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Nena no longer feared boogeymen or ghosts snatching at her plaits when rain lashed the rancho and lightning fractured the broad, black sky. In the last year, Tejas had been ripped out of México, leaving a gaping wound in its wake. She had learned that there were real monsters to be mindful of now.
Growing older felt like holding water in cupped hands; the harder she pressed her fingers together to keep life with Néstor the way it used to be in her grasp, the faster it slipped away.
Nena was his home. The one thing on earth more precious to him than his own life. Whatever that creature was, it did not matter—the only thing that mattered was getting it away from her.
Of the many unspoken dicta that ruled life on the rancho, one of the most important was this: if tragedy struck and you escaped unscathed, it was unlucky to call attention to your fortune by talking about it. Even if you emerged with scrapes and bruises, it was simply not prudent to talk about it. You survived, and that was what mattered. Nothing could be gained from lingering on the past.
He could survive on the scraps from her table—had he not spent the last nine years starving? Anything she gave him now was a bounty. It would be fine.
Was Hell like this? Not a burning inferno but humid and cloying, the air thick with the tastes of sulfur and gunpowder, the clammy fingertips of the dead grasping at her, seeking her soul and dragging her down, down, down . . .
