Moving Serafina

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180 Clayton Elliott had never dwelled on the mortality of others in Solitario. As devastating as it was, the irony about Serafina’s death was that it had become a birth for Clay’s other obsession. Her tragic ending had established a beginning from which a painful focus on his own mortality—and Adelita’s mortality—would spring. Of course, Serafina’s dying never left him or Adelita. It simply layered itself like some dark collage across each day for all those intervening years and then with even greater agony during the long days of Adelita’s dying. And since he had buried his wife, everything else paled in comparison to the single certainty of his mortality, leaving only the pain itself as the very core of Clayton Elliott. With the corrientes gone and the selling of his place also a certainty and the imminent reuniting of Serafina with her mother, the only other thing driving him now was his parallel compulsion to do the same for Perfidia with her own daughter. Clay did not question the added irony of this new situation either. It was simply something he had to do. If it mirrored his own private hell—to reconnect things from his past to his present—he simply had not had time to ponder that either. Too much had to be done. And C H A P T E R 17 MOVING SERAFINA 181 so placing Perfidia in the hands of his oldest and closest friend, Gus Muñoz, was just one more step toward moving Serafina. And his decision to avoid all the celebration on this Cinco de Mayo also sprung from that core, to reconcile at least for a few hours his deep need for isolation against his primary mission which involved the help of others in moving his baby daughter. Today, he needed to avoid crowds and noise and speak quietly to Adelita about all this. He left the hotel well before the breakfast hour because he knew Bea would not be serving on this holiday anyway. He had promised Perfidia that he would get everyone into Presidio to look around today, but yesterday when he had asked Jovita to do this, she smiled at him and said, “Look around for who? Perfidia? Come on, Clay, you know she’s not in danger now.” He was surprised a little by Jovita’s statement until he realized how transparent his sneaking Perfidia out of Bea’s apartment on Monday night had been. And Bea was not the best at hiding things either. Jovita was not stupid. “Okay, I don’t need to play games with you, Jo,” he had said. “Of course I know where she is and you’re right. She’s safe.” “That’s fine,” Jo said. “Somebody needed to do that with all the pressure coming. I don’t even want to know where. I just need to know if the baby is still missing and I’ll keep doing whatever I can on that, okay?” “It’s still missing,” he said. “I don’t know what Alvaro will—” He stopped, another secret exposed, and looked at Jovita who averted her eyes and pretended not Bob Cherry 182 to hear. “Well, just say that someone else besides Locket is involved now and maybe he can help.” “Listen, Clay,” Jo said. “It’s fine and I hope it all works out for her. I’ll get with Lock at least and see if he’ll let me ride over with him tomorrow. He’s found out a few things but I don’t expect anything big to happen on Cinco de Mayo. Why in hell would coyotes come out to celebrate? Are they just going to walk into Julio’s with a baby in their arms and order a beer?” “Probably not,” Clay confessed. “It’d just be good if we kept looking, I guess.” “You’re not coming over tomorrow?” she said. “Not right away,” he said. “I gotta do something else first.” “Oh,” she said but did not question him. “I just want to go by and see Adelita and let her know what’s happening and . . . it’s always been a special day for her too.” “Right.” “I’ll come on over later, okay?” “Sure, Clay,” she said. “I understand.” Jovita had been right yesterday, he thought as he walked through Solitario now toward the graveyard. Clay wondered if...