I watch him carefully blow his spoon, then I ask, “Who is Esme?”
The vaquero lowers his mug to his lap. “Esme.” He stares into his soup as if seeing a memory. “She is the youngest of my four sisters. They’re all trouble, but Esme worries me the most. The other three, they will make good Mexican wives one day, but not Esme.” He looks up from his lap, lips curved into a sad smile. “Please, enjoy your soup.”
I stir my cup, wondering about this youngest sister, and something round comes to the surface. As Andy brings her own mug to her lips, she looks at my spoon. Abruptly, she sets down her cup, nearly scalding herself. She runs to the river.
Peety’s broad face splits open in confusion. “He don’t even try it.”
I show him the onion on my spoon. It still wears its papery peel, like he just dropped it in recently. “You put onions in the soup.”
“I found in my bag. Three of them for three of us.”
I remember the onions I put there from Cay’s lumpy sack back at the Little Blue. Sure took him a long enough time to find.
“He doesn’t like them,” I explain. “It’s not your fault.”
I hurry over to Andy, with Peety on my heels. She hugs her knees to her as she glares at the river.
“I’m sorry, Andito,” says Peety. “I ruin your dinner for you.”
She waves us away, so we return to the fire. I try my best to finish my soup, raw onion and all, just to make Peety feel better.
? ? ?
The next day, West’s temperature spikes, and I alternate bundling him up with fanning him down. Andy simmers a new soup, this time with no onions. A layer of fat swims on top. But West has no appetite for it and only takes a few sips of water. When he slips into sleep, his pain follows him and he cries.
“She didn’t do it,” he gasps during one nightmare.
I take his hand, clammy and trembling. The two scars on his wrist peek out from under his sleeve, gleaming like the eyes of a ghost. I match my fingertips to them, and they feel hot under my touch.
He opens his eyes and squints at me, like he is trying to remember who I am. “Sammy?”
“Yes.”
Then he fades back into unconsciousness.
Every hour I put the cup of broth to his lips, but he will not take it, not even with me spooning it to him. Eventually he stops sweating and his eyes lose focus.
“West,” I call to him. His eyes slit open for a moment. “You need to drink something, or you will . . . ” I can’t say it. “Please?”
Still, he does not drink.
Later that night, I beg sleep to open her doors to me. She leads me to a barren field. West and I face each other dressed as two knights, wearing armor too heavy to shed. The earth opens and swallows him. I clutch his hand just like that day we wrestled, but he is slipping from my grasp.
? ? ?
When he refuses to drink again the third day, I want to shake him in desperation. “Come on, drink, or I might do something reckless.”
Nothing.
Peety and Andy took the horses out to graze and will not return for another hour. The late-morning sun hides in a tepid curdle of clouds.
I shuffle to the water. A random trail of stones lines the shallow stream. I roll up my trousers and step out of my boots. I remember Father walking a path of stones. He said it helped him sort through problems. A balanced body balances the mind.
I step up onto a steady rock with my right foot and hold my left in back of me.
Problem one: the faraway Mr. Trask.
I had accepted the possibility that I might never find him when I decided to go with Andy, even if she still hasn’t accepted my company. Yet I held out hope that I might cross paths with the grocer before Calamity Cutoff, especially now that we are so close. With every passing moment, however, he slips farther from my grasp. And with Lady Tin-Yin gone, the loss will be doubly bitter.
A twinge of sadness stirs me again as I remember Father, his face full of hope as he told me, “I have great plans for us. We might even see a mermaid!”
I grimace and pass to the next stone.
Maybe Mr. Trask has experienced some delays of his own. We can’t be the only ones.
Water laps at my foot. I cannot stand here forever. I move to the next stone, one that requires me to leap and catch my balance again.
Problem two: West will die if he does not drink. I nearly fall into the stream but hold out my arms to steady myself and hop onto a larger rock. Pain, not just physical, seems to have stolen his sense of self-preservation. I felt the same way, not long ago.
I wobble too far to the right and step onto the next stone. Balance. Think.
Angry tears prick my eyes as I remember the assault that pulled me out of my despair. Ty Yorkshire’s hand over my mouth. I inhale and pass to the next stone, a sharp one that wobbles.
Forcing Ty Yorkshire’s moth eye out of my head, I replace it with West’s handsome visage. We all have secrets, don’t we? Secrets that can destroy us, one way or another. Yours are buried deep, too deep for me to reach.
I pass to the final boulder. There I stand on both legs and close my eyes, not easy, I realize, when I almost fall forward. I sway again but grip the boulder more firmly with my feet.
I have kept secrets from you, and still you saved my life, twice. And now that your secrets threaten to kill you, it is my turn to save you from the fire, even if it means you will learn the truth about me.
I open my eyes and drop from the boulder into the cool stream. Time to make good on my threat.
Once I get back to camp, I kneel next to West and comb the hair off his face. His eyelashes flutter. “May you forget this, or at least forgive me if you do not.”
Then I fold my hankie into a square that I use to press down his chin.
I sip the broth and hold the salty warm liquid in my mouth. Lifting his head, I press my lips to his, not lifting my mouth until he opens his to take the broth. His moan catches in my throat as his parched mouth warms under mine. I don’t care if he finds it distasteful, only that he swallows the broth.
He does.
Then I do it again.
This time, when my lips slide over his, his mouth parts easier. I release another sip, a tiny amount so I don’t choke him. When I lift my head, he is gazing at me. He drops his eyes to the cup in my hand. More.
Though I think I can revert to the spoon now, I don’t want to. My pulse beats fast as a hummingbird’s. Did he recognize the truth when it kissed him on the mouth? The way he looks there now, his eyes soft and searching, tells me maybe. My body floods with warmth, and all my boyish resolve melts away.
Two more mouthfuls, and then three. As I feed him the last drop and begin to pull away, his lips follow mine for a fraction of a second.
The empty cup drops from my hand and lands with a tinny thud beside us at the same as time he collapses back onto his bedroll. Still close enough to feel his breath on my face, I open my eyes to his, shrouded in pain. He turns his head away.