Page 23 of Guava Flavored Lies

CHAPTER10

Dressedin a crisp white softball uniform with their logo in dark, red letters, Sylvie pulled on her cap and jumped out of her freshly washed white Jeep. From the back, she grabbed the pristine black and light blue bag with Our Lady of Solitude Softball emblazoned on the side. The late April morning wasn’t suffocatingly hot. At least not yet.

As soon as she started for the field, she rolled her eyes at the Pastry King food truck parked at the edge of the lot as close to the park as possible. Of course they would use this opportunity to make money.

Gross.

Choosing to walk in the dirt in order to skirt the truck as if it might give her lice, Sylvie focused on her primary task. She wasn’t just there to beat the Machados at a game, there was a bigger picture. She was going to find a way to defeat them permanently.

On the field, the families were divided into two dugouts. The Machados were dressed in red uniforms with Pastry King etched in white letters. It was such a ripoff that the uninitiated would think it was just the away version of the Campos’ uniforms.

Sylvie’s attention was snatched against its will as she caught sight of Lauren. Her long, dark hair poking out of the back of her cap in a neat braid as she played catch with a young man. All she was missing was a blue ribbon at the top of her braid to be back in high school.

Memories kidnapped Sylvie out of the present and dragged her fifteen years into the past. No one in the locker room but her and Lauren.

Sylvie’s heart raced it’s way to her throat. How serious had Lou been? About the dance. About her feelings. About their future.

Phantom fingers grazed Sylvie’s cheek and her skin reacted. Fifteen years later and she still remembered the weight of her touch. The softness of her skin.

“Sylvia!”

Her aunt’s voice jarred her out of her thoughts. Clearing the sticky knot blocking her airway, Sylvie coughed. She hadn’t realized that she’d been walking toward the Machado’s side of the field. That her legs had nearly made her a traitor.

Turning away from her accidental target, Sylvie adjusted the bag on her shoulder and hurried to her team dugout. Inside the covered space, she dropped her bag on the bench next to where her aunt was standing.

“You okay?” Her sixty year old aunt, who paid a small fortune to look forty, wore a face full of makeup and false eyelashes. “Are you working too hard?” She shifted her weight on the cleanest cleats in the family. An easy feat considering she was the only one who refused to play.

Sylvie forced a smile as she greeted her aunt with a kiss to the cheek. Wouldn’t everything be too hard to a person who’s never worked a day in her life?

After getting pleasantries out of the way, Sylvie began her inquiry. Her aunt was older than her mother and might remember. “Tia, do you know about a lawsuit in 1979? The one between us and them?” She gestured toward the practicing Machados with only her eyes because she’d been raised not to point.

Her aunt straightened but her expression gave nothing away. It was more a testament to someone’s skill with Botox injections rather than her aunt’s poker face. “I don’t know.”

The clipped response was hard to read, but it was obvious the question hadn’t surprised her. Hadn’t jolted her. Hadn’t unnerved her. Hadn’t so much as confused her.

“You don’t know or you don’t want to tell me?”

“I don’t know anything about any legal fight,” she clarified stiffly. “Who told you there was a lawsuit?”

Sylvie cocked her head as she regarded her aunt. She wasn’t a master at reading body language, and she couldn’t tell what had shifted in her energy, but she was almost certain there was something her aunt wasn’t saying.

“Tia,” Sylvie whispered as she leaned in close, getting a nose-full of her expensive perfume. “Do you know something and you’re not supposed to say?”

Artificially blue eyes darted like they were chasing a disoriented mosquito buzzing around Sylvie’s face. After an awkward beat, her aunt laughed. “Have you ever known me to keep a secret?”

Sylvie remained silent in tacit agreement. Her aunt had single-handedly ruined at least three surprise parties and a gender reveal. Could a person who told everyone about her own affair keep a secret for over forty years?

“Oye caballero’ let’s start getting warmed up!” Sylvie’s dad, his bald head covered in a team cap and his belly hanging over his white pants just a little, clapped as he started wrangling them.

“Better go get in game mode,” her aunt said, practically shoving her out of the dugout as she prodded her to the opening at the end of the chain link wall meant to keep errant balls from hitting its occupants.

“Since when do you care about the game?” Sylvie stopped on the dugout step.

“Since we’ve lost so many games in a row. Do you really want me to go out there and show all of you up?”

“And risk the masterpiece your third husband has created?”

Her aunt chuckled, the tension dropping from her slim shoulders at the change in subject. “What can I say? Wilbur likes to spend money on beautiful things. Now, go on. We have a game to win.”

Her aunt’s sudden enthusiasm for sports added to Sylvie’s suspicion that she knew something, but why wasn’t she talking? What could there possibly be to hide? There was no way either family would drop the suit if they could win, and if they’d somehow agreed to stop hemorrhaging money litigating something neither of them could prove, why seal everything? It just didn’t make sense.

Accepting that her aunt wasn’t going to give her anything, she joined the rest of her family. There were still plenty of people she could interrogate. Someone had to know something.

In the vast green space to the side of the softball diamond, the King of Pastries clan broke up into pairs. Avoiding her brother who was so up his own ass that he’d be of no help, Sylvie darted for her mother’s second cousin. A large man capable of carrying a lot of information.

By the time she’d gotten through most of her top targets, Sylvie was hot and frustrated. Her aunt had been the only person not surprised by the existence of the suit. It was easy to believe they didn’t know anything, but she couldn’t stop wondering what happened a decade before she was born. If she was going to completely take over, she needed to know absolutely everything. How had her mother taken control while being in the dark about something so important?

Sylvie’s mounting irritation peaked as she jogged onto the field. As she headed for the shortstop position, she couldn’t ignore Lauren warming up to be first at bat. She tightened her jaw, ready to face the ultimate source of her vexation.

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