She's had it since Sasabe. Six hours of tunnel and highway and she hasn't let go once, and her fingers tighten now.
I reach back and put my hand over hers.
"You see the woman in the green apron?" I keep my voice down. "That's Ruby. She's got a son and another baby coming. You can stand behind me as long as you want. She's going to feed you either way, and she's very hard to say no to."
Lucia looks at Ruby a long moment, then she lets go of my shirt.
She doesn't go to Ruby.
She moves about four feet off and stands there on her own two feet in an open yard with the sun on her face, and she tips her head back and looks at the sky.
Two years underground.
I turn around and look at a fence post until my eyes stop.
Yoli goes to the medical room and Sakura goes with her, and Nova's already in there with her sleeves shoved up.
I watch the two of them work through the doorway. The nurse practitioner from Vegas and the nursing student from Montana, disagreeing gently about whether to redress the wound now or let her sleep first, and Yoli's watching them go back and forth like it's the most fascinating thing she's ever seen.
They're arguing about her.
Two grown women standing over her, disagreeing out loud about what's best, and then Sakura turns and asks her which she'd rather.
Yoli's mouth comes open. She doesn't have an answer ready.
Nobody's asked that child what she'd rather in a very long time.
Sakura will probably be here for at least a week, then someone will take her back to the crossing and she’ll be back in Vegas, with her husband and kids.
I head into the main room and sit down at the table and it takes me one second to realize Ruby made too much meat.
She made anobsceneamount of meat.
There's a wholecabritogoing in the pit out back andcarne asadaand a pot offrijolesthe size of a bathtub, and when I say something about it she waves the towel at me.
"I didn't know how many," she says.
"You knew how many. Amara called from the road."
"I didn't know how hungry." She points the towel at my chest. "Sit down. You look like a coat rack. Somebody get this woman a plate before she falls over."
***
Amara finds me around eight, out by the fire pit, which somebody's finally lit.
She sits down on the bench beside me with a beer she isn't drinking and watches the fire a while before she says anything.
"My uncle called this afternoon."
I go still.
"He's got people looking for Trask." She turns the bottle in her hands. "Started the minute he heard about the ranch. He's got names. He's got the man's businesses mapped. There's somebody sitting on a house in Sierra Vista and another one on a property in Bisbee."
"Has he found him?"
"No." She says it plainly. "Trask went to ground the same day. He's got forty years of practice disappearing inside his own state and he's doing it now. My uncle's people are good. They're not miracle workers."
The fire cracks and throws sparks up.
