Everyone Knows You Go Home Read online

  ADVANCE PRAISE FOR EVERYONE KNOWS YOU GO HOME

  “A beautifully written story that illuminates the complex allegiances of family and the costs of denying the past for the exigencies of the present. Told with great warmth, humor, and wisdom, Natalia Sylvester brings the border to vivid life in this timeless journey deep inside the human heart.”

  —Cristina García, author of Here in Berlin and Dreaming in Cuban

  “I was charmed by this novel from the start, and when a character from the afterlife shows up—and when no one in the book thinks it unusual or strange—I was smitten. This is the tangled history of one family’s past and present both here and beyond. Sylvester’s gift is that she’s able to infuse it, in more ways than one, with extraordinary spirit and life.”

  —Cristina Henríquez, author of The Book of Unknown Americans

  “Everyone Knows You Go Home is a deeply satisfying read, beautifully illustrating how love and obligation shape our lives and give them meaning. Life on the borderlands—between Texas and Mexico, news reports and real life, history and memory, the living and the dead—creates an immersive world for exploring the mysteries that we all are to each other, bound as we may be by shared blood, shared love, and shared grief.”

  —ire’ne lara silva, author of flesh to bone

  “Everyone Knows You Go Home is a rich and moving story of love and secrets. Natalia Sylvester beautifully explores borders both physical and metaphysical.”

  —Ramona Ausubel, author of Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty and No One is Here Except All of Us

  “Sylvester charms with a family saga that is both epic and intimate in scope, delivering an unforgettable tale of the boundless power of love and redemption. Everyone Knows You Go Home is a dreamy spell of a novel, a new window into the magic and mystery of the natural world and beyond.”

  —Patricia Engel, author of The Veins of the Ocean and Vida, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year

  PRAISE FOR CHASING THE SUN

  “Sylvester’s debut novel depicts the strained marriage of Andres and Marabela Jimenez, a wealthy couple in Lima, Peru, in 1992. When Marabela fails to come home after running an errand, Andres suspects she is leaving him for the second time. Instead, he finds a note explaining that three men have kidnapped her. The kidnappers seek a ransom in American dollars, demanding more money than Andres has. His mother, who dislikes Marabela, initially refuses to help. Each phone call between Andres and the kidnappers increases the tension, as does Andres’ struggle to soothe their children, Ignacio and Cynthia. Sylvester creates a world of nightmarish suspense, not only for the Jimenez family but also for the city of Lima itself, with its curfews and unpredictable guerrilla groups. Marabela is held by her captors for 17 days; in the novel’s second section, Days 17 and On, Sylvester portrays the pain of survival and recovery. The writing is clear, exact, and powerful, maintaining subtlety in spite of its dramatic subject matter, and the ending is smart and unexpected.”

  —Jackie Thomas-Kennedy, Booklist

  “Sylvester debuts with a page-turning novel that strikes a balance between austere domesticity and suspenseful, life-altering trauma.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Sylvester is a fine writer with a knack for crafting situations that externalize the characters’ internal struggles . . . her ambition to reach beyond the traditional kidnapping thriller into something richer is commendable.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Love the mystery and suspense of Gone Girl? Chasing the Sun keeps you nail-biting as Andres tries to solve the mystery of his missing wife.”

  —Cosmopolitan for Latinas

  “Sylvester deftly tells the story of Andres and Marabela, a married couple with an already complicated relationship that is put to the test when Marabela is kidnapped and held for ransom . . . a page-turner.”

  —USA TODAY

  “It is a mature work of literature, one that—while it has the pacing of a thriller—offers fully drawn characters who suffer through an act of violence that was all too common in Peru during the 1990s: the kidnapping of a loved one. Based on both research and family experience, Sylvester’s novel is an important and moving addition to the literature chronicling the brutality suffered by Peruvians during President Fujimori’s decade in office.”

  —Daniel Olivas, Los Angeles Review of Books

  “A fascinating, brooding depiction of a kidnapping in Peru and how the price of a happy marriage is much higher than any ransom.”

  —Jamie Ford, author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

  “In Chasing the Sun, Natalia Sylvester paints an intimate portrait of a Peruvian businessman whose wife is kidnapped and held for ransom. The story resonates with every tortured breath of a loyal husband caught between money and family, a troubled marriage, and an aching heart.”

  —Leslie Lehr, author of What a Mother Knows

  “With wonderful writing and subtle insight, Natalia Sylvester has created a stunning combination of domestic drama and high political adventure. Chasing the Sun is a remarkable accomplishment.”

  —Stephen Dau, author of The Book of Jonas

  “An intimate, unflinching portrait of a marriage, examined against the suspenseful backdrop of a terrifying kidnapping. Natalia Sylvester writes masterfully about the many ties that bind and the sacrifices that may be necessary in order to truly free ourselves. Wise, lyrical, and intriguing throughout—this book stole me away, refusing my return until I finished the last page.”

  —Seré Prince Halverson, author of The Underside of Joy

  ALSO BY NATALIA SYLVESTER

  Chasing the Sun

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2018 Natalia Sylvester

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Little A, New York

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Little A are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542046374 (hardcover)

  ISBN-10: 1542046378 (hardcover)

  ISBN-13: 9781542046367 (paperback)

  ISBN-10: 154204636X (paperback)

  Cover design by Faceout Studio

  Illustrated by Hannah Perry

  First edition

  To Ceci

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36
r />   CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  La memoria guardará lo que valga la pena. La memoria sabe de mí más que yo; y ella no pierde lo que merece ser salvado.

  —Eduardo Galeano, Días y noches de amor y de guerra

  My memory will retain what is worthwhile. My memory knows more about me than I do; it doesn’t lose what deserves to be saved.

  —Eduardo Galeano, Days and Nights of Love and War

  CHAPTER 1

  NOVEMBER 2, 2012

  THE BIG DAY

  They were married on the Day of the Dead, el Día de los Muertos, which no one gave much thought to in all the months of planning, until the bride’s deceased father-in-law showed up in the car following the ceremony. He manifested behind the wheel, then stretched his arm over the back of the passenger’s seat as he turned to face Martin and Isabel.

  “Beautiful ceremony, mijo,” he said.

  The couple’s smiles froze. It seemed to take an eternity for either of them to speak, and when they did, they had little more than mumbles.

  Her whole life, Isabel had heard stories about spirits who spent this one day of the year with family. As a child she had built altars for her great-grandparents, vibrant tributes made out of open shoe boxes adorned with paper flowers and pictures of religious figures that looked a lot like the dioramas she created in grade school. In her teens, her family congregated around her great-aunt’s grave to clean it; one year, her mother even brought a battery-operated vacuum for the stone. “Today we remember our dead,” her mother always said. “We honor them.”

  Martin’s father looked more frazzled than dead, as if he was running late because he had been caught in traffic. Isabel looked to her new husband for guidance and was shocked to realize he seemed annoyed. Not afraid, because honestly her father-in-law looked harmless, just like in the few pictures she had seen of him. No, Martin looked like he had simply bitten into a pepper that was hotter than anticipated.

  “Did you know this would happen?” she said.

  “No, but it’s typical of him. Typical. Only someone so shameless would show up to a wedding uninvited.”

  “Martin, please!” She hadn’t expected him to be so rude. She hadn’t expected any of this at all, but her instincts to remain polite and respect her elders were deeply engrained—even more than her assumptions about life and death, apparently—and so her efforts to understand the situation were quickly overridden by her desire to make everybody feel comfortable.

  It was the first time she had met her father-in-law. She smoothed her white dress, which was bulging into every inch of the seat, and straightened her veil over her shoulders. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”

  The old man sat quietly, waiting.

  “I’m not talking to him,” Martin said.

  “Martin, you can’t be serious.”

  At this, her father-in-law smiled and leaned toward her, through the small space that separated the front and back of the white Rolls-Royce they had rented. “He is, I promise you. That kind of stubbornness runs deep in our blood. Isabel, I’m Omar. Though I hope they at least told you my name?”

  “Of course. Encantada,” she said.

  In ordinary circumstances, she would have leaned in to kiss him, hug him even, but these were not ordinary circumstances. She didn’t know what laws governed the dead. Could they touch? Feel? Hold? Omar seemed as if he might shift the car out of park any moment now. Instead he placed his hand over hers, and she felt not a solid touch but a vibrant warmth, like gentle electricity. Her eyes lit up, but Martin scoffed and turned away.

  “Omar,” she said, letting his name empty her lungs. “Will you be joining us for the reception?” What a foolish thing to say.

  “You’re very kind to ask, Isabel. Thank you.” He stepped out of the still-open door of the car and began walking toward the church gardens. Neither Isabel nor Martin attempted to follow.

  She didn’t know how, but she knew she wouldn’t see him as she and Martin shared their first dance or cut their wedding cake. The whole evening, she didn’t have to glance over her shoulder to see if her father-in-law had arrived. And because the last thing she wanted to do was upset her new husband, she acted like it’d never happened.

  She couldn’t fall asleep on their wedding night. The newlyweds made love distractedly, as if the act were nothing new, and of course for them it wasn’t. They were not, by the Church’s standards, good Catholics. Before today neither had been to mass in years, and they had slept together on their third-and-a-half date and had used condoms and contraceptives and spermicide, sometimes all at once.

  If not new, though, she had imagined their wedding sex would feel different. Husband and wife, joining their bodies, and for the first time it wouldn’t matter if someone heard them or walked in on them or if the condom broke in eight places. They were married now. They were together for life.

  Martin struggled with the perfectly round buttons that climbed, one impossibly close to the next, all the way up her spine. Isabel hadn’t realized until her dress was undone how the corset had constricted her all evening. She had to take a moment to catch her breath, and the indentations that the boning left on her skin, now exposed, itched.

  She had wanted to make love to him in new ways, she really had, but more than that Isabel wanted to lie next to him, close her eyes, and open them to find Martin still there the next day, and the next, and the next after that.

  When it was over, and they untangled their bodies, the newlyweds stared at the ceiling. She sighed. “That was wonderful,” she had meant to say, but the words that came out instead were, “What’s wrong?”

  Martin brought his hand to his forehead. “I didn’t know he was dead.”

  It suddenly hit her that she hadn’t either, but the whole encounter had been so surreal there’d been little time to process the logistics. She had long thought of Martin’s father as gone. What little Isabel knew of him she had learned from Claudia, Martin’s younger sister. “My father left us years ago,” she’d said the first time Isabel had asked, during third-grade recess.

  “You mean like, dead or to another town?”

  Isabel lacked tact and tolerance for ambiguity at eight years of age. Claudia had looked so hurt that Isabel thought their friendship wouldn’t last past lunch, but she recovered quickly, and Isabel resolved never to ask again.

  She looked for clues, of course, whenever she went to Claudia’s house. There were no pictures of a father anywhere, and she never got the impression that his absence was felt with any sort of longing. The closest she got to an explanation was the day a particularly persistent telemarketer got on Claudia’s mom’s last nerve.

  “I don’t know when he’ll be back!” Elda had yelled after the fourth call. “He walked out on us years ago, so your guess is as good as mine.” She had hung up, looking pleased with herself. Isabel had stared at her bowl of cereal, pretending she hadn’t heard.

  Years later, Isabel could still easily recall the cadence of the family’s denial. When she and Martin got engaged and invited Elda to their cake tasting, the baker had asked if they should wait for the father of the groom as well.

  “My father-in-law is no longer with us,” Isabel had said.

  She waited to see if Martin would correct her; if maybe, after all these years, a wedding would be cause enough to make amends. He proceeded to ask about the differences in frosting, and that was the end of that.

  Except now, Martin’s eyes grew satiny, and his gaze, wide, fixed on
the ceiling fan as if he hoped the air would spare him the embarrassment of tears. When this seemed to fail, he buried his face in Isabel’s neck and stretched his arm over her stomach.

  She’d never seen him this way. She knew she should be sharing in his sorrow, but a part of her felt vindicated. A part of her thought, This is what is different now, this is what it means to be married. There would never be anyone else Martin could be so vulnerable with, and it made Isabel want to be strong for him.

  “At least now, you can get closure,” she said. “It could’ve been worse. He could’ve died and been gone forever, and you would’ve never known.”

  “I don’t want closure. I don’t want to see him or speak to him. Just—stay away if he comes back, okay?” His words landed hot against her skin. “He ruins everything.”

  “Nobody’s ruined anything.” She ran her fingers through his hair until he fell into a deep sleep. Sliding out from under him, she got up, dressed, and headed to the small lounge area in their bridal suite.

  There Omar was again, slouched on the paisley couch with his hands together in his lap. Isabel felt a gasp catch in her throat. “You scared me.”

  Omar shrugged apologetically. “Boo.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “It is a little.”

  “Have you been here the whole time? While we were—”

  “God no. Nothing like that.”

  “But you knew then, when to come back? How?”

  “I just knew.”

  She shot him a confused expression, and after a few mumbles and false starts, Omar seemed to find the words to explain. “When you’re dead, you sense all the things you missed when you were living. Moods, timing, a person’s state of mind. Not their thoughts,” he added quickly. “But in a way we’re more alive than we ever were before.”

  She wandered closer to him. There was nothing about this man that didn’t intrigue her. As she walked around the wooden coffee table and plush white love seat that stood between them, she wished that this were a less fancy hotel, the kind that has coffee makers with individual-sized bags of ground coffee wrapped in plastic. But this was the kind of place with twenty-four-hour room service. Even with the wedding being on a Friday to lower costs, they had gone way over their budget to book the suite. She imagined explaining the spirit of a dead man sitting in the living room to the hotel staff. It almost made her laugh.