CHAPTER 7

Voices from the midmorning crowd stopped talking the second Santiago, María Dolores, and Alegría emerged in the bar. A few of the men raised their eyebrows or winked. Santiago reached into the pocket of his new jeans to grip his dull pocketknife. He’d seen eyes like these before: on dogs ready to attack a stray chicken.

“Didn’t your mamis teach you it’s rude to stare? Sin vergüenzas,” María Dolores called out, but Santiago noticed her grip on Alegría’s hand tighten. In a no-nonsense strut, she went to an empty table and set down their bags, which they hadn’t felt safe leaving in the room. Once María Dolores sat, Alegría slipped into her lap and buried her face in her mamá’s chest.

“She’s right—shame on you all.” Don José emerged from the stairs after them. “So either you behave or get the hell out of my cantina.”

Everyone returned to their conversations, but Santiago could feel rather than see the late breakfast patrons still sneaking glances at them.

The old man shuffled to the bar and brought café con leche and a plate with three doughnuts to their table.

“I don’t get involved,” he muttered under his breath to them, “but I wouldn’t trust most of these men with anything. Especially my life.” Then he cleared the dishes from the neighboring table and wiped down the surface as the chef brought food out from the kitchen.

Alegría uncurled enough from her fetal position to enjoy a doughnut but didn’t leave her mamá’s lap. The hairs on the back of Santiago’s neck continued to send off warnings.

Two guys at the table to their left started talking in hushed whispers—whispers that were really too loud if they truly wanted no one to hear.

“They found six bodies in the desert the other day, fried to a crisp. It was that Domínguez. He tells these innocent people he can get them across at a good price and then abandons them in the middle of nowhere. Poor souls,” the first guy said with an accent only found in pretentious telenovelas.

“People are really stupid sometimes.” The second man spoke in a whiny voice.

Pretentious crowded closer to his friend, ready to divulge a huge secret. “We’ve got two spots left in the van tonight, but I think a pair from Puebla will take them.”

“Is that the new van with air-conditioning?”

“Yeah, it’s a sweet ride with Arizona plates,” Pretentious agreed. “Crosses the border without a glitch, and everyone’s in Tucson by the morning.”

“What do you charge again?” Whiny asked.

Pretentious shrugged and waved his hand aside. “Oh, you know me. I just want to help these poor people reach their destination. I’m sure we can strike a deal that’s, uh, comfortable for everyone.”

Santiago slammed his coffee mug on the table. They didn’t have to say it for him to understand they meant to take advantage of María Dolores. María Dolores narrowed her eyes; a quarter of the doughnut turned in her hand, like she wanted to chuck it at Pretentious’s head. To Santiago’s disappointment, she didn’t.

Two different men got up from a far table and walked to the bar to settle their bill. As they passed, one of them casually dropped a piece of paper on their table. María Dolores snatched it up, scanned it, and hastily crumpled it in her hand.

Santiago leaned in and spoke in a whisper that even Alegría, still on her mother’s lap, wouldn’t be able to hear. “What did it say?”

“It’s a marriage proposal,” she whispered back.

“¿Qué?” Santiago blurted. Half the men turned to look at them again.

María Dolores sent him a silencing glare before whispering the rest. “He claims to be a U.S. citizen and would like to marry me. For a fee.”

“¡Qué locos desgraciados!” This time he remembered to keep quiet.

“Agreed. I’m done here.”

She paid for their breakfast, and they gathered their things to take back upstairs. Once in their room, the door locked, they kept their voices low. From the next room they could hear everything their neighbor said on the phone.

“I don’t know what to do.” With a sigh of defeat, María Dolores crumpled onto the bed. “My sister said once we got here it’d be easy to find a coyote to take us across the border, but she crossed with her husband. I hate it, but I’m scared. This is going to be harder than I thought.”

“I don’t like it here, Mami.” Alegría sucked the leftover doughnut sugar from her fingers. “These men aren’t nice.”

“I know, mamita.” She kissed her daughter’s head before turning back to Santiago. “How can we find someone trustworthy?”

Santiago leaned against the closed door.

“Okay, how about this?” he said. The idea scared him, but the more he thought it through, the more realistic it would be to pull off. “I’ll help out in the kitchen, clear tables, o lo que sea. As long as I mind my own business, grown-ups don’t notice me. I’ll keep my ears open and find a coyote we can trust.”

“El viejo won’t pay you to work,” María Dolores pointed out.

“So? I’ll tell him I’m bored and you want me out of the room for a while.” Fear merged with excitement. He could do this.

María Dolores ran her fingers through her daughter’s pigtails. “I don’t know.”

“It’ll work.” Santiago bobbed his head. “Those men were obnoxious. But others might come in later who aren’t. I’ll check them out and report back.”

She sighed and agreed to the plan. “I’ve never had a brother, but if I did, I’d wish he were like you.”

He reached for María Dolores’s and Alegría’s hands, giving them both a gentle squeeze, then letting go quickly, not sure if he’d overstepped some invisible boundary. “You two are pretty cool too.”

He gathered himself to leave. At the door, his hand paused in midair above the handle. He turned, slowly. Madre e hija stared back at him.

“Will you still be here when I come back?” he asked.

“Of course!”

“¿Me lo prometes?” he whispered, addressing her for the first time as a friend, instead of a stranger.

María Dolores reached into her pocket and pulled out a black lava stone smoothed into a flattened heart. She placed it into Santiago’s hand. “This stone has been passed down for generations in my family and was given to me by my abuela when she died. It’s the most valuable thing I have, and I’d be heartbroken if I lost it. Hold on to it for me and give it back when you return.”

She closed his fingers around the stone. It warmed his palm, like the lava still retained some life. The hearts of her ancestors. He didn’t believed her story, but it was a nice stone. He could keep it safe for a few hours.