That's all.
She knows.
Four seconds in a doorway and she knows.
My throat locks up so hard I sit there breathing through my nose like an animal.
"Camila's been telling me about a property in Arizona," Amara says. "Cochise County."
"Okay," Lashes says again.
"I want you to hear it."
Lashes comes into the room. She doesn't sit. She puts her back against the wall next to Dante and shifts the baby higher and gets both arms around her, and she looks at me and waits.
I look at Amara.
Amara nods.
So I turn my head and I look at a woman I've never met, holding a baby, in a country I've never been to, and I say the only word I've got that means anything.
"The girls call itLa Nada."
The baby makes a noise.
Lashes doesn't move. Not one part of her.
She's got her arms around her daughter and the blood goes out of her face all at once, top to bottom, like somebody pulled a plug. Her mouth comes open with nothing behind it.
Dante says her name.
She doesn't hear him.
"Lashes," Amara says.
Nothing.
She's looking at me and she's not in this room. Her arms have gone so tight around that baby the kid starts to fuss and she doesn't feel it.
"Hey." Dante's hand comes toward her shoulder and stops short of it. "Hermana, hey."
"They said—" Her voice comes out on a whisper with nothing behind it. "They told us. If you don't sell."
"Yes," I say.
"They said—" She swallows and I hear it across the room. "They said you go toLa Nadaand you don't come back. They said it's not a place, they said it's?—"
She looks at me.
"You came back," she says.
And I open my mouth to tell her no.
No, I didn't come back, I got out, those are two different things and one of them means something and the other one's just luck and a lazy man and a fire door.
But her face.
Her face is doing something I haven't seen a face do in years, and it's aimed at me, and my mouth's open and there's nothing coming out of it.
