A Place in the World Read online

  Amadina retrieved a small silver bell from the oak desk where Carlo had written all his correspondence, a notary standing patiently at his side while he figured sums and made notations in ledger books. Her mind snagged on the thought. Carlo’s notary knew everything about the business dealings her brother had made. His register book would show all the transactions, the amounts, the people involved. She made a note to investigate the notary’s records before too long. It never hurt to dig a little deeper into Carlo’s affairs.

  The bell’s hard edge pressed into the flesh of her palm. She roused herself, rattled it with vigor. The musical tinkling echoed through the house, summoning the servants.

  She would send those two men out at once, before Mira and her husband turned south on the pilgrim’s route that wound through the mountains to Belarac. Whatever her spies gleaned about the couple would guide Amadina’s next move.

  Until then, she would practice the art of patience, something she had learned long ago from her brother. Though, in truth, she rarely put it to use. A person in possession of great power was not often required to be patient, after all.

  The mourning cloth outside rippled in the wind, sending a shadow across Carlo’s desk.

  6

  August, 2016

  Wallowa Valley, Oregon

  Zari

  The van rolled to a stop on the shoulder of the two-lane highway that snaked through the broad Wallowa Valley. A weather-worn metal mailbox emblazoned with the name ‘Mendieta’ sat atop a slightly crooked wooden post. Forking west from the highway, a curving gravel road cut through a field studded with bales of pale-yellow hay.

  Zari emerged from the air-conditioned vehicle. The midafternoon heat struck her like a physical blow. A truck passed by, sending a swirl of dust into the air, and she breathed in the scents of diesel fumes and hay.

  “When you told me Lena Mendieta lives on a ranch, I pictured herds of cattle, horses in corrals, giant barns.” Gus came around the side of the van, one hand shading his eyes. “Are you sure this is it?”

  Zari nodded.

  They stood in silence for a moment, looking west. Heat shimmered above the field in undulating waves. Steep forested ridges towered over the valley, an implacable barrier between civilization and wilderness.

  The mid-afternoon sun beat down on Zari’s head. She had never been so grateful for her sunglasses. “We won’t stay long,” she promised. “Lena’s recovering from cancer treatments. I don’t want to overwhelm her.”

  “Okay,” her brother said. He wheeled and climbed back into the driver’s seat. “Let’s do this thing.”

  Inside the van, the kids were quiet, mesmerized by a narrator’s voice spoon-feeding them chapters of a Harry Potter book in a gloriously acrobatic English accent.

  Gus drove through the field to a bowl-shaped meadow bristling with pine trees. Hundreds of sheep milled about, their fleeces shorn close. Several massive white dogs lay panting in the shade of the pines.

  “I guess Lena’s still in the wool business,” Zari remarked.

  “Or the meat business,” Gus suggested.

  “Dad,” Eva groaned from the back seat. “That’s gross.”

  “People have to eat,” he reasoned. “And a lot of them like to eat lamb. Me included. Maybe she sells lamp chops. We can grill some up tonight.”

  “I’m not eating them,” Eva retorted. “I would never eat a baby lamb.”

  Jasper turned to her. “You have eaten it. Lots of times. We usually have it at Christmas.”

  “Well, nobody told me,” she said hotly. “And from now on if anyone tries to make me eat lamb, I’m not going to.”

  “You like it,” he said.

  “No I don’t.”

  Zari twisted in her seat. “Jasper, if Eva doesn’t want to eat lamb anymore, that’s her choice.”

  Her nephew rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”

  The house was Victorian, with narrow windows, a roomy front porch, and several parched rose bushes in front. Its white paint was cracked and peeling. A broken glass panel in the porch light revealed a single cloudy bulb.

  Zari knocked on the battered front door, Gus at her side. The kids fidgeted behind them.

  After a long pause, the door creaked open.

  An elderly woman gazed out, dark eyes full of confusion, her olive skin rutted with deep wrinkles. A pair of reading glasses was perched atop her unruly silver curls. She wore a loose-fitting yellow T-shirt and faded jeans that swam on her tiny frame.

  “Hello, Lena,” Zari said, smiling. “I’m Zari Durrell. This is my brother Gus and his kids Jasper and Eva.”

  Gus held out a bag of cookies they had purchased at the grocery store in Joseph.

  “These are for you,” he said.

  The woman peered at the bag, her eyes brightening. “Chocolate chip, my favorite.” She waved them inside. “I have to say I didn’t think you’d really come. I’m afraid I’m not much of a host these days. It’s too hot for coffee. I’ve got some sodas in the fridge, though.”

  “We’re not actually allowed to drink soda—” Eva began.

  “Except on special occasions,” Gus interrupted. “Like this.”

  “Would you like one, Mrs. Mendieta?” Jasper asked. “I can get them.”

  Zari stifled a laugh. Jasper was not going to squander an opportunity to drink soda.

  “Yes, I would, young man, as long as you call me Lena,” said the old woman, pointing him down the hall to the kitchen.

  She shuffled into the living room and sank into a recliner covered with a hand-crocheted wool throw. Next to it was a small table piled with magazines, books, and remote controls.

  A huge flat-screen television was mounted on the wall opposite her. Underneath it sat a brown couch. Two high-backed wooden chairs and an oddly futuristic oval glass coffee table completed the room’s furnishings. The air held the faint odor of a pine-scented cleaning product.

  “Sit, everyone,” Lena commanded.

  Jasper trotted into the room, his arms loaded with cans of root beer. He offered Lena one first, then passed out the rest. Zari and Gus sat in the wooden chairs and the kids kneeled on the green carpeting next to the coffee table.

  The metallic pop of cans opening ricocheted around the room.

  “Thanks so much for letting us stop by,” Zari said.

  “Well, I’m glad to see you.” Lena took a long pull from her root beer. “I like visits. I get lonely from time to time these days. Can’t be outside working like I used to. Now my boys handle all of that.”

  “How many sons do you have?” Zari asked, confused. Her mother had said Lena Mendieta had no children. But the woman was elderly. Maybe she had dementia or memory loss.

  “My sweetheart died before we could get married. And I was never lucky in love again. So no babies. But I took in a few strays over the years. Now they’re like family. They do most of the work around here.” Lena frowned. “Where are those kitties? Scared of strangers, that’s their problem.”

  As if on cue, a cream-colored cat appeared in the doorway.

  “Oh, there’s Wyatt.” She made a clucking noise. “He’s the outgoing one.”

  Wyatt bounded up on the couch and settled in a spot thickly layered with his own pale hair. He curled up and regarded them all with unblinking green eyes.

  Lena ripped open the bag of cookies and passed it around.

  “So you want to know about your roots?” she asked, directing her gaze at Zari. “Your Basque ancestors?”

  Zari nodded. “I had a chance to spend some time in Basque country recently and it got me curious.”

  Lena plonked her soda can down and rummaged in a canvas bag emblazoned with the words ‘Pendleton Roundup 2009.’ Retrieving a thin manila envelope that was secured with a metal clip, she placed it on her lap.

  “Do you know what ‘Mendi
eta’ means?” she asked, directing her gaze at the kids.

  They shook their heads.

  “ ‘Men of the mountains,’ that’s what. Shepherds. They learned their craft over in Basque country. Then they came here. Those white dogs you saw driving up here from the road? Descended from the original Basque sheepdogs. They aren’t afraid to fight wolves or bears.”

  Eva watched her intently. “Do you ever see wolves or bears around here?”

  “We’ve got both,” Lena declared. “And mountain lions. There’s nothing a mountain lion likes better than a newborn lamb.”

  Eva’s eyes widened. Zari sipped her root beer, enjoying the spectacle.

  “Now, what you’ve got to know about our people,” the old woman went on, “is they had an adventurous spirit. They used to sail across the Atlantic to fish for cod off Canada. Way back before Columbus.”

  “But I thought Columbus discovered America,” Jasper objected.

  “Ha!” Lena snorted. “That’s what they wanted us to think.”

  “Who?” asked Eva, confused.

  “The guys who wrote the history books. But they didn’t know the whole truth. Or maybe they did, but they chose not to tell it.” She stared at the children. “History is full of holes.”

  Zari saw Jasper about to object again and then think better of it.

  Lena leaned back in her chair. “Anyway, my grandfather was born in Basque country, but he came here and built this house with the help of two brothers. It’s still as sturdy as the day they hammered in the last nail.”

  She poked an arm between her chair and the table and fished out a ball of cornflower-blue yarn.

  “This is Mendieta wool,” she said, unraveling a length of it. “Best wool in this valley. The knitters love it. My boys sell it online for me, all the way to the East Coast.”

  “Beautiful,” Zari murmured.

  Gus and the children nodded in agreement.

  Lena jabbed the ball of yarn in Zari’s direction. “I’m glad you came. I had to check you out in person to make sure our family history is going to someone who really cares about the past.”

  “No one cares about the past more than Zari,” Gus said stoutly.

  “Zari found an artist from Renaissance times,” Jasper chimed in. “A woman painter named Mira who was a nun but then she got married.”

  “Mira was in the wool business,” Eva added. “Like you.”

  Lena looked doubtful. “Is that so?”

  “I’m an art historian studying female artists from the sixteenth century,” Zari explained. “It’s my passion. It’s why I went to Basque country. To follow Mira’s tracks through history.”

  “You’re too young for your passion to be as boring as history,” Lena mused. “I’ll bet you went to Basque country for love. There’s nothing like the spell of young love.”

  Zari smiled. “History is more dependable than romance, in my experience.”

  “Well, maybe you just haven’t stumbled into the right romance.”

  Lena shifted in her chair, trying to find a comfortable position. Her birdlike physique made her seem delicate, though her personality was decidedly robust.

  Zari felt a stab of worry. “Do you have help with cooking or cleaning?” she blurted. “This is such a big house.”

  “The boys and their families do my grocery shopping, and now that I’m sick, I get more food than I can eat from people around the valley,” Lena replied. “But I do my own housekeeping. Never trusted anyone else with it. If you want something done right...” She broke off, yawning.

  “You do it yourself,” Eva finished.

  Zari stood. “We should probably be going,” she said.

  “You’re the keeper of the family lore now,” Lena said, waving the file folder at her. “Though from what I’ve heard, you haven’t been much interested in our family.”

  The words were harsh, but they were also true. Zari had only been to a few of the annual Mendieta reunions in California’s Central Valley. Family ancestry never interested her until she moved to Europe two years ago for her first post-doctorate research job. Before then, she found it easier to look ahead to the future rather than back into the past.

  Impulsively, she bent down and kissed the old woman’s soft, wrinkled cheek. “I’m up to the task,” she said gently. “You can rely on me.”

  Reluctantly Lena relinquished her grasp on the file folder.

  “Thank you,” Zari said. “This means a lot. I’ll take good care of it.”

  “You all see yourselves out.” Weariness was evident on Lena’s face. “Just toss the empties in the recycling box on the back porch, will you? You can go out through the kitchen.”

  She closed her eyes, resting her gnarled hands on her lap. Zari was seized with an urge to move in for a week and give the house a deep cleaning, vacuum every cat hair off the couch, fill the refrigerator with snap-top containers full of healthy meals.

  But instead, she gestured to the others to follow her through the kitchen. They dutifully placed the empty cans in a blue plastic bin on the porch and descended the stairs to the crunching gravel driveway. A dog’s slow, deep bark echoed up from the meadow below.

  The wind gusted, filling Zari’s lungs with a searing blast of heat. She clutched the file folder to her chest.

  Whatever this pile of papers contained, it was her responsibility now.

  7

  August 2016

  Wallowa Lake, Oregon

  Zari

  After sunset Zari and Gus walked past the campground to the lakeshore, leaving Jasper and Eva to whisper in their sleeping bags, giggling over shadow creatures they created on the tent walls with flashlights. Laughter and chatter from people gathered around campfires rose up all around them, drifting on wisps of smoke through the branches of towering ponderosa pines.

  “I love having no phone service,” Gus said. “This is how people used to entertain themselves before social media and live-streaming video.”

  “I know,” Zari agreed. “I feel a bit guilty for not being accessible twenty-four hours a day, but mostly I’m relieved.”

  They reached the edge of the long, curving lake. Its waters shifted quietly in the darkness. The crowds that materialized daily on the sandy beach with their paddle boards and inflatable rafts had vanished. Instead, there was a deepening silence.

  Near a creek that fed the lake with snowmelt from high peaks, Zari spread a blanket on a picnic table. They lay back, admiring the majesty of their surroundings. Dark ridges reared up over the lake and rolled away into the Eagle Cap Wilderness. The velvety sky pulsed with more stars than Zari had seen since her time in the Pyrenees. She imagined golden-eyed wolves loping silently through the woods, lapping icy water from alpine lakes.

  “So history’s more dependable than romance?” Gus’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “What about Wil Bandstra? I thought he was the one.”

  “When we’re together, I feel sure he’s the love of my life,” Zari confided. “I’ve never felt this way about any other man. But we don’t spend enough time together to really get in a rhythm. There always seems to be some personal emergency or work-related crisis that pulls us apart. And now we’re separated by thousands of miles again.”

  “Are you keeping your options open?” Gus teased. “Anyone else in the running?”

  Zari turned her head in his direction. She could barely see the outline of her brother’s face in the starlight. “No. Although I did have an awkward moment with John Drake, the art conservator from Oxford, that almost turned into a...thing.”

  “Ooh. Spill it.”

  “It’s way too embarrassing.”

  “Come on,” Gus prodded her. “It’ll be in the vault. You know that.”

  Gus didn’t share secrets. It was one of his best attributes.

  “Okay. I had never seen him in a
lustful light before, and then one night after surfing with him and drinking way too much wine, I felt this electric charge between us. He kind of made a move and I waited a beat too long to stop it.”

  “Surfing and booze can do that,” Gus observed sagely. “It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re attracted to him. Here’s the test: if you had to choose between a night with him or a night with Wil, who would you pick?”

  Zari folded her hands and slipped them behind her head. “Wil, no contest.”

  “Case closed. You are in deep smit.”

  “I know,” she sighed. “But maybe I should set my sights on a more attainable goal.”

  “Make a plan with him, Zari. Decide to live together.”

  “But how can we pull it off? He’s spent years developing his furniture design business in Amsterdam. And even if I can get back to Europe, I wouldn’t want to stay there forever.”

  “Details, details. How often does a guy like this drop into your life? You have to try to make it work. Or you won’t be happy.” Gus’s tone grew serious. “And I want my sister to be happy. You don’t have all the time in the world.”

  “What are you implying?” Zari sat up.

  “You want kids. You told me he wants kids. You’re not getting any younger.”

  “If you tell me next I have an elderly womb, I’ll slap you,” Zari threatened.

  “Well, biology doesn’t lie. Make your move, Zari. Before it’s too late.”

  Zari glowered at the vast expanse of the lake. Why did Gus have to be so aggravating? He was lucky to have found Jenny, his partner in life, as a teenager. He never had to navigate the stormy seas of singlehood.

  She realized her hands were clenched. Unfurling her fingers, Zari willed her frustration out with a few long, sustained breaths—something her mother had taught her long ago. Little by little, her mind cleared.

  The truth was, she was paralyzed by fear. Fear of commitment, first and foremost. Fear that she would end up living seven thousand miles away from her family for the rest of her life. What made her feel most vulnerable was the fear that Wil’s family would never accept her, that in their eyes she could not replace his longtime girlfriend Hana, a woman who was still deeply intertwined with all of them—and whose shadow, Zari suspected, would always loom over her.