“Accordin’ to Flores,” Selman explained, “the señora absconded with the mail.”
Jacy reached for the letter. “You’ll have to be more specific than that, Constable.”
“Read it right there,” he returned, then proceeded to inform her that Señor Flores had filed charges against Señora Bella Saucedo for opening a personal letter he had written to Señorita Boneville, and not only reading it but responding to it, in writing.
“Flores says he has both letters in his possession.”
“In his possession,” Jacy echoed, struggling to find her wits. Trevor was safe. The constable had come to arrest Tía Bella. The idea was so absurd, it made no sense at all. Tía Bella couldn’t go to jail. “I fail to see the problem,” Jacy retorted. “If Mr. Flores has his letters—”
“Invasion of privacy, that’s what the old lady’s been charged with.”
“And you are here for what purpose?”
“To take her in.”
“In?” Jacy aimed her chin straight at Selman’s arrogant face. “In where, may I ask?”
“Jail, ma’am.”
The constable’s pronouncement was met by a series of wails. Sophie and her charges had entered through the back door in time to hear Selman’s announcement. Shrieking, little Carter tore away from her and ran to bury his face beside Gato’s in Tía Bella’s lap. She smoothed his wiry hair with wrinkled hands, as though oblivious to the entire proceedings.
Jacy knew better. “How dare you come in here like this,” she accused the constable. “You know the misery this family has endured. If a complaint has been filed against our aunt, we will deal with it, but you have no authority to terrorize these poor children.”
“Hear this, old man.” Drummond hobbled forward, waving his walking stick at Selman. “You will treat my family with respect. I am Drummond Kimble of Arizona Territory, in case you didn’t know.”
“Well, you ain’t in Arizona Territory now, Kimble,” Selman returned, “case you didn’t know. Pardon my French, but your name don’t mean sour mash in these parts.”
Propelled by fear of what Drummond would do next, Jacy moved between the two men. “We were discussing our aunt, Constable. Where is the evidence against her?”
“Evidence? You mean them letters?”
“Exactly.”
“Flores has ’em. But I trust him.”
“Without evidence, you can’t hold Tía Bella.” She lowered her voice and hurried on, knowing that he, the law, could do anything he pleased. “We would consider it an enormous favor, if you would allow us to handle this problem tomorrow. As soon as the offices open in the morning, I will engage an attorney to help Tía Bella resolve the difficulty with Señor Flores. I’m sure we can reach an agreement.”
John Selman cast a wary eye around the room.
“We take this charge seriously,” Jacy assured him. “Tía Bella and her late husband have been responsible for mail delivery in the area for many years. I’ve never heard a single complaint against them. We won’t run out,” she added. “As you know, we have no place to go.”
Selman studied the little woman in the corner.
“We could meet Señor Flores in your office,” Jacy suggested, “say at ten o’clock tomorrow morning?”
The constable turned stern eyes on her.
“I fail to see what good could come of her spending the night in jail,” Jacy added. “With the reprobates you pick up regularly, why, she would be terrified.” Jacy cast a glance around the room, which had grown somewhat quieter, although little Carter still sobbed into Tía Bella’s lap. “Please consider the children. They have lost so much already.”
Selman frowned. “Tomorrow morning at ten o’clock?”
She nodded.
“Done.” He backstepped onto the porch. “But don’t go thinking you’re gettin’ away with nothin’. Way law-abidin’ folks figure things, once a feller gets crossways with the law, he’s likely to stay that-away the rest of his life.”
Jacy didn’t respond. She wasn’t exactly sure what the constable meant, other than to insult the Kimbles. She watched him step into the saddle of his big black stallion and waited until he had ridden away to sigh in relief. But even as she did, she wondered what hurdle would be thrown in their path next.
While Marielena finished supper, Jacy tried to talk to Tía Bella about her misdeeds.
Tía Bella staunchly defended her actions. “I have written many a letter for Miguel Flores. He has always been satisfied.”
“Those were letters he hired you to write,” Jacy explained.
“Many hired me to write letters. It is my talent. I copy any style. I have written letters for many important people.”
“I know, Tía. But you can only write letters for people if they ask you. As postmistress you are obliged to protect the privacy of every person whose letters come through this office.”
“I only told one person, Jacy.” She pronounced the name Ja-cée. “Only Elmo. Elmo won’t tell tales.”
Unless to the angels, Jacy thought. “Elmo won’t tell,” she agreed. “But you must understand the trouble we’ll have if you open other people’s mail. Or if you write any more letters without being hired.”
For years Señora Bella Saucedo was one of the few persons in the area who knew how to write. As she said, her talent for copying even the most intricate style won her customers and praise from far and wide. Today, most people could write their own letters, and calligraphers were readily available. Only a few old-timers still came to her.
Jacy’s immediate concern, after getting the charges against Tía Bella dropped, was to keep the postmistress position. In the last five years Tía Bella had gone steadily downhill, and Jacy had struggled to keep the business going. The salary was minimal, but it was all that stood between them and the poorhouse.
“That nasty Señorita Boneville needed to be told a thing or two,” Tía Bella was saying. “Poor Miguel. She was taking him for a ride. I couldn’t sit by knowing the facts and not act in his interest.”
The problem, of course, was the way Tía Bella learned the facts. “You know better than to open mail addressed to other people, Tía,” Jacy said gently. “It’s against the law. If someone comes to you, fine. But you must promise not to open anyone else’s mail.”
The old lady studied Jacy with cocked head and half-cast eyes, an expression somewhere between bewildered and offended. But who among them hadn’t been bewildered and offended a few times today? Jacy wondered.
One of the major benefits of Mari’s daily trek to the mission was, to Jacy’s mind, the gifts of food she brought home. Supper on this night consisted of a succulent cabrito stew and tortillas. A nourishing, satisfying meal, eaten at a scarred plank table from cracked, unmatched bowls, both of which magnified the family’s dismal circumstances. Tonight, however, Jacy’s mind was in such an uproar, she hardly noticed.
Halfway through the meal Todd made a tardy appearance, slipped into his place, and grinned around the table. “Guess what I heard?”
Jacy dreaded to hear. Todd was never excited over the ordinary, mundane events that thrilled most children. Truthfully, she had stopped believing in ordinary, mundane things herself. If they existed, it wasn’t for the Kimbles.
“Trevor Fallon has been seen in El Paso,” Todd announced.
“Trevor!” Mari exclaimed.
“Uncle Trevor?” Sophie squealed.
Shock washed over Jacy in waves, confirming the dread. She lowered her spoon deliberately, hoping no one saw her hand tremble. With conscious, controlled effort she glanced around the suddenly silent table.
“It was probably just a rumor,” she said carefully. “I doubt anyone in this town knows what he looks like.”
“I know,” Sophie said, hero-worship in her voice.
“Where the hell did you hear such a thing?” Drummond demanded. His sallow face had turned waxen. Although he spoke to Todd, he glared at Jacy.
“On the street,” Todd was say
ing.
Drummond didn’t speak but continued to stare at Jacy. And she felt sick. He didn’t have to speak the words, she knew them by heart. Not that her father had ever voiced the accusation, he hadn’t. Never once had he condemned her for her part in the debacle. Not aloud.
But she knew he thought it, for she had lived with the bitter truth for five long years. If she hadn’t set out to flirt and tease Trevor, he might not have stayed around. He might have been long gone when Ana Bowdrie’s body was found.
If Ana Bowdrie’s body was found. Which seemed unlikely if Trevor had left the country.
No, Drummond didn’t blame her. She blamed herself—every time she looked at the wasted life of her father, every time she thought of the wasted life of her brother, every time she hugged little Carter or scolded Sophie or worried about Todd. If she hadn’t tempted Trevor with things that could never be, maybe he would have gone on to other pastures.
He was a drifter. He said so himself, time and again. He never remained long in one spot, not until Jacy in her cheeky arrogance set out to play games with him.
Until today she hadn’t even known why. Until today, when she looked into his eyes and upon his body and listened to the rhythmic, sensual music his voice thrummed inside her, she hadn’t known what an integral part of her life he had become. In the jail that day she acknowledged that she had fallen in love with him. Only today had she realized how much she loved him.
And that made her all the more wrong. All the more perfidious, that she could love so wretched a man. A man who had wronged them so badly.
Nighttime brought little relief, either from the heat or to her troubled mind. She helped Sophie and Tía Bella wash dishes, while Mari read Carter a story, and Drummond and Todd began a game of chess.
Contrary to the way Todd treated Jacy and his mother, he was still courteous to Drummond. Of course, Drummond made no demands on the boy, nor reprimanded him. In many ways the loving grandfather was more childlike than the child. Listening to them banter as she washed dishes, Jacy was suddenly overwhelmed by the dismal uncertainty of this family’s future. The children deserved more, so much more. As fiercely as she denied it to herself and to others, Drummond’s claim that she was wasting her time trying to win Hunter’s freedom was probably right.
If the children were to have more in life, it would be up to her to provide it. Not only must she keep them safe and well and happy, she must find some way to give them a future. That, she knew, was where she should concentrate all her efforts. But right now keeping them fed and clothed and together was a monumental task. If Tía Bella lost the postmistress job…It didn’t bear considering.
The dishes finished, Jacy carried a lamp into the post office portion of the house to sort the day’s mail. She prayed Tía Bella hadn’t squirreled away any letters this afternoon. She vowed to keep a better eye on things. Tomorrow she would engage Wes Hardin to help soothe Miguel Flores’s ruffled feathers. Hereafter, she would keep an eagle eye on the mail.
When Sophie came in with a question about geography, Jacy set her at the desk with her geography book. “Read the chapter. In the morning we’ll discuss it on the way to school.”
“What if you can’t walk us to school tomorrow?”
“I will.”
With her eyes on the flickering blue flame, Sophie said hesitantly, “We made it to school just fine today, Aunt Jacy. I can take care of Carter. You’ll see.”
“I know, love.” She paused with mail in hand, studying her niece.
“I was really proud of the way you stood up to that awful Mr. Selman,” Sophie added.
Jacy sighed. “It’s Constable Selman, unfortunately. We must be careful and polite. It’s a sad fact of life, Sophie, that once a person is held in ill-repute, his family is credited with every wrong that comes along.” She turned back to the mail, eager to sort it and escape the stifling heat of the small house.
“Aunt Jacy?” Sophie said at length.
“Hmm?”
“Do you think someone really saw Uncle Trevor?”
Again Jacy set aside the mail. Not trusting her voice, she hmmed again.
“Will they put him back in prison if they catch him?”
“If the wrong…I mean, if the right people see him, they will.”
“I don’t want him to go back to prison,” Sophie whispered. “He was always nice to me.”
Sophie’s plaintive tone brought a catch to Jacy’s throat. “I know, love.” She went to the girl and held her close. After a while, Jacy drew her back and wiped her eyes with the tail of her apron. “Study now. When your papa gets home we want him to be proud of the way we’ve run things.”
Sophie’s distress, combined with the day’s events, pressed in on Jacy. She felt like the walls of the little house might implode from her despair. Grabbing a rebozo from a peg on the bedroom wall, she headed for the back door. Her only thought was to get some air, to feel a breeze, to see the stars. Passing the children’s room on her way through the kitchen, she overheard Mari putting Carter to bed.
“God bless Mama,” he was saying, “and God bless Papa.” His child-sweet voice filtered through the turmoil inside Jacy. Just as she slipped out the door, he added, “and God bless Uncle Trevor.”
By the time she reached the hilltop, she was breathing hard. She had practically run from the house and up the hill, but she felt better for it. Sliding down on a boulder in her usual spot, she looked out over the valley to the lights that flickered in the distance and beyond to the fiery magenta and gold streaked sky.
This was Jacy’s favorite time and place. After sundown the area was transformed to a land of magic. Gone were the adobe hovels and huts, gone the larger more substantial brick and frame buildings of the elite. The lights of El Paso and Juárez across the Río Grande merged; the valley came alive with hundreds of campfires and lights.
Jacy came here often to unwind after a trying day. It was the most peaceful place she had found since leaving the mountains of home.
Indeed, this was the only place since leaving home where she found any peace. It had become a nightly ritual she often thought she couldn’t function without—sitting alone in the dark, watching the stars come out and mingle with the lights of El Paso and Juárez across the Río Grande. She sat most nights until the sky turned velvet and her jittery fears calmed.
Tonight she had never needed serenity more. She stared at the horizon until the last streaks of gold and magenta turned black, until the stars popped out in the velvet sky.
But on this night she did not find peace. The turmoil inside her refused to subside. Dispiritedly she thought she might never find peace again.
Trevor was back. There was no peace. Startled out of her reverie by a sudden movement nearby, she glanced around.
“’Evening, Jace.”
His presence loomed in the shadows as large as the sky. Stunned, she pulled her rebozo closer and tried to close out her thoughts, her feelings, her runaway emotions.
Trevor slid to the ground beside her. She turned cold.
“Kinda takes a feller back to happier times, don’t you think?”
Then hot. She bolted up like a jackrabbit flushed from a stand of sage. Before she gained running feet, however, he grabbed her upper arm and pulled her back down beside him.
“Whoa, there, Jace. I won’t hurt you.”
“Stay away from my family.”
“I am.”
Curious at the reply, she glanced toward him again. His eyes shone like amber in the white moonlight. She looked quickly away.
“For five years I didn’t see a single star,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone, not asking for sympathy, as though they were in the middle of a companionable visit. “But I had them in my head. I would lean back against the cold wall of that small cell and close my eyes and I was sitting on the hill again, beside you, looking at the stars. The hill behind the ranch house. Remember?”
Remember? Of course she remembered. But she didn’t want to. She wan
ted to forget. She must forget.
“It kept me from going insane,” he continued when she didn’t respond. “Remembering the stars…and you.”
The idea sent shivers down her spine. The words, spoken from this man she hated, infuriated her. “Lucky you. You had stars to keep you sane.”
“You taught me to appreciate the night sky,” he said, again matter-of-factly, ignoring her sarcasm. “Before you, I saw them only as signposts in the sky.”
She smiled to herself, remembering against her will to do so. At first, she thought he was interested in the stars only as an excuse to be alone with her. But in the blackness of the night sky, they had found a special bonding. He told her about his mother; how she taught him to find stories in the stars when he was a boy, while she was still young and as yet unbroken by her miserable existence.
Eventually he shared the anger he felt for his father, how after his mother died he left. He never saw his father again.
“I would have killed him sooner or later,” he said once. A statement Jacy had recalled often the last five years.
“How nice that you had memories to keep you sane,” she said now, unable to hide her fury. “While you huddled in a corner dreaming up stars, I was fighting to keep this family together. This family you tore apart.”
Again he ignored her denunciation. “From what I saw today, it’s been a struggle. Todd needs a strong hand.”
“Todd needs his father. They all do.”
“What about Drummond?” he asked. “Was he drunk today? Or is he ill?”
“Ill,” she retorted. “He has a broken heart.” Then, with a sigh, she admitted, “And hung over. He didn’t make it home last night. He drinks too much.” She stopped there, unwilling to share her problems with this man. That in itself was a huge disappointment. For she had always been able to talk to Trevor. And he, to her.
“Stay away from him,” she repeated.
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