I suppose she feels constantly criticized by me in the same way I feel constantly criticized by her; we’d made choices about our lives as different as our preference in clothing, as different as our hair and makeup. I tried small talk, commenting on the nasty weather, anything I could find to set her at ease, reminding myself that at bottom we were both women who loved the same child.
    â€œMaybe she's better off on her own,” Marta said as she sat, unable to find sugar or milk, angry with me for the shambles of her kitchen. “She's fifteen.”
    â€œWhen I’m her age, I’m on my own. I’m working all the time, living away from home, making money.”
    And in no time, pregnant. The way I’d heard the story, she’d been a servant in Paolina's father's house, a uniformed housemaid. Whether it had been a teen love affair or rape, I didn’t know. There had been no marriage.
    Marta took a quick sip of coffee and placed the cup back on the table with emphasis. “She's like a baby, playing hide-and-seek, that's what I think. And she wants you to find her, not me. When she's a real baby, when she's sick on the floor, I’m the one cleans up after her, I’m the one stays home with her, can’t find a good job or a new man. And now, now you gonna find her. You gonna step up, be some kind of hero, find her and save her. But I’m the one has to take care of her when nobody else will. I’m the one has to wipe her nose when it runs.”
    The coffee was lukewarm and grainy, but I didn’t care.
    She said, “What do you want?”
    I want my little girl back. I want this headache to stop. I want to go home and pull the covers over my head . “Just the answers to a few more questions.”
    No, she didn’t know her daughter had broken up with Diego. As far as she knew, or as far as she would admit, there were no new boys, no new friends, no school troubles. I wondered whether mother and daughter ever spoke.
    I drank bad coffee.
    â€œIs that all?”
    â€œMarta, are you in touch with her father?”
    â€œWith Jimmy, you mean?”
    â€œWith Roldan. Have you asked his family for money, done anything that might bring Paolina to their attention?” “What are you getting at?”
    Custodial kidnapping was what I was getting at. Until she was ten years old, my little sister believed her father was the man who’d lived in her house till she was six, the father of her younger brothers, a Puerto Ri-can drunk named Jimmy Fuentes. Why not believe it? She had his name.

    And then, at ten, her mother had flown with her to Bogota, driven to a big house with servants, and presented her to a man she was told to call “Grandpa.”
    â€œThe Roldan family,” I said. “They know about her. Is it possible they took her?”
    â€œThe old man's dead.” She stared into her cup and I wondered if she was deliberately avoiding my eyes. “And his son?”
    â€œDead, too. Even if he's alive, what would he want