Chapter 14
A
lejandro banished her to the living room while he cooked something mysterious he wouldn't name, with ingredients he'd purchased with his pay from Wiley. Outside, a cold wind blew last night's snow around, and Molly stared at it with a hollow feeling, wishing she were in the kitchen with Alejandro.
Josh and Lynette showed up right on time, without the children, both of them nicely dressed, and Molly smiled, knowing how much they treasured these times alone together. As they came up the walk, Josh said something, a joke by the way Lynette leaned close to him and laughed. Her blond hair blew over his shoulder and he put his arm around her.
Molly had called Josh this afternoon, confessing everything, in return for his help seeing to Josefina's safety. He had agreed with relief. As she unfolded herself to go to the door, she heard a clang from the kitchen, and Alejandro swore, rather strongly, in Spanish. She smiled, thinking he must have burned himself.
And suddenly, she was breathlessly sorry that he was going. That this was an end, instead of a beginning. She had to stop and breathe deeply for a minute before she opened the door and smiled brightly. “Hi! Come on in. It's freezing!”
Josh smiled at her, and held up a six-pack of beer. “Lynette promised to drive us home, so I hope you don't mind if I kick back a few.”
“Of course not. I may join you.”
Lynette hugged her, and again Molly felt a rush ofâsomething. Love and relief. “I missed you,” she said. It had only been a week or so, but it seemed an age.
“Me, too.” Her plump arms were tight.
To her amazement, Josh stepped forward, too, and gave her a surprisingly fierce hug. “Sorry, sis.”
Molly almost lost it, but there was a step from behind her, and she managed to swallow her tears before she turned. Alejandro, wiping his hands on a towel, had emerged from the kitchen, and Molly gestured, bringing him into the group while she stepped back. “You remember Lynette and Josh.”
“Yes. It is good of you to come tonight.” He extended his hand, and this time, Josh took it. “Things are nearly finished. Come.”
He'd set the table with her pottery bowls, and put them on bright turquoise mats she'd almost forgotten, and he'd gathered candles from various places all over the house to put on the table. They burned brightly amid small bowls of marigolds and a tall thin vase of carnations. She'd never seen her own table look so festive, and when she raised her head to tell him so, she saw him waiting for her reaction, his eyes oddly grave.
“Beautiful.”
He held her gaze for one moment more, then looked away quickly, and seemed a little confused over what should be done next, looking at the stove and the counter.
“What can I carry?” Molly asked. A thick stew with what looked like hominy bubbled in a pot. A fragrance of chiles and onion rose from it, and mixed with the scent of cinnamon from the coffee in another pot. Molly inhaled, closing her eyes. “Oh, this is going to be wonderful, Alejandro!” Without thought, she put her hand on his arm and turned to Lynette. “Wait until you taste his coffee. You'll never drink American coffee again.”
“No machine coffee,” Alejandro said, smiling down at her. He put his hand over hers, squeezed it once and let it go.
Somehow, touching him gave her a sense of strength and the tight knot of loss in her chest eased a little. He might be gone tomorrow, but tonight he was here, and she would not lose whatever memories she could tuck away by mourning the loss in the future. “What is this?” she asked of the stew.
“Posole,”
he said, and Lynette cried out happily. He grinned over his shoulder. “You like it?”
“I love it,” she said, and patted her round tummy. “But then, look at meâI love everything.” She laughed to show she didn't mind. “Mainly, though, I really love, love, love Mexican food.”
He carried the pot to the table. “Yeah? It's good here. Josefina, my niece, has eaten well in New Mexico. I do my best, but I am not a cook like her mother was.” He shrugged, went back to the stove, took a thick package of foil out of the oven and opened it, releasing the steam of an enormous stack of thick flour tortillas. “I had to buy the tortillas. I do not know how to make them very well.”
They settled around the table, Molly at one end, Alejandro at the other, the candles and flowers between them. He filled their bowls with his rich stew, and talked lightly of many things, drawing even Josh into the conversation. Molly ate the stew with a pile of tortillas and drank a cold beer with her brother, and felt deeply satisfied. Outside, the wind howled and snow began to fall, but in here, there was family and good food and warmth, and what else did a person need?
Josh stood up to get another beer, and offered one to Alejandro, who shook his head with a smile. “No, thank you.” He lifted his chin with a little smile. “Molly will drink mine.”
“You don't drink?” His eyes narrowed. “You in AA?”
Alejandro gave Molly a puzzled expression. “Why do people always ask that? Only people who have trouble refuse alcohol here?”
Lynette cracked up, and put her hand on his sleeve. “No, I don't drink either. I just don't like it. You're safe.”
“I'll take his, Josh,” Molly said. “Don't worry about itâall the more for us, right?”
He nodded and carried the beers back to the table. “How's your niece doing?”
“Very well. They will let her go tomorrow.” He pushed his bowl away a little, glanced at Molly, then away. “That is why we are here tonight, since I will be moving in a day or two.”
“That's what Molly told me.”
There was, suddenly, no point to either woman being at the table, for the men faced each other, looking each other in the eye. “We are both sorry for lying to you,” Alejandro said. “It seemed there was no other way.”
Molly quietly stood and began to collect the bowls. Lynette helped her.
“I was only trying to protect her, man,” Josh said. “It wasn't personal.”
“Sure. I know.” Alejandro looked at Molly as she took his dishes, and again, it was as if they entered their own little world when their eyes touched, a place where only the two of them knew the rules. “She is too trusting.” He looked back at Josh. “But I am grateful. She saved my life, and the life of my niece. We can never repay our debt to her.”
Molly took the bowls to the sink, where Lynette had poured soap and now ran hot water. Lynette looked up at Molly, and widened her eyes, trying to give Molly a message she didn't quite get. She frowned, shaking her head. Lynette pressed her mouth together, looked at the men. Shook her head.
“Now that this is out in the open,” Josh said, “I need to know what happened, exactly, if you wouldn't mind.” He looked at his sister. “Did you really know the little girl before?”
Molly, the pot of stew in her hands, looked at Alejandro. Hesitated, then shook her head. “I found him at the foot of the bluff the morning after the raid.” She put the stew down. “I know they say there are no shots fired, but he had a bullet in his leg and broken ribsâand I couldn't leave him there.”
Josh bowed his head. “It was me.”
“What was you?”
He lifted his head, and in his too-young face she saw lines of weariness. “I fired that night. Twice. One went by, but I guess the other oneâ” He cleared his throat. “So in a weird kind of way, all this was my fault.”
Molly sank into a chair. “Josh, how could you?”
He shook his head. “Don't think I haven't asked myself that same thing a hundred times, every night ever since.” He rubbed his face. “It was so crazy that night. So many people scattering.” Josh looked at Molly. “I lost my temper. It just pissed me off that all these people were here, breaking the law. And Wiley just sits up there like a fat cat, pretending he doesn't know they're all illegal.” His jaw went tight. “And you know, it really is a problem for the county. Crime goes up and the jail is packed, and the hospital fills up, and the county gets stuck with all the bills.” He looked at Alejandro. “You seem like an all-right guy. I'm sorry for your troubles, but why do you have to be here?”
Molly opened her mouth to interrupt, worried that the conversation was going into dangerous territory. Alejandro lifted a hand, and she understood he wanted to field this.
Earnestly, he put his arms on the table. “I do not wish to be here,” he said. “I love my home. In Mexico, I am an important man where I live. My family has land and I have the respect of the men I do business with.” He shook his head. “Here I am nothing.”
“So why do it? Why drag that poor little girl all over?”
“I promised her mother I would take care of her. Josefina was her only child, and my sister wanted to raise her here.”
Josh nodded.
Lynette said, “Molly, will you come with me for a minute?”
Startled, she glanced up, saw the urgent expression and followed her out.
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Alejandro watched them go, and when they were out of earshot, he said quietly,
“Señor,
who I am is not important now. I must ask you to do one thing.”
“What?”
“You must help your sister buy that house she likes so much, the one in town.”
“She told you about that?”
He shrugged. “We talked of many things. It is very important to her, that house, and she thinks she should not have it.”
Josh's mouth was serious, his blue eyes troubled.
“She can't do the work it needs.”
“So, she can hire it to be done.” Alejandro tried to think of a way to express the sense he had that Molly had to have the house. “Without something to believe in, something that belongs to only her, she will...” he frowned, thinking of a loaf of bread without its insides “âgo hollow. No more of her, only the outside.”
“Why do you care?”
Because he loved her. Because he couldn't stand to think of that expression on her face when she looked at it this afternoon, so much longing, so much fear, so much certainty that anything she wanted that much would always be out of reach. But he could not think how to say all of that without revealing his heart, and he only shook his head. “She saved my life.”
Josh smiled. “I'll see what I can do, man. Maybe she can sell this place and do what she wants with the house.”
Alejandro nodded. “Thank you.”
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Lynette hustled Molly into the bedroom and closed the door, then leaned against it. “You want to tell me what's going on here?” she said.
Molly frowned. “What do you mean?”
“With you and him.”
“Nothing.” She tried to say it innocently.
“Nothing is going on? Nothing?” She twisted her mouth wryly. “You're going to tell me you have had that beautiful hunk of man flesh under this roof all this time and you haven't slept with him?”
She crossed her arms. “Well, no.”
“No, you didn't, or no, you did?”
“No, I did.”
Lynette's eyes narrowed. “Don't you think that was kind of dangerous?”
A sudden vivid and erotic vision rose in her mind, a vision of their first joining, the sun making her lids red, his hands and mouth on her body. “No,” she whispered. “He's a man of good character.” It sounded old-fashioned, and she was embarrassed, but didn't take it back.
“That's not what I mean, Molly. Not dangerous as in taking a knife and stabbing you. Dangerous as in, can you stand to have your heart broken so completely again?”
Molly moved to the window, lifted the curtains and stared out. “My heart is fine,” she lied.
“It can't be, Molly. Remember who you're talking to here, okay? I've known you all your life. I remember the boys you used to fall for. The Medina brothers, remember, in second grade? And Toby Espinoza. Nobody was more shocked than me when you ended up with some big old galoot of a white guy.”
Her fingers tightened on the curtain, and she remembered a story they'd both heard at a Girl Scout gathering once:
The old women say there is a face carved on the heart of every woman...
“Alejandro is nothing like them.”
“No,” Lynette said, “he's everything a man should be. He's kind and good and smart and beautiful. And you are in love with him.”
Molly swallowed. “I've been thinking so much about Tim,” she said quietly. “Remembering all these things about him that I loved so much. His hands. He had freckles on the back of his hands. And he was so romantic in practical ways, you know?” She turned to look at her best friend. “I broke down one night, just remembering everything about him. It came flooding back, so hard, and I felt like I was going to die, it hurt so much. I wanted to die when he did. There just didn't seem to be any point in going on.”