I felt bothered on two counts, first that Tita Rosa had shared the envelope’s contents with Tita Dom and second that the “even” meant that she was, again, denigrating my beloved tita Dom. Rhetorically, I was not sure how to proceed.

“Don’t say anything,” Tita Rosa said. “I’ll take care of it.”

“How can you take care of it?” I asked. “It’s American law with American lawyers. We’re out of range.”

“Every morning I wake up and I ask, ‘Lord, why am I still alive? Shouldn’t I be dead?’ And then I read something like this and I know why I’m still here. Jim will know what to do.” All-powerful Cousin Jim was often appealed to by my aunt to solve a range of problems, even if they had nothing to do with him.

“Jim? You’re showing that to Jim?”

“No, of course I’m not showing it to Jim. Jim is very busy. But he has an American lawyer based here who is getting back”—she checked some notes that she had written on the back of an envelope­—­“in four days . . . or maybe five.”

“I think, Tita, this is when I remind you that I’m nearly fifty.”

“And I’m ninety. So what?” She rattled a pillowcase that was resting on the desk beside her. It was a floral pillowcase, faded, filled with some mystery thing, and I, who had been wondering why the pillowcase was there, was now wondering how rattling its contents helped my aunt to make her point.

“Tita,” I asked, “what’s in the pillowcase?”

Tita Rosa looked over at the pillowcase and composed her face in a look of extreme serenity. “That is your lola,” she said.

“Lola?”

“Yes. We had her disinterred because now that Jim has had the chapel built, he is transporting all of his ancestors to be buried in the family crypt.”

“Why do you have Lola’s bones on your desk?”

“To keep her close,” said my aunt.

The pillowcase easily contained what was left of my grandmother, who I remembered as a full being—a woman who I had prayed the rosary with, whose legs I’d massaged when she was in pain. My lola’s soap opera was Flordeluna and we had watched it together, eating chicharon, drinking Coke. That there was a connection between the pillowcase and the woman seemed impossible. And surely there was a better place to keep the bones than in this pillowcase and on this desk, but before I could question my aunt further, we were distracted by the ringing of the telephone.

Beng’s slippers flapped across the parquet as she rushed to answer it. “Hello,” she said in her deepened phone voice. She then turned to me, holding out the phone. “Ate Ting,” she said. “It’s for you.”