Calla allowed a little pride into her face. “They thought it was a rabbit or a fox or something. It distracted him enough that she just said good night and left.”
The perfumed sweetness of the roses and the lily magnolias filled Estrella. Most days, she liked it, the smell of these gardens so strong it seemed liquid. But now it made her forehead ache.
“Throw all the rocks you want,” Estrella said. “But you can’t do this. Do you know what he could do to us?”
Calla bit her lip. “It’s not fair.”
“I know,” Estrella said.
To Marjorie Briar, Estrella and her cousins had been las haditas, garden fairies who promised rich men magic held in seeds and bulbs. Marjorie taught them to trick men with too much money in their pockets, to part them from the contents of their billfolds. And if they ever came back complaining that the bulbs did not take into flowers as grand as those on La Pradera, they convinced them the only answer was to buy more.
But Reid just wanted them to grow flowers that could be stuffed into vases. He wanted a ball not so the Nomeolvides women could sell their sewn burlap bags of iris bulbs and hydrangea seeds but so he could impress rich men. So he could work out how to wring enough money from La Pradera to pay his debt.
And Bay. Reid had taken the loss of Bay no harder than misplacing a fountain pen.
Reid’s reign had seeded in all of them, for the first time, the idea of leaving. They wouldn’t do it of course. They knew it could cost them their own lives and their mothers’ broken hearts. But the thought was new, and enough to frighten Estrella as she lay in the dark at night. She dreamed of La Pradera striking her sick as soon as her nightgown hem crossed the property line.
“I promise you,” Estrella said. “The minute we can get rid of him, we will.”
“No,” Calla said. “I mean”—she shook her head, shutting her eyes—“yes, I want that. But it’s not that. It’s his shirts.”
“What about his shirts?”
“They’re wrinkled,” Calla said. Her lips pressed together tight, a guard against tears. “He wants our cousin, and he has all that money, and he can’t even put on an ironed shirt.”
A little piece of Estrella cracked. She loved Calla for how this small thing bothered her. She felt Calla’s rage and frustration so sharply tears burned at the corners of her eyes.
“Listen to me,” Estrella said. “We’ll fix this.”
“I don’t want to,” Calla said. “I want him to see it.”
She could not let Reid come down on Calla for this. Not Calla, not brilliant, vindictive little Calla. She might have been taller than Estrella, but she was all thin limbs and round eyes. Sometimes, when Estrella was not close enough to have to look up at her, Calla still seemed ten.
“You’re not taking the blame for this,” Estrella said. “I am.”
“No,” Calla said. “I’m not letting you.”
“You have to. Because you catch things before any of us do. We need you. Reid doesn’t know how much you notice and I don’t want him to. Let him keep underestimating you.”
“But then what’s he gonna do to you?” Calla asked.
“Don’t worry about me,” Estrella said. “Worry about Dalia. Take care of her.”
“How?” Calla asked.
Estrella thought of Calla folding up her thin arms and legs behind a bush, making noises that sounded like the skittering of a deer or rabbit.
“Keep throwing rocks.”
Estrella sifted through her thoughts for the way out of this, how to rub out any trace of what Calla had done.
The bottle of whiskey in Reid’s hands, the gleam of the gold label, drifted back to her.
Estrella combed out her hair and put on her best dress, a blush-colored one she’d worn to a midsummer party last year. The bodice was sewn with ribbons and satin flowers. The straps, thick pink ribbons, fastened in bows at each shoulder. The skirt brushed her calves, and the memory of how Marjorie used to pick out their dresses with their mothers stung.
Liquor crates had been coming in for the ball, stacked high in an unused shed. Estrella stole bottle after bottle. Aged whiskey. Imported grappa. Champagne wrapped in pink foil. Absinthe the bartenders would serve by lighting sugar cubes in slotted spoons, the liquor burning blue green.
She slipped through the carriage house’s side door, popped the bottles, and soaked the interior of the car. Grappa flooded the consoles and rained down over the calla lilies’ leaves. Absinthe left the steering wheels stained and sticky. Scotch dampened the dark soil. Champagne filled the flutes of the calla lilies, foaming over the petaled rims.
She poured out liquor and wine onto the chrome and leather. The fragrance of sugared grapes and bitter wormwood filled the carriage house. The fumes made her body feel light.
From the last few bottles, she poured out enough to soak a few rags, and stuffed one in the neck of each. She held a lit match to a rag. The soaked cloth went up, and she threw it into the car. She lit the next, tossed it in, and again until they littered the inside.
On the way out, her foot kicked green glass. A half-empty champagne bottle she’d missed. She grabbed its throat before it toppled, and took it with her.
By the time the bottles blew, Estrella had climbed one of La Pradera’s grass-covered hills. It gave her a view of the flash and the fire lighting the carriage house windows.
She sat on the grass, drinking straight from that bottle of champagne that probably cost more than Reid would ever pay her family. The windows in the carriage house doors showed ribbons of fire jumping up from the car.
In every flick of light, the fire swallowed any evidence of Calla and her lilies. The bells and stems caught and went up, disappearing into the flames.
It didn’t take long for Reid to notice, and for men to arrive in their red trucks.
Fel appeared in a smoke-filled doorway.
He coughed into the bend of his elbow, his shirt grayed with smoke.
Panic prickled her. She hadn’t seen him go in. She’d been so set on burning any evidence that Calla had touched the car, she hadn’t thought about Fel, quiet and so unknown to them that he was unpredictable.
He spoke to the firemen, gesturing inside and telling them, Estrella guessed, that no one was in the carriage house.
Her heart settled and slowed. He was okay, this boy who cooked for her family when they could not cook for themselves, this boy who searched the thick gray of liquor-filled smoke to make sure they were not lost in it. His clothes and hair were smoke-dulled, and he was coughing to clear it from his lungs, but he was okay.
And Estrella had turned to ashes anything that could damn Calla.
There was nothing for Reid to do but stand, try to deaden the horror on his face, and look around at who was there to witness it.
The men threw open the barn doors, letting the bitter smoke billow out. They had the fire out with a few snowy arcs of the extinguishers. But it had done its damage. The car was ruined, and the carriage house would smell like smoke for weeks.
Reid’s eyes moved in Estrella’s direction. They missed her at first, passing over her.