Page 57 of The Promise of Jenny Jones

“Grandma? Can we bake a cake today? Maybe a cake would make Daddy smile.”

Every time Graciela looked at her daddy, his sad expression made her chest hurt. When she’d given’ him her gold-heart locket, she had hoped her mama’s portrait would help him feel better, but it didn’t seem to. She didn’t think her presence helped either.

Of all the people on the ranch, she was most shy around her father. He held himself aloof and distant, wrapped in misery. Sometimes she guiltily wished Uncle Ty was her daddy, and she liked to daydream about her and Jenny and Uncle Ty being together. That would have been so wonderful and perfect.

Graciela watched Grandma Ellen exchange a glance with Jenny before she wiped sudsy hands on her apron. “We’ll bake a cake tomorrow, honey. But this morning, Jenny wants you to go riding with her.”

“Oh good!” She clapped her hands. “Just you and me? No one else?” This was a far better treat than baking a cake.

“Just you and me,” Jenny confirmed in a strange husky voice.

“Can we go to Uncle Ty’s house?” They visited his house regularly, pulling weeds away from the front steps, sweeping off the porch. Graciela liked to go there because she liked to think about Uncle Ty, and because she could see the rooftops of her grandpa Barrancas’s hacienda from Uncle Ty’s porch.

“Put on your split skirt because we aren’t going to ride those sissy ladies’ saddles,” Jenny said. “Hurry up, now. I’ll fix us a lunch basket while I’m waiting for you.”

Before she skipped up the staircase she heard Grandma Ellen suggest that Jenny carry a gun.

“A couple of the boys mentioned seeing strangers yesterday and the day before. At first Jake thought they were new Barrancas hands, but he did a little checking and they aren’t.

Jenny, you know I don’t feel good about you and Graciela going up to Ty’s place alone.

I wish you’d take Jake or Grizzly Bill with you. ”

“This will be the last time.”

There was an odd silence and Graciela overheard soft whispery sounds as if Grandma and Jenny were hugging. Something about them today made her feel uneasy. She had that strange prickle of dread and anxious anticipation like she sometimes felt just before a lightning storm.

Stopping on the landing she sucked in a breath and held it, thinking about the long glances between Jenny and Grandma Ellen and the way they’d both been fussing over her during the last week.

And yesterday, Jenny had given Grandma Ellen the documents they had brought from Mexico.

Last night her daddy had said something about having Jake drive Jenny somewhere.

These small events came together and suddenly she understood.

Whirling, she leaned over the bannister and hot tears blinded her. “No!”

Jenny couldn’t leave. She wouldn’t let her. She loved Jenny and they owned each other. If Jenny left the ranch, then she would go too. It would be a hundred times less painful to say goodbye to Grandma Ellen and the others than to let her Jenny go. She couldn’t do that.

Angry and upset, she struck the bannister with her fist. She wished Uncle Ty would hurry up and come home. He wouldn’t let Jenny leave them. Uncle Ty would be furious if Jenny left, she just knew it.

Covering her face, she scrubbed her palms against the tears burning her eyes. It was so hard to be a helpless kid. There was so much she didn’t understand and couldn’t control.

Please, please God. Don’t take Jenny away from me too.

Jenny couldn’t figure out what had happened between the time Graciela left the kitchen and when she reappeared with reddened eyes and accusation pinching her expression.

“You got a burr up your tail?” she asked after they had ridden to Ty’s house in heavy silence.

“I don’t remember you ever being this quiet for so long.

” She looped her mare’s reins around the hitching post and watched Graciela do the same before she lifted down a picnic basket and carried it to the porch steps.

Graciela sat on the step above her. “Why are you wearing a gun and those pants?”

“I’m wearing a gun to humor your grandma.

It was either wear a gun or bring along Jake or Grizzly Bill, and I didn’t want to do that.

I want today for just you and me.” She pulled a chicken leg from the lunch basket and offered it, but Graciela shook her head.

“Suit yourself. Anyway, the gun is just a precaution.”

“I know why you’re wearing pants again. You’re getting ready to leave, and you’re getting used to work trousers.”

Jenny froze, then lowered the piece of chicken she’d brought to her mouth.

She kept forgetting how bright Graciela was.

Nothing got past the kid’s sharp little eyes and mind.

She had hoped to delay their private good-bye for a while yet, had hoped for one last lovely afternoon to remember before they got into fare-thee-wells.

Lowering her head, she wiped her fingers on a napkin.

“The Sanderses aren’t my kin, honey girl.

I’ve imposed on their hospitality long enough.

I’ve seen that you’ll be loved and taken care of…

I’ve waited the month I promised Ty.” She raised her head and gazed into Graciela’s swimming eyes. “Honey, I have to go now.”

“Uncle Ty is going to come home and he’s going to be really mad when you aren’t here.” Angry tears rolled down her face.

Jenny sucked in a deep breath before she answered.

“I’ve tried to accept that Ty is dead even though a little part of me”—she touched her heart—“refused to believe it. But, honey, if Ty was alive, he would have sent word.” It hurt so much to give up hope.

That was the hardest part of it. The ache was constant, her sense of loss as fresh as daylight.

“You and me… we’re the only ones who thought he might make it, but that was just wishful thinking because we loved him. I think we’ve got to accept the worst.”

The kid’s tears drowned her, just fricking killed her to see and made her want to cry, too.

She felt as if she were strangling on salt and bile, and she wasn’t prepared when Graciela jumped into her lap and wrapped her arms tightly around her neck.

For a moment they teetered within a gasp of falling off the porch.

“If you have to go, then I’m going with you!”

“No, honey girl, you can’t.” Jesus Lord, this was driving a knife through her heart.

She’d rather have relived Chulo’s blade slicing her belly than have these little arms clinging around her neck and feel a child’s sweet tears on her cheek.

“These are your people. They love you, and you love them, too. You’ll have a good life here. ”

“I’m your people! I love you, and you won’t say it, but you love me, too, I know you do, Jenny! You have to take me with you. Who’ll give you clean hankies? Who’ll sew you up?” Her arms tightened, holding on. “Who’ll teach me new words and new things? If you go, who’ll teach me how to be like you?”

“Oh Graciela. God.” She held on so tight that she feared she might hurt the child. When Graciela pushed back to peer in her eyes, she had to force herself to loosen her grip.

“Jenny! You’re crying! Oh!”

They clung together and let the tears come, sobbing until their eyes were dry, until all they could do was sit together in combined misery.

Jenny adjusted Graciela’s weight on her lap and rested her cheek against the kid’s hair.

She would never forget the fragrance of Graciela’s hair and the weight of her small, warm body.

That weight had started off mighty heavy; now she welcomed it.

How was she going to live without this child?

Losing Ty had already carved away half of her heart; she would leave the other half behind when she rode away tomorrow.

“I do love you, Graciela,” she murmured hoarsely. “No, don’t look at me. I have some things to say, and it’ll go easier on me if you don’t look while I’m saying them.”

“I’ll follow you when you go. You can’t stop me.”

“I don’t want you to do that.”

Marguarita? If you’re listening, I beg you… please. Please, help us both.

“Honey girl, believe me. I’ve tried to think of some way that we could stay together, but there is none.”

“You could marry my daddy.”

She had considered this possibility herself.

And had concluded that even if Robert accepted such a doomed proposal, it would end in disaster.

She disliked him intensely for keeping himself a stranger to his daughter, felt contempt for his weakness, past and present.

“Your mama is the only woman your daddy will ever love.” Graciela would grow up motherless and mostly fatherless, and there wasn’t a fricking thing she could do about it.

“But why can’t you take me with you?”

She fought the hot lump threatening to strangle her.

“Because I love you enough to give you the life your mama wanted for you. I don’t want you growing up on the streets like I did.

I want to know you’re safe and happy and loved.

I want to know that you’re clean and eating good food and sleeping in a bed with a pillow.

When I think of you, and Graciela I will think of you every day until I die, I want to think of you here.

If you want to make me happy, then stay here with your daddy and your grandma Ellen, and be happy yourself. ”

“I can’t—”

A shot exploded through the quiet sunny spring morning. Splinters flew from the post above Jenny’s hat.

Before the slivers of wood hit the porch floor, Jenny had tossed Graciela over the railing and dived after her, drawing her pistol as she fell. Easing her head up, she peered through the porch rails, scanning the shrubs and underbrush. “Did you see anyone?”

Graciela peeked, then gasped and ducked down again. “It’s Luis! And my cousin Emil, and I think I saw the Cortez brothers.”