“As you see,” she said. She paused. What if she tested the waters with him now? To see how ready he would be to calm Mamá—and likely Papá—about the way she returned home? “Se?or Duarte escorted me home safely.”
“Ah,” Félix said. “I suspected.” He fell silent for a few steps. “You and a vaquero, alone on the road,” he said. Nena flinched at his tone: it was grave. Unamused. “Rumors cannot spread about this. Your honor is that of the family, and if word gets out—”
“I know. That is what Mamá said. But Félix, you must talk sense to her.” Please, let her desperation not be too obvious. She needed a voice of reason. The only voice Mamá and Papá listened to. “All he did was protect me. There were Rinches, and worse, and if it had not been for him—”
“Nena! Félix!”
Mamá was on the patio of la casa mayor, gesturing to both of them.
Papá sat at the table, slumped with exhaustion. At the sight of Nena, he stood with great effort and, removing his hat, held his arms open to her.
“Papá!” she cried. “Are you well?”
“Mija,” he said. His face was creased with relief as Nena stepped into the shade of the patio and embraced him, resting her cheek on his barrel chest. He smelled of the road. He smelled exhausted. “I am so sorry I did not keep you safe, mija,” he said. His voice rumbled from deep in his chest, but when it reached her ears, it sounded reedy. Tired. “I should have never let you come. It was too dangerous. It is a miracle you’re home safe.”
“Not a scratch on me,” she began as she pulled away from him. “Thanks to—”
“But the state she returned in,” Mamá cut in. Nena turned her head to Mamá sharply, surprised by how her voice was tight with anger. Félix raised his brows as he slumped into a seat at the table and removed his hat. “Wearing barely any clothes. It was just her and the Duarte boy. He has crossed boundaries, Feliciano,” Mamá added, voice shaking. She felt trapped as Mamá’s voice pitched higher, as she grew flustered and upset. As she watched a storm build in Papá’s face, a quiet, detached part of her mind observed that Mamá was doing this to get her way with Papá. It was not so unlike the way Nena begged Félix to speak for her, was it not? Instead of voicing her displeasure for herself, instead of speaking directly to Nena, Mamá stirred the anger of the bull with a hot poker. “The way he speaks to her, the way he touches her? It would be better if she had not returned at all.”
Ashamed heat flushed to Nena’s cheeks; her throat closed tight with emotion. Mamá’s words struck like a slap across the face.
“Whoa,” Félix said weakly. His face was paler than it had been before, as if dismounting and stepping out of the sun had sapped the last of his energy. “Calm down, Mamá. Nena is home safe and that is what matters.”
Mamá ignored him.
“I told you it was hard to keep them apart as children, but you did not listen to me. You never listen to me. Now the worst has happened,” she cried. “This is your fault for taking her with the squadron when I told you she would lose her reputation. Everyone saw them return. Everyone saw. Her honor will be called into question by every decent family from here to Laredo. We will never be able to show her in polite society again.”
Both Papá and Félix stared at Nena, stunned by Mamá’s swift attack. She hid her face with her hands. She had been so fixated on Néstor’s feelings about her bargain with Papá that she had not anticipated this. She was struck down, fast and hard, as dizzy as if she had physically hit the ground.
“That’s not true,” she said. She had to regroup. She had to somehow get Mamá to calm down. There was nothing to be gained from this conversation but more trouble. She dropped her hands and pulled her shoulders back. “You are overreacting, Mamá. Nothing happened and no one will think anything of it. Félix, tell her she’s overreacting.”
Félix looked from Nena to Mamá to Papá like a drowning man. He was ill. He was exhausted. It was unfair for her to drag him into this battle, but what other choice did she have? She needed his backup. She needed to convince her parents that nothing would happen to their plans.
“Félix,” she hissed.
“Enough, Nena,” Mamá cut her off sharply. “Neither of you know how people talk. This ruins all of our plans, Feliciano,” she said, turning her vitriol on Papá. “This is all your fault.”
“Then I will solve it,” Papá thundered. Nena jumped as he turned on her, towering over her, his chest and shoulders seeming to grow to twice their width. “We had a bargain. I trusted you. You betrayed that trust.”
Papá turned on his heel and stormed into the sunlight.
Toward the Duarte jacal.
It was as if the conversation spun like a top, winding tighter and tighter until it was knocked off-kilter. It looped wildly out of her control.
She had to bring Papá back. She and Félix could talk sense into him, but not with Mamá poking him with a hot brand.
Nena turned to follow him. She needed to get Papá away from Mamá, away from Néstor, away from anything that might further inflame his temper. She needed to calm him down. To assure him that their bargain was still whole.
But Mamá seized her by the elbow and yanked her backward.
“You stay here,” she said forcefully. “If we have any hope of marrying you to Don Hortensio’s son, the boy must be made an example of.”
An example. She had put Néstor in harm’s way. That was inexcusable. She had to fix it.
Nena whirled on her mother. “What if I don’t want that?” she cried, restraint snapping.
Mamá looked as if Nena had slapped her. “Do you not love the rancho?” she said. “This land has been in your family for generations, entrusted to your great-grandfather by the king of Spain. It is our inheritance. It is our lives. Would you throw it away like that?” She narrowed her eyes. “Did I raise you to be so selfish?”
“No, Mamá,” Nena said. “I want what’s best for the rancho just as much as you do.”
“Then you will see that we are weak, Magdalena,” Mamá snapped. “We have no choice.”
“But what if the strength of the rancho is not about alliances?” Nena said. “What if it is the people who are already here? What if I want to stay here, and keep us strong that way? Let me speak to Papá.” She wrenched her arm away from her mother.
Mamá scoffed. “At your age, I had a husband and a son and a whole rancho relying on me. You are still a child. Go ahead, speak to your father. But you are still a child if you believe he will listen to you.”
Nena curled her hands into fists and turned her back on the patio. On her mother. She stepped into the piercing afternoon heat and raced after Papá.
27
N?STOR
“GET UP! N?STOR, wake up!”
He didn’t want to. Every bone in his body still ached from the hard, fast ride back to the rancho. He had been on longer rides, of course, but rarely that hard, and never with such high stakes. What dreams lifted the depth of his sleep were full of monsters ripping themselves free of Rinche corpses, of clawed hands reaching for Nena through the shadows. Of looking up at her from the ground, knowing that he was dying, knowing that he had been killed, and that he could not protect her from the vampire that loomed over her.
He clambered out of sleep groggily. Abuela’s ivory braids swung over him; she shook him, looking over her shoulder at the door.
“Mijo, the patrón is here,” she hissed. Anxiety rippled off her like heat, slipping under Néstor’s skin. “He’s angry. Get up.”
Néstor lurched up from his sleeping mat. Judging from the afternoon sunlight that poured into the communal bedroom of his family’s jacal, the siesta was not over yet. His throat was dry, but he had no time to get water. He threw a shirt over his head and followed Abuela to the patio, lifting up an arm to shade his face from the sun as his vision adjusted.