Beto pursed his lips as he rolled his cigarillo, brows lifted in interest at Néstor’s reaction.
Néstor cleared his throat, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He couldn’t let Beto see what Nena was to him. That would invite questions. Questions would require evading or explaining, and he was in no state to do either.
“The patrón says we need curanderos,” Casimiro continued. He stole a roasted pepper from Néstor’s plate and popped it in his mouth, then nodded at Abuela. “I guess you could call her Abuela’s apprentice. Anyway, Don Félix wants her to be well protected on the road. He’s enlisted us to trade watches, keeping an eye on her day and night. You can handle the extra work, verdad?”
Keeping watch over Nena would mean riding beside her, or at least near her. Standing watch outside her tent as she slept. Seeing her every day. His heartbeat quickened with anticipation at the thought.
It would provide opportunities to talk to her. He could say . . .
What would he say?
He had been speechless tonight, and she slammed the door in his face.
Those are two very different griefs, Abuela had said.
His grief had taken root in his legs and kept them running. Nena’s, it seemed, walked hand in hand with anger.
“?Verdad?” Casimiro asked again, drawing the syllables long.
“Of course,” Néstor said quickly. As Casimiro and Beto began relating the other matters that had been discussed at the assembly, he looked past them at la casa mayor, at the candlelight that shone through the windows.
Over the course of an evening, his world had spun and flung him to the ground like a half-broken mustang. He had stumbled as he righted himself, but now, an unexpected calm swept through him. His feet were firm on the earth; his gaze was fixed on the horizon, on the one thing worth fighting for.
Nena lived.
Yes, he had made an unfathomable mistake. Yes, Nena did not want to speak with him—perhaps she wanted nothing to do with him. He could spend the rest of his life regretting it, or he could take this imperfect, broken miracle that fate had dropped in his lap and do something with it.
I will fix this, he swore, his eyes on the windows of la casa mayor. Though he had no idea what that might look like, nor how long it would take, it was an oath. A prayer. I promise.
10
NENA
BY THE TIME the bedroom candles were blown out hours later, no one had asked Nena about Néstor. She stared at the ceiling as her cousins’ and Javiera’s breathing softened the darkness with sleep. Javiera’s dog, Pollo, paced the room three times, his claws clicking rhythmically on the stone floor, until he, too, settled at the foot of Javiera’s bed.
Sleep flitted mockingly over the crown of Nena’s head, close enough that she could almost touch it. It would remain there, both close and maddeningly distant, so long as thoughts circled her mind like a yearling in a training corral, hooves packing the dirt harder and harder.
How dare Néstor come to speak to her. How dare he interrupt her on one of the few peaceful nights she had left with her family before the squadron departed on the dangerous road to Matamoros. And to say what, after nine years of silence?
An irritated hum rose in her chest, fatally soft as a snake’s rattle, at the memory of his face illuminated by the candlelight in her doorway. The way the glow from within the house caught the sharp lines of his features and gentled them.
How dare he stand there, as if he genuinely believed he was entitled to speak to her after so many years away. After no word. After nearly a decade of silence.
She owed him nothing. Not the courtesy of conversation, not the time it took for words to fall from his mouth.
As the girls undressed for bed earlier, Nena had been certain she caught Didi whispering I told you so to her sister Alejandra. She lifted her head and cast them an imperious look over her shoulder as she closed the latch on the room’s single window.
“What did you say?” she snapped.
Her cousins shot each other twin guilty glances. Alejandra confessed immediately.
“We saw Néstor Duarte arrive at the comisaria this afternoon,” she said, words crowding together as she grew flustered. “We could have told you, or maybe we should have, but . . .”
“But we knew you’d be angry,” Didi cut in, her features turning sheepish as she ducked away from Nena’s glower.
So Nena could have had a warning. Anger simmered in her chest when she thought of how someone could have told her that Néstor was about to walk into the courtyard. Instead, surprise made her a fool.
She didn’t need him. She had learned to live without him and would continue to. In two days, the squadron would be leaving. The rancho would forget that Néstor Duarte had ever appeared.
She turned abruptly onto her stomach, casting thoughts aside like a too-heavy blanket. She shut her eyes.
Sleep eventually took her. Its embrace was ill-fitting, itchy as wool, never settling with ease.
She dreamed of Néstor.
She watched him thrown to the dirt by the bucking mustang, once, then twice, and she was running toward him. Her legs were too heavy; it was as if she were running through wet sand as Casimiro reached for her. Darkness swept over both vaqueros, distorting their voices, swallowing them. The dream rippled and slipped forward; suddenly, thousands of arms were reaching for her, grasping at her in the black. She pumped her legs, desperate to flee, her heart throbbing frantically in her throat. She could not see behind her and she dared not try to look, for she knew the arms reaching for her were long and clawed. She knew they belonged to something terrible, something a hair’s breadth behind her. They were just behind her: a thousand eyes, a thousand awarenesses descending on her like bats, blinding her. They were upon her. She was falling, falling—
She tried to scream.
Sleep swallowed the sound whole; when she woke, flinging herself forward into a seated position in tangled sheets, it was nothing but a strangled, fleshy cry. She gasped, uneven and harsh, taking in the room: the crucifix on the wall, Didi and Alejandra’s sleeping forms, the small altar to la Virgen, the vanity covered with combs and jewelry and ribbons by the window. Everything was as it was.
Except—
Javiera was sitting upright in bed, her shriek splitting the night. That was what had woken her. The whites of Javiera’s eyes were shockingly bright in the moonlight that spilled into the room.
Nena flung herself from her bed, tripping over Pollo and stumbling to Javiera’s side. The dog was barking without cease, barely drawing breath, his voice rasping and angry.
Plaintive cries rose from Didi’s and Alejandra’s beds as they were disturbed from sleep and began to ask what the matter was. Nena ignored them. She sat on Javiera’s bed and took her younger sister into her arms.
“Hush, hush, I’m here.” Javiera trembled violently, but at Nena’s touch, her screaming broke and crumbled into heaving sobs. Nena pressed her head into her shoulder. “Come back to me, Javiera. Breathe. It was just a dream.”
The dog was still barking. Sounds rose from the rest of the house. Voices stirred, disgruntled; despite Didi and Alejandra’s commands, the dog kept barking, his nose pointed at the window, his hackles raised, his legs splayed and braced, his tail held high and alert.
Javiera inhaled sharply. “That face,” she whispered into Nena’s shoulder. “In my dream. It had no eyes. And teeth, so many teeth . . .”
A light breeze struck Nena’s back. Its cool, cloying fingers played over the soft sweat of sleep that sheathed the back of her neck.
The hairs on her arms lifted.
She tightened her arms around Javiera and looked over her shoulder.
Moonlight spilled onto the floor of the room, thick and slow as a pool of blood. The window was open. The latch was undone, the wooden shutters flung wide open to the cloudless night sky beyond.
In the center of the pool of moonlight stood Pollo. The dog’s nose was pointed directly at the window, and he would not stop barking.
11
NENA