Nena.
He drank in her face, so changed and exactly the same, with slim, even brows, round cheeks, pointed chin. Full mouth. He should have noticed it was set in a firm line. He should have known his time was short. That he had but one chance.
“Buenas,” he breathed.
Determination flickered across her features as she shifted back a step.
Then she slammed the door in his face.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
“?MIJO?”
Néstor whirled. Abuela took him in from the doorway, her dark eyes scrutinizing. He had returned to pacing before the family’s jacal, his chest heaving as if he had been running, his hair likely ruined from the number of times he had run his hand through it.
She raised a brow. “Is something the matter?”
His life was shattered underfoot, further crushed by every aimless step he took. He had no direction. He had nothing but these two pistols drawn at each other: Nena was dead. Nena lived. Nothing but that and a dark awareness in his gut, growing and spreading with a shameful heat, that he had done something very, very wrong. Something that could never be undone.
He said none of this. Instead, he said: “Nena.”
Abuela’s face softened with understanding. “I thought so,” she said. “Was she angry to see you?”
So Abuela did not know either. Neither Casimiro nor Bernabé nor anyone at the assembly was shocked to see Nena. Nor her father or her mother. Do?a Mercedes, whom Néstor had last seen wailing my daughter is dead, took Nena by the elbow and spoke to her as if nothing had happened.
It could not be.
At last, the pistols fired at each other.
“She died.” He stopped pacing and faced Abuela head-on. She had sat at the table on the patio and patted the seat next to her on the bench. He ignored the gesture. “That night. I carried her back to la casa mayor. She was dead. Everyone said so. And I . . .”
His voice snagged on sharp breath. His feet were carrying him again, flattening the grass before the patio. Memories crushed beneath the soles of his boots. The weight of her in his arms, stiff and lifeless. Her cheek cold against his. A yearning for her to breathe, a need so desperate it became an ache in the hollow of his throat.
“Mijo.” Abuela gestured for him to come sit by her. “You don’t understand.”
“It is true.” The words stung the air like a whip.
“Néstor.” This had the resonance of a command. Néstor’s body responded before his thoughts could catch up: he stopped pacing and turned to her. “Breathe,” she instructed. “Sit.”
He stepped onto the patio and obeyed, taking a seat next to her on the bench at the table.
“One night, I was called to la casa mayor by Do?a Mercedes,” Abuela said. “It was Nena. She looked . . . as if she had been mauled by a beast. But that was not all. She was sickened by its venom.”
Néstor braced his elbows on the table and placed his head in his hands. He focused on the knots and gnarls in the wood of the table before him, the familiar swirls he had traced with his fingertips dozens of times as a child, but all he could see was Nena bleeding on the floor. Do?a Mercedes wailing over her.
“You know what happened,” Abuela said softly.
It was all his fault.
He braced for the surge of grief, the nauseating darkness to pull him under. But for once, it didn’t. Abuela’s hand was on Néstor’s upper arm, its weight comforting. Soothing.
But not soothing enough that he could bend nightmares into words.
“You assume I was there.” He was deflecting. He knew that, and he knew it was stupid. Abuela always knew.
“I know my grandson,” she said. “What happened to her?”
Néstor squeezed his eyes shut. Long, machete-like claws carved through the black; Nena’s screams reverberated against the back of his skull.
“It was awful.” The words were barely above a whisper.
“What was it?”
“I . . . I don’t know.” That was the truth. “It was dark.” That was a lie: the weak moonlight illuminated gray skin, a nose flat against a skull like a bat’s. And teeth, so many teeth, dark and dripping with Nena’s blood.
“I couldn’t see,” he said. He inhaled deeply and opened his eyes. He spoke the words as quickly as he could, in one long, breathless phrase directed down at the table: “When it was gone, Nena was hurt. I carried her to la casa mayor. Do?a Mercedes was there, and Don Félix, and the patrón, and they said she was dead. The patrón was shouting, and I . . . it was all my fault.”
There his voice died. He had no more words.
“So you ran,” Abuela said.
His silence stretched through the twilight, broken only when Abuela sighed deeply.
“And now I understand why I was robbed of you for so long.” Her words were heavy with sadness. She patted his arm and rested her hand there, as if she never wanted him out of reach again. “You’ve heard of the sickness that has been plaguing the vaqueros, haven’t you, mijo?”
Néstor lifted his head from his hands, taken aback by this sudden shift in subject. “Beto heard something about susto.” Susto was one of the spiritual illnesses Abuela spoke of. When he was a child, her practices were the laws of his world; to this day, he never surprised anyone from sleep, for Abuela said doing so risked the wandering, dreaming soul being separated from the waking body. He did not know if he believed it. He only knew that if Abuela believed in something, it was usually in his best interest to follow suit.
“Many have been stricken on Los Ojuelos. It is a venom that stuns rather than kills—like a scorpion. Nena was poisoned that night,” Abuela said. “But she also suffered a shock to her spirit. Two shocks, I believe. The first I healed her from, that night when Do?a Mercedes summoned me to la casa mayor.” She shook her head, her white braids seeming brighter as the light died and the night deepened. “But the second is one she has never recovered from.”
Néstor lowered his hands from his face, waiting for Abuela to continue. This was a pause he knew from a thousand stories around the fire; he fell into the rhythm of her speaking as if he had never left.
“Losing you,” she said, her dark eyes searching his face. “To you, Nena died. To her, you left. Those are two very different griefs.”
Nine years he ran, and she was here. Alone.
He had left her.
Dread unspooled in his chest. It felt at once full of nausea and horribly, impossibly empty as he realized that yes, he had made a mistake. One that could never be undone.
Voices and footsteps approached; it was Beto and Casimiro, returning from the assembly. A lift in the breeze carried the rich smells of cabrito and beans toward the patio.
Néstor lifted his head. His stomach curled into an eager fist. He had forgotten to eat; now, presented with the smells of grilled onions and peppers and cumin and hot tortillas, he could think of little else.
“Brought you something, hermanito,” Casimiro announced, setting a plate before Néstor on the table. Beto placed a second before Abuela.
“Brought you two somethings, actually,” Casimiro added. He swung his legs over the bench and sat as Néstor tucked into the food. Beto sat as well, reaching into his shirt pocket for corn husk and tobacco. “A job.”
“Oh?” Néstor asked as he raised a tortilla stuffed with cabrito to his mouth. Juices dripped over his fingers as he bit into soft tortilla and tender meat. Madre Santa, nothing he had ever eaten in the last nine years compared to Los Ojuelos’s kitchens. There had to be something magical in the mesquite woodsmoke, or in the pans, or the way the maíz was ground. Something. Nothing could compare.
“The patrón’s daughter is coming with the squadron to Matamoros,” Casimiro said. “I don’t know if you remember Se?orita Magdalena,” he added, voice lifting wryly.
“What?” Néstor coughed, nearly choking on his taco. “Why? That’s not safe.”