If Félix had yanked her from the back of a galloping horse, it would have hurt less to strike the ground. He had always taken her side in arguments with their parents. Had always spoken for her when she needed him to.
Now, she had no breath in her lungs as she stared at the closed door. No thoughts but this: she was alone. Whatever damage she had wrought by being unaccompanied with Néstor, she would not have Félix’s voice on her side to fight for her.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
THAT NIGHT SHE lay in bed, staring at the ceiling in the dark, her limbs as numb as if she had soaked in a cold spring for hours.
But her mind was a hive of angry bees.
How dare Félix say it was convenient that she was open to the prospect of marrying now. It wasn’t convenient; it was that she didn’t have a choice. Not only had she gambled with Papá and lost, she was now intimately acquainted with the dangers that the rancho faced. She knew those dangers even better than Félix and Mamá and Papá did: she poured salt at the doorway and windowsill before bed again, hushing Didi, Alejandra, and Javiera’s questions. She rubbed her hand over her scar. She had thought so much about the prickling sensation in her skin and what it meant that she could no longer tell if she was imagining it or not.
They have been following us, Beto had said. They have been waiting.
And Néstor was alone in the dark somewhere, far from home. Did he have salt? Did he have enough of it?
It was her fault that he was alone in the darkness.
She had known every step of the journey back from Matamoros what waited at the gates of Los Ojuelos.
So why didn’t she tell Néstor? She should have warned him. She should have behaved appropriately and enforced boundaries between them.
But she didn’t. Instead, she leaned into his touch as if it were the only thing sustaining her. Being apart from him now was like nursing a splintered rib: every breath hurt.
What do you want?
She could already see her whole future unspooling before her: as a daughter-in-law in a new house, she would be thrust low in the pecking order. She would chafe every day at the commands coming from on high—instead of Mamá and the tías, it would be some faceless motherin-law and a dozen women she had never met. Years, if not decades, would pass until she took up the mantle of being the master of her own household—and even then, there would be her husband’s will to grapple with. Would she ever be the master of her own fate?
In that life? Never.
She had taken the ease of partnership with Néstor on the road for granted. She helped him saddle his mare when his arm was injured; every morning she woke to him checking her boots for scorpions. They hunted together, gathered nopal together, cooked together, rode together. She had been terrified and exhausted, but she felt present. She felt listened to. As if she were as important to the survival of their small party as he was. As if she were valuable.
Whereas the future that lay before her was already stifling. It had not yet even begun, but its pieces were already in motion. There was no choosing Néstor, because Néstor was gone. Because she had chosen not to speak up when Papá raged.
She chose this.
She turned roughly onto her stomach and shoved her face into her pillow, smothering her sharpening breathing. Beneath the pillow, she had hidden Néstor’s pistol when Mamá ordered her to change back into decent clothing. It was hard against her cheek, even through the fabric. A vaquero alone in the chaparral was already low on defenses, but he had given it to her. He had trusted her with it because he trusted that she would watch his back as he did hers.
A sob rose in her throat, hot with shame.
She had made a choice. She had turned her back on him. She wouldn’t get another chance to fix what she had done, to choose differently.
Even if Néstor could one day forgive her—and, judging from the hurt that burned in his eyes, that could be a long time away yet—he was gone. He wouldn’t come back. Just as she said, he didn’t have a steadfast bone in his body.
And neither did she.
Amid the talk of Yanquis and honor and her parents bearing down on her, she had caved. She was spineless. She was weak. And this was her reward: she would be trapped like a rodent in the ground all her life, kept from the air, kept from the light, voiceless and suffocating.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
SHE MUST HAVE fallen into a restless sleep at some point in the night, for she woke with a start. All the candles she had left burning before bed were extinguished. Her sister and cousins slept on.
But when she saw the reason she woke, she knew they would not be asleep for long.
Pollo stood at the foot of Javiera’s bed. His thin tail was raised, his hackles bristling in the moonlight from the window.
He barked ceaselessly.
A warning.
Nena stripped off her blankets.
Gunshots cracked in the distance.
She ducked out of instinct, hands flying up to her ears. Shouts rose across the rancho. Didi, Alejandra, and Javiera jerked upright with startled cries. Footsteps hammered through la casa mayor as other family members woke.
“It’s Yanquis!” someone cried.
More gunshots split the night.
The dog kept barking. Snarling at the open window.
There might be Yanquis attacking the rancho. But Nena knew from the pain in her scar, prickling like a thousand needles, that there was also something much, much worse.
29
N?STOR
N?STOR RODE HARD and rode west. The setting sun struck him with piercing rays; he lowered the brim of his hat, but did not stop. He had not stopped since he turned his back on Don Feliciano and Nena. His body moved as if commanded by another force, by the brute power of his anger. His hurt.
Nena had not spoken.
It was worse than a betrayal. Betrayal was a woman with whom he thought he had an understanding flirting with or pursuing another man. That had happened to him, and it had stung like horseflies. But he could sweep the feeling away like a horse swept away flies; with alcohol or work or another woman, it did not matter.
This was Nena.
Don Feliciano could say all he wanted about her marrying someone else, but for as long as Néstor lived, as long as he had breath in his body, he belonged to her. He thought of siestas in the shade beneath the huisaches, listening to her breathe in time with him as they fell asleep. Every one of her secrets whispered against his ear in the firelight at Nochebuena. The way she took him by the hand and led him into the chapel for school, defying her aunts and her mother.
He had relied on that defiance. It was as much a part of his image of her as her gestures or the dimple to the right of her mouth. But in the years he had been gone, that part of Nena died. Whatever flickers of it he had seen on the road were weak echoes of how she used to be.
For when he had held his hand out for help, for her to grasp him and pull him to his feet as he would her, she let him fall.
This was more profound than a simple betrayal. To her, he was not worth the effort of standing up to her father. He did not need her to declare her undying love for him on the spot and forfeit her family, no—all he wanted was for her to say something. Anything.
But she said nothing.
The message was resoundingly clear. He was not worth anything. He brought her home and she discarded him like a used rag.
Before he returned to Rancho Los Ojuelos and saw Nena, alive and breathing, he had never let his dream of the future into the light, never spoke a word of it. After losing his world on Rancho Dos Cruces and then Nena, he even feared looking at it himself. What if it bent and crumbled under the weight of his own regard, as if the reality of reflecting on it were too much for such a fragile thing to bear?