Even at two years old, Olivia was talkative, mostly in English but also Spanish and a little Samoan. By three, Olivia was ordering Luis and Collin around. They spoiled her, just as everyone else in the outfit did.
Shortly after Olivia’s fifth birthday, Lopez came out of the cabin and saw her jumping off the barn roof and onto a pile of tarps while the boys cheered her on. Lopez thought his heart was going to stop. Despite the harshest discipline he and Lani could muster, Olivia showed no repentance.
“What was she in her first life?” Robert wondered one day.
“Warrior queen of the technology magicians?” Lopez said while massaging his temples. “Hard to imagine her adding her mind to a heaven without taking over the whole fucking thing.”
Robert’s newest son, and perhaps favorite uncle, was growing fast. But on one foggy morning when Melisa was holding him on the porch, the baby stopped breathing and dissolved into luminescent green light and floated off into the white air.
Melisa had lost three other boys this way. She seemed unaffected and spent more and more time with Lani caring for Olivia, but Robert fell into a dark mood for nearly a month.
At nine years old, Olivia had mastered the air of sweet-talking her father into letting her stay up late or into buying something for her at the store. In town, the men teased Lopez. He never admitted how much he enjoyed it all.
But then Olivia talked her Aunt Melisa into teaching her how to ride, even though her father had forbidden it. She was caught only when she fell off at a gallop and broke her leg. This sparked a shouting match between Lopez and Melisa, then Lopez and Robert. For a tense few days it seemed as if the outfit might split.
During Olivia’s immobile convalescence, Lopez tried lecturing, cajoling, and pleading to inspire caution in his daughter for her own sake, for her mother’s sake, and—goddamn it—for his sake. She agreed to be more cautious but never apologized.
Two years later, Luis told his father he’d be leaving. Lopez had seen it coming. Olivia admired Collin, now a levelheaded young man. It was clear to everyone that if Collin stuck around, he would one day marry Olivia. Luis, on the other hand, had nothing to keep him in a small outfit deep in the redwoods.
Olivia threw a fit, screaming and crying for three days. Everyone else in the outfit still spoiled her, but now her brother would not. Two days after Luis left, Lopez heard crying from Olivia’s bunk and went to sit with her. “Mija,” he said, taking her hand, “you’ll see him again.”
She hugged him close.
When she turned fifteen, Olivia was five feet and nine inches tall. Her eyes were wide and childlike, her body slender. Her curly black hair cascaded down her back. Lopez knew she was a Gringa, but still found himself comparing her smile and long hair to his mother’s.
In the early dry season, Olivia convinced Collin to take her to town and then, for a laugh, slipped away. A man caught her alone behind the tailor’s shop. He was a squat old trader named Jimson. He owned a mule caravan that ran goods up from the Petaluma trading outfits. He held her against the wall and ripped her blouse. She bit his thumb hard enough to draw blood and then rammed her knee into his testicles.
While Jimson was doubled-over and vomiting, she went into the tailor shop and showed the owner what Jimson had done to her shirt. She also told him that Jimson’s penis was as small as a five-year-old boy’s. Collin took her back to the homestead. By the time Lopez and Robert came marching back into town with rifles, Jimson had left for Petaluma. For the next two weeks, neighbors visited the Lopez outfit to hear Olivia tell her story. She told it well.
A few months later, when the summer seemed nothing but dust and heat, Lopez found Olivia on the path up from the ocean. Her shins and forearms were covered with bruises. At first he worried someone had attacked her. But when she denied it, he asked if she had been cliff-diving with Collin. After a telltale pause, she denied this too.
Lopez sent her home and went looking for Collin. He found the young man helping his father clear land behind their cabin. After a few questions, Collin confessed to the cliff-diving.
Back in his own cabin, Lopez found Lani fretting over their daughter’s bruises. They kept Olivia in bed for three days. The bruises faded but she developed a nose bleed that didn’t stop for an hour. Lopez walked her up to town. Dr. Lo listened to their story and examined Olivia for a long time, drew blood from her arm, disappeared into a back room. He came back with a tight expression. Lopez felt as if his heart had fallen into ice water. “What is it?”
“I believe there are too many immature blood cells in Olivia’s blood.”
Lopez blinked. “What does that mean?”
“With the equipment I have, I can’t be certain. It could be nothing.”
“Or,” Olivia asked, “I might have something bad?”