SHE WATCHED MORNING RISE THROUGH THE VALLEY. THE PYRAMID was there, beyond the tops of the foregrounded juniper and piñon. Physically, Luz felt good. Well rested. She took a shower and buckled the knife to her calf and put on the same clothes she’d worn the day before. She looked at the closet and gave some thought to hanging up her mother’s dresses, but she did not intend to be here very long—she just didn’t know where she’d go yet, or how—so she left the dresses rolled up in her bag. She did not want to feel as if she were moving in.
Ninfa had prepared eggs and black beans with fresh salsa and warm tortillas. There was good coffee in the pot. Off the kitchen was an alcove with a square table, where Cecilia sat drinking coffee. She was dressed in her customary black. There was an assault rifle propped against the wall behind her. Ninfa bustled in the kitchen, wished Luz a good morning, told her to sit. A morning news program babbled on the wall-mounted flat-screen between two mounted deer heads.
Cecilia, examining football scores in a paper open on the table, didn’t acknowledge Luz when she sat. Ninfa brought her a plate. The salsa ran around the rim. Cecilia folded her paper and sat back with her coffee. By way of a greeting she finally looked at Luz and winked without smiling.
“Your uncle isn’t home yet?”
Cecilia shook her head. She rolled her hand through the air and held up fingers: Two days. Then she drained her coffee and scooted out from the table. She hefted her rifle and left through the front door.
Ninfa came out from the kitchen then, and asked if she might join Luz.
“Of course.”
The woman sat. She stirred milk into her coffee. “I have worked here for five years, since this has been señor Zegas’s home. It will be nice to have someone else around.” She leaned forward, cupped an old hand around her mouth, and added quietly, “Someone I can speak with, I mean.” Terror flashed on her face and she added, “Please do not tell Cecilia I said that.”
Luz waved her concerns away, more interested in the notion that Ninfa believed she was here to stay, for a while at least. But she held onto this, decided not to prod further. Instead she asked the housekeeper about the home, who came and went.
“Oh,” she said, “this is señor Zegas’s house alone. His niece works in Monterrey, but she stays in the house when she visits. I also make my quarters here, naturally. But the men rotate in and out, and they bunk in the other cottage.” She paused, sipped her coffee. “I always assumed señor Zegas kept his girlfriends in other places. It will be very nice having you here.” Again, that quick look of terror: “My mouth runs now that I have somebody to speak with—forgive me.”
Luz crossed her arms. The coffee settled hot in her belly, making her feel sick. “Did somebody tell you I was his girlfriend?”
Ninfa’s features scrunched. “Aren’t you?”
A heavy pause. Luz didn’t answer. She asked how Ninfa came to be there.
She began to clear the plates from the table. She spoke over her shoulder. “My husband once worked with him, too, but he passed, and señor Zegas has treated me well.”
Luz said she was sorry. Ninfa’s tone indicated that it had happened a long time before, but Luz couldn’t help seeing the man with graying hair, hand clapped to his eye, tumble into the void beyond the brink of the cliff.