Twenty-three people. Black mole from the cook she had used for fifteen years. Tequila from a distillery in Jalisco whose owner she had published in 1998. A three-tiered cake with sugar bougainvillea, because the real bougainvillea grew along her courtyard wall and she had always found it the most honest flower — it needed almost nothing and gave almost everything.
She had dressed carefully. The silk blouse had been bought on a Tuesday afternoon at a small boutique on Álvaro Obregón, chosen because the colour was the precise blue of her daughter Lucía’s childhood bedroom, the room that was now, quietly, a guest room with different curtains. She wore her pearls. She had her hair done at nine that morning.
She was ready at six.
Valeria arrived at six-forty.
Mercedes heard the heels on the marble before she saw her — a particular rhythmic confidence that had always preceded her granddaughter’s entrance into rooms. She appeared in the doorway in a gold dress that cost more than most people’s monthly salaries, surveyed the dining room with the expression of someone assessing property they intend to acquire, and then did the thing that Mercedes registered in her body before she fully registered it in her mind.
She moved the place card.
