He had to keep trying.
For it was not enough to be her shadow, to stand between her and danger as much as he could. How could it be, when all he had to do was close his eyes and see siestas in the shade beneath the huisaches, listening to her breathe in time with him as they fell asleep? He had kept every one of her secrets like they were precious jewels. For years, he feared the pain such memories could cause, how they poured salt on his wounds.
But now, with Nena alive and before him, they overtook him like heatstroke. Even when she was shouting at him, he could not help but think of how she had once stood close to him in the late afternoon shade of the anacahuita grove, safely hidden from the house. How she had said that one of her older cousins told her that some people kissed badly. This filled her with dread that she, too, might be a bad kisser unless she had practice. Was Néstor in?
He was thirteen. Of course he agreed enthusiastically. But when she took his hands in hers, when their faces were so close he could admire the dusting of freckles over her nose and the perfect curve of her lips, he was overcome by a wave of shyness.
“You’re really bad at this,” she whispered. Her eyes were like a doe’s, big and dark and immensely trusting—but there was an amused glint there. She was laughing at him.
“I haven’t even started!”
“That’s what I mean, tonto.”
“You could start too.” He was deflecting. Buying time. His palms had begun to sweat. He hoped to God she could not feel it.
“The boy is supposed to,” she said authoritatively. Her freckles were like constellations. He wanted to stare at them until they made him dizzy.
“Says who?” he said.
“I don’t know. Aren’t those the rules?”
This gave him pause. “There aren’t rules. Are there?” What if there were? Was there some secret vault of knowledge Casimiro was hiding from him, some locked door that stood between him and manhood?
Nena shrugged lightly. “Fine, if you’re going to be a coward . . .”
She leaned forward. Before Néstor could process this, her lips were on his. For a moment, his world was her dark lashes, the curve of her nose, her cheek. Loose wisps of her hair tickling his skin. Then he shut his eyes. Her lips were impossibly soft. Her skin smelled like sunshine, like her, like home.
She pulled away.
“There,” she said with a tone of finality. Her cheeks were flushed as if she had been running.
A soft ribbon of desire unraveled against his spine. I want this, it hummed. I want more of this.
“That wasn’t that hard,” she said. She loosened her hold on his hands, as if she meant to unlace their fingers and step away; he resisted. She paused. He was certain that if either one of them looked down, they would see his heart beating out of his chest like a rabbit’s.
“Wait,” he said. “Can I try going first?” His voice felt unlike his own. He cleared his throat quickly. “For practice,” he clarified.
“That’s fair,” Nena agreed brightly. She pulled her shoulders back and closed her eyes. “Go ahead.”
He inhaled through his nose; held his breath. Brought his face close to hers. He lingered there, just for a moment, a hair’s breadth from her lips, from her honey skin, to memorize every part of her.
He pressed his lips to hers.
When he pulled away, her eyes were open, her gaze liquid and intense.
A new understanding cracked open in his chest: they both knew that was not practice.
That was real.
“Nena!” A woman’s voice rose from the direction of la casa mayor. “Nena, where are you?”
Nena’s quick intake of breath was almost a gasp. “That’s Mamá,” she said. She stepped back; Néstor released her hands immediately. “She’ll murder me if she finds out about this. Don’t say a word. Promise?”
“Promise.” He watched as she raced back to the house, her braids bouncing against her back, the sun cradling a bronze halo around her head.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
IT WAS NOT enough to be fine. It was not enough to keep his distance. Not when that was what he once had.
He would keep trying, no matter how many barbs she flung at him, no matter if she shouted or cried.
When the sun rose, the squadron would cross the river and ride with the Mexican cavalry. Let the army of the Mexicans rise or fall, let the Yanquis burn.
Nearly a decade of grief shaped his understanding of the world. He knew, with the acute awareness of a much older man, that there were some things too precious to lose. That so many things—his dignity, his work, his very world—meant nothing.
Not when Nena lived.
The only purpose of tomorrow was to survive it and to reach her on the other side.
And nothing—not Don Félix, not Don Feliciano, not his own cowardice—would stand in his way.
15
NENA
THEY HAD CROSSED Río Bravo early that morning on a broad, flat ferry. It was as unsteady on the river’s slow waters as a drunk; Nena feared it would tip over at any moment. They marched to Palo Alto, where Arista’s plan was to cut off the Americanos’ supply shipments from Puerto Isabel.
The thunder of cannons split Nena’s skull. She ducked with a cry, clamping her hands over her ears. Smoke and humidity lay thick over the low ground in a suffocating blanket, choking her with the taste of gunpowder. With the metallic smell of blood.
It was now two hours past noon. The sun beat mercilessly on her hair, and her clothes stuck to her sweat-sheathed skin.
“Bandages, Magdalena.”
The camp women of the squadron fell under the command of a no-nonsense woman called Susana. She was a curandera from one of the ranchos outside of Reynosa and had long gray braids that fell over a chest as broad as a bull’s. She boasted a voice to match.
Nena’s boots squelched through marshy earth as she stumbled toward Susana with arms full of bandages. She refused to speculate about how much of the mud was caused by water from the nearby resacas and how much from blood.
Wounded men lay in rows around her, some groaning, some trying to sit up as they waited for the curanderas.
Many were already dead. She could not look at their faces, at the peeled-back eyelids and vacant stares.
Thus far, the fallen were all strangers clothed in the regular uniforms of the Mexican infantry and cavalry.
But that would not be the case for long.
The Escuadrón Auxiliares de las Villas del Norte had been separated into two sections and stationed west of the center of the battlefield. Papá and the men from Los Ojuelos and the other ranchos surrounding Mier were positioned behind the regular cavalry, who had charged onto the prairie battlefield, straight at the line of Yanqui bayonets and cannons.
Nena and some women of the squadron, including other curanderas, created a makeshift healing area nearby to tend to the wounded. There had been some conversation about whether the curanderas who came with the squadron would go to the hospital behind the back of Arista’s army. In the end, the rancheros decided to keep their women close.
Félix hovered nearby on horseback, pacing the quiet area between the mounted squadron and the space where the healers worked. His hat cast a dark shadow over his face, but beneath it, his mouth was grim as he kept watch. The wounded were already being carried in—and dragged in, mud mixing with blood on their uniforms—but Nena’s attention was on the squadron.
Félix had told her that General Arista said that the rancheros, as auxiliary forces, might not see battle at all today.