Recognition struck her like a pail of freezing water. It was one thing to imagine how he might have changed as she hovered on the cusp of sleep. It was another entirely to see him. To take in polished boots, dark trousers, and shirt fitted to his compact, muscular body. To see the angle of his shoulders, the black hair combed away from his face, a strand or two of it already falling loose onto his forehead, as it always did by the middle of Mass on a hot Sunday morning.
His face was both familiar and remade by age: the distinctive cut of the Duarte jaw was more pronounced now, the slope of his cheekbones so like his cousin’s they looked like full blood brothers. But if Bernabé and Casimiro were drawn in broad, rustic strokes, Néstor was a sharp, precise carving. A reflection in a mirror that had been polished harshly bright. His expression was even, almost stern, giving him a look like serious Bernabé. But the set of his mouth still had a hint of playful wickedness, a glimmer so familiar she would know it in any face. Even if it was the face of someone she had not seen in nine years. A man who was as good as a stranger to her.
His sweep of the courtyard slowed. Stopped.
On her.
Their eyes locked.
Mamá was speaking, but her words were a distant hum, a hive of bees falling further and further away. Nena was standing. She was moving around the table, past Mamá and Félix.
Néstor was here. It was impossible. She felt a powerful urge to touch him. To know that he was real. To know that he was no longer a memory, the dull ache of a thorn long buried in her side, but a boy of flesh and blood.
No longer a boy—a man. Taller than he once was, his shoulders and ribs filled out, weathered but confident.
“Magdalena.” Mamá’s tone sliced into her, demanding her attention. The voice came from farther behind her than she expected; she had begun to cross the courtyard. She hesitated.
He was still watching her.
“Magdalena.” Mamá seized her by the elbow. “I said, we must return to la casa mayor. These conversations do not concern young women.”
Nena faced Mamá. She had to stay, not least because of what hung on the success of her going with the squadron to Matamoros.
“But I am going with them,” she said. “Of course it is appropriate for me to stay. Félix,” she called, drawing her brother away from Don Severo with the insistence in her voice. “Félix, tell Mamá that I need to stay to listen to plans being discussed. I need to know.”
“Mamá, Nena is right,” Félix began gently. “It is important for her to hear the logistics being discussed.” Mamá’s posture and expression shifted at his level, reasoned tone. Her hold on Nena’s elbow loosened.
Nena was both relieved and fought the urge to scowl. Thank goodness Félix had been present. If Papá was going to take her bargain with him seriously, then she needed to be present in moments where the men spoke. Félix’s role in this did not sour her victory at all, for such was the way of the world. Such was the way she fought each battle and won.
When Mamá retreated, turning her focus to instead search for Javiera, Nena whirled to where the Los Ojuelos vaqueros had entered. Where Néstor had appeared.
She scanned the crowd of men as they shifted and settled around Papá and the other rancheros, her eyes skipping from face to face.
He was gone.
Was it a mirage she saw? No, he was there. He was there. The courtyard was suddenly too full of people, too noisy; though it was not yet twilight, it was too bright.
He was back. After nine years, Néstor Duarte returned to Rancho Los Ojuelos.
But not for her.
She was a stone sinking to the bottom of the spring as Félix led her to a bench to sit while Papá and the rancheros spoke. Memories washed over her in thick, cloying waves.
She was fourteen, cleaning dishes very badly as she waited for Félix to return from the comisaria. When he did, he walked in the direction of the Duarte house. The comisaria meant mail. Walking to the Duartes’ meant . . . that meant news of Néstor. It had to.
She had slipped out of the kitchen, quietly so as not to draw attention, and dashed after Félix. She came abreast of him just before he reached the Duartes’. Abuela was on the patio; she lifted a hand and waved. Nena lifted her hand in return greeting, fighting to catch her breath.
“Is it from him?” she said to Félix, in between sharp breaths. “Is it Néstor? Where is he? Is he coming back?”
Félix was looking down at her, then looked over her head at the Duartes’ house. Bernabé stepped onto the patio, wiping his hands after cleaning saddles.
“You need to stop asking, Nena,” Félix said sharply. “He’s gone. There’s no news.”
Nena looked over her shoulder. Bernabé looked expectant, his face shifting toward hope as he watched Félix and Nena.
“And now I have to tell Bernabé there’s no news, no letter, just a request from Papá to come speak to him,” Félix snapped. “Can’t you see your acting like this just causes him more grief?”
He’s gone. You need to stop asking.
She didn’t. Not then.
Not when Abuela told her that sometimes, young men needed to stretch their legs like colts. They needed to dash off and see the world. Not when Abuela refused to add Nena’s desperate pleas that Néstor return into their letters. They were in the kitchen garden, removing weeds that snarled around the herbs and vegetables, the early-afternoon activity of the rancho settling around them.
Abuela gave her a sharp look. “You are the patrón’s daughter,” she scolded. “You should know better than to ask something of a man that would anger his patrón. That would be inappropriate for Bernabé to say in a letter.”
Nena bit her lip and curled her fingers into the dirt, the arches of her fingers blurring as her eyes welled with hot liquid. Félix had refused to post her letter for fear of angering their parents. Mamá had scolded her for obsessing over one missing peón, for she was the patrón’s daughter and should not care.
How could she not care? She was a tree with its roots yanked violently from the soil. She was a bird without its flock, a colt cut off from the herd and lost to the chaparral. The world could not make sense without heaven overhead and earth beneath; so, too, did the world make no sense without Néstor. How could it be that everyone seemed to have forgotten about him? How dare they expect her to do the same?
“It is best for you to let go,” Abuela said, her voice softer. “We cannot know his mind. We can only pray that God cares for him and brings him back to us one day.”
Praying was not enough. Praying every Sunday in the chapel, every evening at vespers, and every night into a pillow wet with tears had not brought him back. It had been months. It had been nearly a year.
“But why did he go?” Nena’s voice cracked, bringing her a lurching step toward shattering altogether. “Why won’t he come back?”
Abuela sat back on her heels and gave Nena a long, solemn look. Nena’s pride snapped its head back, awakened and restless. That was the look Abuela gave the ill or the suffering. When she was peering deeper than their surface, seeking what lay beneath flesh and bone. That was a look that didn’t just reveal Nena’s aura, it assessed it.
And it was pitying.
Nena stood abruptly, dirt falling from her skirts.
She could endure scolding from Mamá and impatience from Félix. But she would not be pitied.
From that day on, as she turned her back on the kitchen garden and Abuela, she swore she would never think of Néstor again.
She failed. Daily. Memories of him circled her footsteps like hungry curs. Every shift of the trees whispered his name, every turn of the wind carried his voice.
Hurt hardened her bones. Thickened her skin against the infrequent but searing shock of news that a rare letter had reached the Duarte jacal from a distant town.
She grew accustomed to it. She grew older. Sometimes, she found herself forgetting about him for days at a time. Perhaps in a few years, he would have faded entirely from her life, a childhood bruise too distant to be thought of with anything but resigned, genial forgiveness.
But then she saw Néstor tonight.
She was caught by surprise. She felt the earth tilt under her feet. The skies turned themselves inside out and shook shattered starlight over his head, illuminating him like a saint.