Néstor’s name slipped through the gathered peones like a half-forgotten guest. It was passed from hand to hand, leaving a bitter taste in its wake. It slinked around Nena’s ankles like a snake. This is your fault, it hissed.
All Nena could see as Papá led evening prayers were the suspicious looks the peones cast at him. They should be looking at her. Néstor did, when he rose from the ground slowly and deliberately. He had adjusted his shirt with an aggressive, dismissive gesture, his sharp jaw set, his eyes burning.
He turned his back on her.
She should have spoken. She should have done something more to fix the situation, to diffuse the aggression between Papá and Néstor.
But when Papá shoved Néstor to the ground, her limbs turned to stone. Her body was practiced in the ways of avoiding Papá’s anger: be still, be silent, and the storm will pass on. It was a protective impulse, like a hare going still. It was the right impulse, wasn’t it?
Now she saw clearly. She watched the scene unfold in her mind, looping from the end back to the beginning like a colt circling the training corral. Coming upon Papá shouting.
Are you engaged to this man?
What? No, Papá.
Surprise spoke, not her wit. It didn’t matter that there wasn’t a formal understanding between them, words exchanged, rings promised. Papá was attacking Néstor and she should have done something to stop him.
Néstor was right. She was spineless.
And this was the result.
Casimiro and Beto stood at Bernabé’s side, both rigid as soldiers. They left a conspicuous space between them, wide enough for a man. Abuela’s absence gouged another wound among the people gathered.
Casimiro bore a long red cut down one side of his face that deepened his glower. His lips were unmoved by either prayer or celebratory response to Papá’s impromptu return speech that thanked la Virgen for keeping the people of Los Ojuelos safe.
Casimiro was not alone. Surly defiance wove through the shoulders of even the eldest and quietest among the vaqueros. Their prodigal son had returned, grown and handsome and with a thousand colorful stories trailing after him like a peacock’s tail.
And Papá had banished him.
Papá did not notice this sentiment among the men. Or if he did, he thought it beneath him to acknowledge it.
But some work harder, and others keep the profit. Papá was speaking, but Néstor’s voice rang in her ears. If Néstor had harbored anger like that, who was to say it hadn’t buried itself in the other vaqueros of Los Ojuelos?
Nena kept her head lowered in a show of piety, but snuck a quick look up at Papá. Weariness was evident in the lines of his face as he led prayers. In that moment, she saw not her father, but the patrón of the rancho. The man who kept a strict difference between his family and the peones. All the people gathered here: the vaqueros and the shepherds, the farriers, the farmers, their wives and children. Papá kept them under his thumb, in his debt, manipulating their wages like toys on a string. He kept them beholden to him. Beholden to the land that they could never call their own because it belonged to the patrón.
It was wrong.
And yet.
This was the way the world turned: the peones dispersed to the dusk and their tired jacales, the Serrano family retreated into their house of stone.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
NENA AND F?LIX sat next to each other at the table on the patio. Crickets filled the night with song as she unwound the bandages on Félix’s wounded arm and placed a fresh poultice where the bullet had clipped him.
“It’s a miracle it didn’t hit your chest,” Nena murmured as she put the cool, fragrant paste on his too-warm skin.
What if it had? What if Félix had not come home at all? The thought turned her mouth sour with dread. The Mexican generals had fled, leaving half their belongings in their wake. It was a humiliation, Papá said. But at least Félix had returned.
“I’m glad you’re back,” she said softly.
“It was doomed from the start,” Félix said, his voice low. He stared off into the evening. A candle was lit on the table before them; it highlighted how like Mamá he looked from the side, with somber, hooded eyes and a pensive mouth. “The vast majority of soldiers were too poorly paid or trained to do anything but desert,” he said. “Our government will be its own downfall for not looking after them the way it should. For not looking after us. It takes and takes but never offers us anything in return, not even protection.” He hissed as Nena lifted his arm and began to wrap a clean bandage tightly around it. “We should be left to govern ourselves,” he added through gritted teeth.
Nena raised her brows. “Now you sound like Antonio Canales.” She had overheard many conversations among the more radical rancheros to this effect on the road to Matamoros.
“I sound like a lot of men.” Félix’s voice was always serious, but now it was fervent, though he kept it low enough that it could not be heard from inside the house. “This is our home. I want it to be safe. I want it to thrive. I want . . .” He sighed deeply. “I want it to be ours, forever.”
But the prospect of separating from México meant more men she knew sent to fight and die, be it trampled by enemies’ horses or shot or drowned while crossing rivers.
“I do too,” Nena said. “But I don’t want any more war. Or death.”
“Papá shouldn’t have allowed you to come,” Félix said.
Perhaps not. But if she had not gone, how could she have discovered the cause of susto? Would she ever have allowed Néstor to speak to her?
Perhaps that, too, would have been for the better. The thought tasted bitter, drawing her mood low.
“I was doing my part to defend our home,” she said softly. “Now I will do my part to defend it here.”
“So you’re going to marry Don Hortensio’s son after all?” Félix wondered.
Nena avoided his eyes, focusing on tying off the bandage around his arm. Beyond her bargain with Papá, she had agreed to nothing. Mamá had not so much as even broached the subject since her return. She had seemed too angry to. But it could not be long before she did.
Félix tested his arm, raising and lowering it. He winced, a low hiss of discomfort slinking through his teeth.
“Convenient of you to be interested in marrying now, after the way you returned home,” he said.
Nena snapped her head up, her mouth dropping open in surprise. That barb could have been plucked straight from Mamá’s mouth. But coming from Félix? How it stung.
“If you’re going to accuse me of something, come out and say it,” she snapped.
“I would never accuse my sister on hearsay,” Félix said, looking taken aback by her vitriol. “But . . . look, it was a dishonorable thing to do, traveling alone with a vaquero. You know that.”
“Would you prefer I had done the journey alone and died?” Her voice shook as she fought to keep it down. There were still voices murmuring in la sala just on the other side of the door; the last thing she needed was a tía or one of her cousins to overhear this conversation. “Or stayed on the battlefield, and died at the hands of Rinches? He saved my life.”
“And I am glad he did,” Félix said. He took her hands; she snatched them back as if they had been burnt. “I am so grateful you are home and safe. But, Nena, this is the truth: the way you returned home casts doubt on your honor. On the family’s honor. You’ll have to marry very quickly before rumors start to spread to the neighbors, or . . .” He let the thought trail off as he rose, as if the damnation he implied was self-evident. “I have to speak to Papá about this banishment. We cannot have Bernabé and Casimiro angry with him like this. We cannot afford to lose them, not in times like these. But if he comes back, Nena . . . you must stay away from him. Think of what’s best for the rancho.”
He stood. Nena stared straight ahead, jaw set so hard it began to ache, as his footsteps crossed the patio. As the door creaked open and shut with a decisive click.