It never rained in South Texas. Except this summer, the pattern seemed to have finally broken. The sky had been cloudy for three days, the air laden with humidity, when Susan set out for town, but that was typical Bee County weather. Maybe the drought was over. Finally. She wiped rain from her eyes and squinted. The driving rain and wind made it hard to see the road in front of her. The wagon swayed and creaked as the horse strained against the gale.
The Byler farmhouse couldn’t be much farther. Hazel squirmed in the seat next to her. The little girl tried so hard to be brave, but every time thunder boomed she shrieked and clutched Susan’s arm. That made it hard to keep the slippery reins in her hands.
“Child, it’s okay. We’re fine.” She patted Hazel’s head for one quick second. The clouds were so dark, the day had turned to night. The ruts filled with water. Lightning split the sky, then receded. “Only a mile or two more.”
“I don’t like this.”
“It’s just water.” Susan searched for comforting words. “Look at it this way. You’ve had your bath for the week. You know how you hate taking a bath.”
“For two weeks.” Hazel sounded only slightly mollified. “You tell Mudder.”
“I’ll tell your mudder.”
Abigail would be tickled. By the time a mother got to her fifth child, baths didn’t rise to the level of an argument so much anymore. As long as the child didn’t stink or make the sheets muddy.
Thunder boomed so close, Brownie shook his long neck and whinnied.
“Aenti!”
“It’s okay, sweet pea. Why don’t you sing? Pick a song, any song.”
The grip on Susan’s arm eased. “La cucaracha, la cucaracha—”
“The what?”
Another voice, as young and sweet as Hazel’s, joined in. Susan craned her head and peered at the road. Right there, in the middle of the road. Two figures. Short, thin, little. Kinner. “What . . . who is that?”
“Diego!” The taller child—Lupe—tugged at the shorter one and headed for the side of the road. “Come.”
Diego apparently had other ideas. He bolted toward the wagon. Lupe whirled to follow. She slipped and fell in the mud. Diego cackled with glee and kept coming.
Susan tugged on the reins. “Whoa, whoa!”
They came to a halt and she hopped down. “Diego? Lupe? What are you doing out here in this storm?”
“Running away.” His face streaked with rain and mud, Diego grinned. “We go to San Antonio.”
“Diego.” Lupe had mud from the tip of her nose to the end of her bare toes. “Stop telling her.”
“Lupe, why are you running away?” Hazel scrambled from the wagon and stomped through the mud with a splat-splat. “You can’t leave. We haven’t finished our baby quilt.”
“Hombre malo. Have to go.” Lupe grabbed her brother’s arm and jerked him away from Hazel’s reach. “We go now.”
“Why?”
“Man in van come to take us away. Hombre malo.”
“In a blue van?”
“Sí.”
“That’s the people Rebekah and Tobias told you about. Rebekah’s sister and brother-in-law. He’s a good man. Very good man. He used to live here with us. Tobias and Rebekah went to talk to them, remember?”
Lupe’s face remained woebegone. “I don’t want to leave.”
“We don’t want you to leave.” Susan smoothed the girl’s wet bangs from her eyes with gentle fingers. She looked like a half-drowned kitten. “But we also want to do things the right way. Can you understand that?”
Lupe ducked her head. “What if right way is back to frontera?”
“Doing the right thing isn’t always easy.”
“Nothing easy.”
The rain chose that moment to stop. A sliver of sun peeked through clouds that collided, then parted. “You’re right. Life isn’t easy, but nobody promised it would be.”
To her utter surprise, Lupe leaned her face into Susan’s apron. One sob, then another escaped. “I tired.”
“Me too.” She hugged Lupe’s cold, wet body against her. “We have to go back so Jesse and Leila can help you figure out what to do so you can stay. Running away isn’t the answer.”
“We could go fishing.”
Susan turned to look at Hazel. The little girl squatted in the middle of the road, mud squeezing between her bare, plump toes. “See, the night crawlers are out.” She held out a fat worm pinched between two muddy fingers. The brownish-gray worm dangled and wiggled as if trying to get its footing to no avail. “Mordecai says these are the best for catching fish.”
Lupe slipped from her grasp and knelt next to Hazel. “My papi is going to take us to California. We’re going to go fishing. Mi abuela said so.”
Hazel grinned. “Do you want to take some worms? Is California far? They could be like Pedro, your pets. Until the fish eat them.”
Of all things to be talking about now. “Hazel, put the worm down. This is no time for—”
“Hey! Hey, Susan!”
Susan pivoted in time to see Tobias emerge from a shack tucked along the other side of the fence that separated the road from Byler property. Right behind him came Rebekah. No one followed. Just Rebekah and Tobias.
“Well.” She couldn’t think of a thing to say. “Well.”
“We were looking for the kinner.” Rebekah’s clothes were wet, wrinkled, and muddy. When she turned to look at Tobias, who was equally bedraggled, she revealed a huge muddy blotch on the back of her dress where her behind would be. “Then it stormed.”
Lupe hopped up, grabbed Diego’s hand, and took off running. “No, no,” Diego yelled, but Lupe didn’t stop. They careened across the road. Lupe shoved her brother through a gap in the fence and they disappeared into a dense thicket of juniper, live oak, mesquite, and nopales.
“Lupe, stop.” Tobias raced after them, his long stride eating up ground. “Stop, we only want to help.”
Rebekah scampered past him, thrust herself through the same gap, and disappeared after them.
Susan looked at Hazel, who stared back, her tiny face perplexed. “Should we go too?”
“Maybe. Maybe they’ll come back for you.”
Hazel grinned. “Diego likes me.”
“Child!”
She shrugged. “I like him, too, but not like that. He’s not Plain.”
“That’s right.” The sooner Hazel learned these things, the better. “Your poor mudder has been through enough.”
She took Hazel’s hand and together they squeezed through the gap and tried to follow the path left by the others. A shriek made her stop in her tracks. Hazel smacked into her from behind. “Hey.”
“What was that?”
Susan picked up speed, moving in the direction of the distinct sound of a child crying. Still holding Hazel’s hand, she burst through the stand of trees where she found Rebekah on the ground in a gully filling with rainwater. She clutched at her ankle, her face etched with pain. Tobias knelt next to her, his hand outstretched as if he would touch her. He looked back. His hand dropped. “Gut, you’re still here. We’ll need your wagon.”
“The kinner?”
“They got away.”