From behind his back, Néstor heard Casimiro chuckle. “I knew she would do this,” his cousin said slyly to Beto. “Watch, I bet he’s gotten slow.”
“Abuela—” Néstor ducked away from another whack of the sewing; it caught him stinging on the upper arm. “I missed you.”
“Cruel boy!” she cried, and at last, flung her arms open to embrace him. Her cheek was soft when he kissed it and smelled like the rosemary of her limpias. “I missed nine years of seeing you grow. And for what! Why?” Abuela demanded, punctuating her declarations with firm kisses on his cheeks.
“It’s a long story,” Néstor murmured.
“Well I’m running out of years to hear it, so talk fast, mijo,” Abuela said, releasing him. Her arms were smaller and weaker than he remembered. Everything was smaller. The house, the patio.
The only thing that remained the same size was la casa mayor looming behind him. Its presence hovered over his shoulder with the unwelcome intimacy of a lover, whispering in his ear. I am here, it hummed. Remember me?
He did. Too clearly.
He had never been inside, but still he knew every place from which Nena had slipped out in to the night. He knew just how high her bedroom window was from the ground; if he returned from the chaparral too late to say hello, he would leave her little gifts on the wide, stone sill. The girls often left the shutters cracked at night, just enough for a breeze to cool the room, and there he put a few inches of ribbon he bought from the comisaria. Fruta guadalupana, just ripe enough to crack open for the ruby seeds inside. A note written on a scrap torn from one of Don Feliciano’s old newspapers.
He knew that twenty steps behind the window of the girls’ bedroom was the Serrano and de León family graveyard. The crosses and stones there marked the resting places of the first settlers on Los Ojuelos. A chill crept up the flesh of his back at the thought of what new stones might be there.
“Later, please.” He cleared his throat and introduced Beto, explaining that he would stay with them for a few nights.
“Then rest and get cleaned up, chamaquito,” she said, patting the side of Néstor’s face affectionately. “You can’t go before the patrón like this. Besides, this cheek is too scratchy to kiss.”
Néstor’s heart stopped. Bernabé had told him that he and Beto arrived just in time for a gathering of rancheros and their vaqueros from the surrounding ranchos to discuss the organization of the squadron and how they would travel to join the Mexican forces gathering at Matamoros. He had decided immediately that he would not attend. He knew he would have to be in the vicinity of Don Feliciano as the squadron rode to Matamoros, but he had hoped to avoid the full force of the patrón’s attention for at least a few days. If not weeks. If not the whole experience, however long it lasted. He rubbed a hand over his jaw self-consciously. “I don’t think . . .”
“You must come to the assembly,” Bernabé said. “It is a show of force for the other rancheros. They need to see that Don Feliciano’s finest are ready to defend this land. Besides,” he added, “it’ll be good for you to see people. You’ve been missed.”
These last words bore a weight that made Néstor think Bernabé meant something else; panic hampered his ability to parse them. What family would want to see the person who caused Nena’s death on their very threshold? What would Don Feliciano say if he saw him? When he saw him?
But Bernabé made it clear he didn’t have a choice. Néstor and Beto slept for the rest of the siesta, and when he woke, he washed in freezing water. Shaved for the first time since leaving Laredo. Let Casimiro elbow him out of the way to the one piece of polished copper they used as a mirror on the one side of the patio that caught sunset’s light best. When it was his turn, he squinted at himself for the first time in several weeks.
His thirteen-year-old face stared back, wide-eyed and bloodless. He blinked, and the vision vanished.
Nausea shifted in his chest.
He seized a comb and attacked his hair. For nine years, he had pushed these memories down. He pretended they had never happened. He was just another anonymous vaquero on the road, another man with secrets that—if ever they bled—were buried deeper than silver. Unless they were jolted out of him by a bad dream, the memories never happened. They were never real.
He was hard. He could keep the past pushed down, even when he was here.
But every time he turned his head, every time he felt the breeze shift or smelled the heat that rose off the soil, something reminded him of a life that used to be.
The life that he ruined.
The comb fell to the floor. “Shit.” He picked it up. Only then did he notice his hands were shaking.
“Aren’t you done yet?” Beto called.
“Give it up, you’ll never be as beautiful as me,” Casimiro said.
One last run of the comb through his hair. It would do. He would be fine. He had years of practicing being hard and coolheaded. Nothing could shake him now.
He shoved his hands into his pockets as they set off toward la casa mayor with Bernabé, toward the sound of dozens of voices and the smells of food. He focused on putting one foot in front of the other. Keeping his shoulders squared.
“I’ve never seen you this clean in my life.” Beto fell into step beside him and gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder. “Relax, compadre. Why are you so nervous?”
He had never said it aloud before. There was no way in hell he would try now. He shrugged; made a noncommittal noise. “The whole rancho will know that I’m back by now. They’re all going to look at me.”
Beto scoffed, deeply amused by this answer. “Don’t be so conceited. It’ll be fine.”
They arrived at the entrance of la casa mayor’s courtyard. The music swelled; grew louder as they passed through the stucco arch and entered the party. Torches lined the walls, illuminating the courtyard and the dozens of men who had already arrived. He had never seen the courtyard so packed, not even at Nochebuena. There were at least six rancheros and nearly a hundred vaqueros gathered, their voices thickening the air like the weight of a storm before it broke.
And yet. How strange it was how the gravity of attention in a crowd so large could shift so nimbly. It gathered and spilled toward the entrance like water, toward the Duartes.
Toward Néstor.
Strange, how conversation could carry on uproariously and an uncanny quiet could fall at the same time, like the dropping of a thin sheet over a bed. For the length of a breath, Néstor could hear nothing but his own heartbeat. The silence settled. Shifted; lifted. Conversation collected itself and reeled on, underscored by whispers spinning like a top from one corner of the courtyard to the next.
Beto let out a low whistle.
“Well I’ll be damned,” he drawled. “Everyone is looking at you.”
“Thank you for the observation,” Néstor murmured. He stepped forward, a measure behind Bernabé and Casimiro. His heart was lodged somewhere in his throat, but he could breathe past it. He could still his shaking hands and scan the room just as he would at any other gathering, be it a group of men outside church on Sunday or a fandango hall in Laredo. He swiftly listed the rancheros present; among them were the most important owners of ranchos and haciendas between Guerrero and Mier. Three were gathered near a familiar figure near the back of the courtyard.
His palms went slick as he recognized Don Feliciano and, to the patrón’s left, Do?a Mercedes. The patrón’s wife was seated and engaged in conversation with a young, well-dressed woman. Through gaps in the crowd, Néstor noticed that the young woman was decidedly distracted; in fact, she was staring directly at Néstor.
Their eyes locked.