by Ruth Wind
"Please. And please do not tell Molly that her brother lied to her. There is enough trouble between them. She does not need to know."
* * *
Molly stopped by the grocery store and found the place crowded as all the other locals stocked up in case of a nasty snowfall. Often they came at this time of year, huge snowfalls that stopped everything in the high valley while it came down, stilling the world with a fuzzy whiteout.
She got the groceries, including one full bag for Lynette, who hated driving in the snow. At her brother's house, she saw the cruiser was parked in front, and she carried the bag of groceries to the door, feeling a strange sense of awkwardness. Unbelonging.
A feeling that was not improved when Josh himself opened the door and stepped out onto the porch, putting on his hat in preparation for returning to work. He looked a little startled when he saw her, then remembered to frown. "We have plenty of groceries, Molly. We're not some charity."
"You can pay me for them if you think you need to. I wasn't doing it to help you, but your wife."
"She doesn't need you."
"And neither do you, right?" Molly said. She'd meant the words to be angry, bitter, but to her horror, they came attached with the edge of tears in her throat
He bowed his head, and Molly found her eyes on the tender nape of his neck, below the close bristles of blond hair. It was a vulnerable place, one that showed his youth and stubbornness. "Josh, I hate this so much! You're the only family I have, and I can't stand for us to be in a fight."
For a long minute, he kept his head down, then looked at her, his defenses firmly in place. "We're not in a fight, Moll. We're just on different sides of an issue."
"So it's going to ruin our relationship if I hold an opinion that differs from yours? Is that what's happening here?"
Lynette pulled open the door, scowling. "You two come in here right now," she said in a tone of voice that had been ordering around children for years. "You're not gonna stand on my front porch and air your dirty laundry." When both Josh and Molly hesitated, she put a hand on her hip. "Inside. Now."
They obeyed. Lynette pushed them to the kitchen, thanked Molly for the groceries and put them on the counter, before she bustled toward the door. At the threshold, she paused. "Thrash it out pretty quick. The kids'll be home in a half hour, and I won't have them see you two fighting."
Molly leaned on the counter. "The sheriff stopped by the hospital a little while ago."
Josh sat and took off his hat. A lock of hair stuck up, and Molly ached to smooth it down as she always had. She put her hands in her pockets and waited for him to speak. "I figured," he said.
"Why did you have to do it like that, Josh?"
"I had to, Molly. You're breaking the law. I know that wedding isn't real."
She opened her mouth to lie, then closed it. Maybe the time for lying was over. She thought of Alejandro's hands on her body this morning, thought of his mouth, kissing hers and said instead, "My feelings are very complicated right now, but it doesn't matter anyway. A wedding isn't enough to keep him here." Tears suddenly filled her eyes and she collapsed in the opposite chair. "And it didn't have to come to that. You didn't have to tell them."
An odd expression crossed his face – guilty and confused. "I don't know what you're talking about."
She raised her head, dashing tears away. "All I know is what the sheriff told me – he'll let Alejandro stay until Josefina is out of the hospital, but then he has to go back to Mexico and petition to come back as my husband."
"I'm real sorry, Moll," he said, not sounding sorry at all, "but you're the one who got all noble, not me."
"Noble? There's a lot involved here, but nobility isn't really a big part of it."
Josh sighed. "Moll, don't take this wrong, but – maybe you do like him. Maybe you really want somebody in your life. I can understand that. But did you ever consider that he might be using you?"
"No. He wouldn't do that."
"Cripes, Molly! Listen to yourself! D'you think all those confidence men out there bilking old ladies of their savings are ugly swines who can't string a sentence together? You think that would work?" His blue eyes threw sparks. "This Sosa is real smooth. You should hear the women, all over town, who've seen him. It's like we have some big-time movie star in town. He could have love slaves from here to Mexico City with the snap of a finger."
Molly made a sound of exasperation. "So if a man is charming and good-looking, he's automatically running a con?"
"No! But look at it from his side. Here's this lonely widow, with all that land, no man. How hard would it be?"
"It would be easy," she said, surprisingly calm. "Except that's just not his style."
He rolled his eyes. "Whatever. You aren't going to listen to me, but I'm not going to sit idly by and let you make a fool of yourself with this guy. What happens in six months or a year down the line when he starts sampling the wares of all the women in town?"
"Listen to yourself! You're acting like I'm a sixteen-year-old girl in heat! Like I have no judgment, like I can't make decisions for myself!" She narrowed her eyes. "I don't want to be protected, Josh. I want to live my life on my own terms – and I'll take my chances on making mistakes."
"Fine, but do you have to start by falling in love with some—"
"What, Josh?"
His mouth hardened. "With a guy whose got nothing to lose by taking you for all you have."
"No, damn it! Don't you get it? It might not be a mistake at all! Any more than buying that old house I wanted when I married Tim. I would have been happy in that house, and you know what? If you'd stayed out of my way and let me buy it when Tim died, I would never have met Alejandro."
"What the hell does that have to do with anything? You're not even rational!"
She flung up her hands. "You know what, Josh? You are not hearing one word I'm saying. I love you. You're my brother and I don't want us to be estranged, but if you insist on meddling in my life this way, I'm finished with you. I'm a grown woman. I raised my little brother when our parents died, and saw him safely married. I've been to college and buried a husband. I've lived alone and managed to thrive in spite of everything." She shook her head. "Stay out of my affairs."
He didn't stop her when she left.
* * *
Chapter 12
«^»
Alejandro went back to Josefina's room to wait for Molly. When his niece stirred, he played her a soft lullaby, singing softly as he strummed the gentle chords. She was soothed into sleep.
He set the guitar aside and stared out the window, watching dark fall and the wind whip into a fierceness that would bring winter with it. Leaves and dirt spun into whirlwinds, and somewhere out of sight, an empty can clanged over the blacktop. The sound was lonely.
His thoughts whirled like the leaves outside, and he felt dizzy, thinking of how much had changed in such a short time. It was as disorienting as when his sister died, two years ago. One day, he'd been bargaining with a food exporter about the price of his cauliflower. The next, he'd been bargaining with a coyote to shuffle him across the border to take care of Josefina.
Since then, his life had taken on a certain sameness. He'd hated it, all of it – the shacks that passed for living quarters in many places. The haphazard way Josefina went to school. Until his sister died, he'd been very rooted to one place, one lifestyle. Ever since, he'd been as rootless as a tumbleweed.
And now, his situation had become very complicated. This wedding had seemed like an answered prayer. But he could not bear to make life so hard for Molly.
She had already given a hundred times more than most people in her situation. Thanks to her, Josefina was safe and warm in a hospital bed with an illness that could be treated now that they finally knew what it was. Thanks to Molly, Alejandro was not sick in some jail, maybe facing the loss of his leg, but clean and well fed and newly back to his usual self.
It struck him again – what had made her do this kind thing? Ha
d God or some angel simply been watching over him and Josefina to let such a thing happen?
A tight knot of emotion grew in his chest, anxiety and sorrow and regret. He thought of Molly, of her light-struck eyes so pure and clear when he kissed her ring at the wedding. Looking at his own ring, he frowned. They were married, and it had been consummated. He should not have let himself make love to her this morning. He had known, even as he reached for her, that it was wrong – that it sealed the vow they had made, and more than that, it caused risk for her.
And yet, thinking of her now, of the way she stood in her kitchen, so achingly vulnerable, almost bold in her robe with nothing beneath it, he knew he could never have walked away. He had been longing to touch her for days, and all through the night, when her warmth and woman smell had been so close, it had been a piercing sort of torture. He'd managed to keep himself aloof then, but that glimpse of her naked breast, just the delicate upper swell, offered and not offered, had been too much to resist. Too much for his lust, and too much for his heart.
For in that moment, she had needed him. At last. Needed something he alone could give her – the touch of a man for her lonely skin, the kiss of desire for her hungry mouth, the devotion only he, with his snared heart, could give to heal her long, long hurt.
But had he given or taken?
He closed his eyes, remembering the taste of her. The look of her throat while she rode him, the lift of her small, pretty breasts that fit exactly into the nest of his hand, the nipples rising to kiss his palms. Oh, yes, he had taken much with him today.
And yet, in his madness, he had not thought of protecting her. They had used nothing. If she became pregnant…
"Madre," he whispered to the glass, bowing his head. The idea made him ache with longing. He would like to see her with his child. He wished it could be so, that this could be a true marriage. They had only known each other a short time, but it did not seem to matter to his heart.
He looked at his niece, seeing her thinness and the paleness of her cheeks and he wondered suddenly if he had done her a disservice. If he had not dedicated himself to satisfying his sister's foolish preference for America, Josefina would not even be sick at all. She would be sleeping now in a cozy bed, her skin brown from her play and chores outside. She would have many cousins and uncles and aunts to love her, instead of only Alejandro.
But now it was too late for that. She had to remain until her illness was cured. Then he would return to Mexico, return to what he knew and people he loved. Suddenly, he was so weary of this country that he wanted to weep.
Somehow, he would let Molly go. Somehow, he would stay here with Josefina.
And somehow, he would have to keep his heart from shattering when he saw his saint every day, not thinking of him at all while she moved in her world, a world in which he had no place.
* * *
Molly picked up Alejandro and drove back to the house. Neither of them spoke much, but when they went inside, they both moved to the kitchen, wordless. He reached for the teapot to boil water. Molly reached for the coffeepot. They stopped, both smiling as they reached the sink, and there was one split second in which Molly knew she could turn back, one minute when she could have halted everything.
She didn't. Instead, when he reached for her, she was reaching back, and they were somehow kissing, the kind of wild, openmouthed and desperate kiss that spoke of a hunger that should have been somewhat appeased by their morning in bed together.
But all Molly could think was that she needed him even more now, that if she was going to lose him again so fast she had to make the best of the time they had.
And this time, she drew him past the open door to the back room and took him into her room, and it was there that they made love, first with a kind of driven frenzy that was graceless and pointed, completed before they even managed to get half their clothing off. Then again, gently, slowly, taking time to know where to kiss, to stroke, to linger and to tease.
This time, there was no pressing obligation to make them rise, and they lay together, sated, her belly and breasts pressed into his side, his arm looped around her neck.
After a time, Alejandro turned on his side and slid down so they were laying face-to-face. He touched her cheek. "I told myself we should not do this again."
Molly blinked lazily, her body tingling and relieved. "I'm glad you didn't stick to it."
He grinned. "Me, too." He stroked her shoulder, touched her elbow, and his face sobered. "But I worry, Molly, that I will leave you with a child."
She shook her head. "Don't. There's always a chance, of course, but I tried for a long time to conceive with my husband, and we were not blessed with children."
"You wanted them?"
"Oh, yes. A houseful."
"And are there no children for women to take in here?"
Molly almost said no. But that wasn't strictly true. There were plenty of children who did not have homes. Older children or those of mixed race. "My husband was not interested in adopting, particularly. We thought we'd just keep trying." Her gaze fell to his chest and she put a hand on it, open, right over his heart. "Did you ever marry?"
"No." His lashes fell, hiding his eyes. "I had been thinking of it some when my sister died, but until then, I was very busy with the farm."
"Thinking of someone in particular?" she asked, envisioning a woman with long dark hair, busty and slim-hipped. It gave her a strange pang.
"Two of them." A glint came in his eyes, as if he sensed her jealousy. "There were twenty or more who would have gladly wed me, of course."
Molly smiled. "Twenty? All for your good looks?"
He snorted lightly. "For my strong back, and my good head for figures and the land my uncle and I made profitable." He shifted, and more seriously said, "It isn't so much beauty, eh? A man who will take care of his family, that's to be valued."
"Yes," she said soberly. "It is." And it seemed, suddenly, a very great tragedy that circumstances should have robbed his hometown or village or whatever it was, of such a man as Alejandro Sosa, who would have been a good husband and a good father and good provider, who had love in him and honor, and energy to make things happen. Some woman who had lived in that village all those years, maybe looking at him from the corner of her eye, measuring his fit to her life, had lost a very good husband. "Do you miss it?"
He was silent, and in the reflection of the lamp on his dark irises, she thought she could see memories moving. Finally, he looked at her. "Yes. But this is what I have been given to do." A slight lift of a shoulder. "Be a father to Josefina. That is more important."
She kissed him then. Closed her eyes and kissed him and breathed in the smell of his skin, and pressed her body close to his, knowing she would never meet another man like him again.
* * *
It was snowing when they arose much later, both very hungry. They raced to the kitchen, laughing, and Alejandro halted, the saucepan he used to make coffee still in his hand, staring out the window.
"Oh," he sighed, an expression of perfect wonderment. "Look, Molly! It's so beautiful." He walked to the long glass door and pushed aside the drapes to see more of it, thick swirls of snow chasing each other, sparkling against the light from the kitchen, everything awash in it. "Josefina will be so happy – she has not seen it snow very often." He glanced at her over his shoulder. "Usually, we are gone by the time the snows come."
"I love snow," she said, and leaned on the counter, her hair scattering over her shoulders as she peered out at it. And it seemed to Alejandro that winter was reflected in those pale eyes. In her bare feet and oversize robe, he thought she, too, was very beautiful. "I used to wait and wait and wait for the first snow." She laughed softly, watching as he measured coffee and water and turned on the heat under the pot. As if it spurred her on, she opened the fridge and started arranging a plate with paper-thin slices of roast beef, and olives, and sliced tomatoes. He plucked them off as she arranged them.
She smiled and carried
what was left on the tray to the table. He joined her, and made a sandwich, feeling a taste in his mouth he couldn't quite name. The cold night and the smell of coffee and making love made him want – something besides bland American meats. He ate because he was hungry, but he told himself tomorrow he would find something with bite to it. It had been many days since he'd tasted anything … normal.
But here, this was normal. The thought reminded him that this was not his world. Sobering a little, he said, "Did you find your brother today?"
Her face closed so tightly, so completely that she didn't have to say it had not gone well. She plucked crust from her sandwich and nodded. He waited for her to speak, but she seemed intent on keeping her eyes lowered. Her mouth grew taut, and he said finally, "Was it so terrible, Molly?"
She lifted her head. "He's my only family. I wanted to see if we could make it right between us. He wouldn't listen to me, and that makes me sad. It also made me very angry. He doesn't understand," she said. "He wants to make all my decisions and mistakes for me."
Mistakes. Would she look back five years from now, ten, and think this time had been a mistake? He hoped not, hoped that he could leave her with some legacy that would make her very glad she'd helped him.
She went to a cupboard and took out a large sketchpad, carried it to the table and flipped back the first few pages, so quickly he could not see what was on them, to reveal a watercolor painting of a house.
"Is this your work?"
She nodded.
Alejandro touched the page lightly with his fingers, surprised by what the spare, soft lines made him feel – a sense of yearning and a certain lost hope that seemed to come from the yawning, obviously empty windows. "It's very good. You do not want to spoil this with hard lines, as you asked me to show you. This is different."
"So soft. That's what my art teachers used to tell me. That it was too soft, that I needed more definition." She brushed the subject away with a fling of her fingers. "Anyway, this house is here in town." She flipped another page, and another, showing him different views of it – one at night, all lit up with a family in the windows. Another made it the haunted house of a ghost story.