Fearless

That went double for Rodrigo, the educated bit. Glory couldn’t figure him out. He seemed the least likely person to be working as a manual laborer. It disturbed her that he’d given jobs to men like Castillo and Marco. Neither of the young men looked like farm hands. They were too savvy.

What if, she asked herself, Rodrigo was himself on the wrong side of the law? The question shocked her. He seemed so honest. But, she recalled, she’d prosecuted at least two people whose integrity was attested to by a veritable parade of character witnesses. But the criminals were only adept at putting on an act. A very convincing act, at that. Very often, people could be the exact opposites of their assumed roles.

Rodrigo might even be an illegal himself. Glory’s stepbrother, Jason Pendleton, was sympathetic to all sorts of people. He might have felt sorry for Rodrigo and given him the job out of sympathy.

What if Rodrigo was illegal, and mixed up in drug trafficking? She felt sick inside. What would she do? Her duty would be to turn him in and make sure he was prosecuted. She, of all people, knew the anguish drug dealers could cause parents. She knew the source of the drug money as well—upstanding, greedy businessmen who wanted to make a fortune fast, without putting too much effort into it. They didn’t see the families whose lives were torn apart by the effects of crystal meth or cocaine or methodone. They didn’t have to bury promising children, or watch their loved ones suffer through rehabilitation. They didn’t have to visit those children in prison. The money men didn’t care about all that. They just cared about their profit.

Could Rodrigo be one of those businessmen? Could he be a drug dealer, using the farm as a cover?

Her heart sank. Surely not. He was kind. He was intelligent and caring. He couldn’t be mixed up in that terrible business. But what, her conscience asked, if he was? If she knew, if she had proof, could she live with herself if she didn’t turn him in? Could she do that?

“My, what a long face!” Consuelo chided.

Glory caught herself and laughed self-consciously. “Is that how I look? Sorry. I was thinking about all that fruit waiting for us in the warehouse.”

Consuelo rolled her eyes. “Isn’t it the truth!”

They returned to casual conversation, and Glory put away her suspicions.

THAT EVENING, SHE SAT in the porch swing listening to the musical sound of crickets nearby. It was a sultry night, but not too hot. She closed her eyes and smelled jasmine on the night air. It had been a while since she’d been in a porch swing. She tried not to remember sitting beside her father on long summer nights and asking him about days past, when he was a little boy going to local rodeos. He knew all the famous bull riders and bronc riders, and often had invited them to the house for coffee and cake. Her mother hadn’t liked that. She considered such people beneath her station in life and deliberately absented herself when they came to the house. She felt her father’s sadness even now, years later…

The screen door opened and Rodrigo came outside. He paused to light a thin cigar before he turned toward Glory.

“The mosquitoes will eat you alive,” he cautioned.

She’d already killed two of the pesky things. “If they’re willing to sacrifice their lives to suck my blood, let them.”

He chuckled. He walked toward her and paused at the porch rail, looking out over the flat landscape in the distance. “It’s been a long time since I had time to worry about mosquitoes,” he mused. “Do you mind?” he indicated the empty place beside her.

She shook her head and he sat down, jostling the swing for a few seconds before he kicked it back into a smooth rhythm.

“Have you always worked on the land?” she asked him conversationally.

“In a sense,” he replied. He blew out a puff of smoke. “My father had a ranch, when I was a boy. I grew up with cowboys.”

She smiled. “So did I. My father took me to the rodeos and introduced me to the stars.” She grimaced. “My mother hated such people. She gave my father a bad time when he invited them to come and have coffee. But he did all the cooking, so she couldn’t complain that he was making work for her.”

He glanced at her. “What did your mother do?”

“Nothing,” she said coldly. “She wanted to be a rich man’s wife. She thought my father was going to stay in rodeo and bring home all that nice prize money, but he hurt his back and quit. She was furious when he bought a little farm with his savings.”

She didn’t mention that it was this house where they lived, or that the land which now produced vegetables and fruits had produced only vegetables for her father.

“Were her people well-to-do?”

“I have no idea who her people were,” she admitted. “I used to wonder. But it doesn’t make any difference now.”

He frowned. “Family is the most important thing in the world. Especially children.”

“You don’t have any,” she said without thinking.

His face set into hard lines and he didn’t look at her. “That doesn’t mean I didn’t want them,” he said harshly.

“I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I don’t know why I said that.”

He smoked his cigar in a tense silence. “I was on the verge of marrying,” he said after a minute. “She had a little girl. They were my life. I lost them to another man. He was the child’s biological father.”

She grimaced. His attitude began to make sense. “I’ll bet the little girl misses you,” she said.

“I miss her, as well.”

“Sometimes,” she began cautiously, “I think there’s a pattern to life. People come into your life when you need them to, my father used to say. He was sure that life was hard-wired, that everything happened as it was planned to happen. He said—” she hesitated, remembering her father’s soft voice, at his trial “—that we have to accept things that we can’t change, and that the harder we fight fate, the more painful it becomes.”

He turned toward her, leaning back against the swing chain with his long legs crossed. “Is he still alive—your father?”

“No.”

“Any sisters, brothers?”

“No,” she replied sadly. “Just me.”

“What about your mother?”

Her teeth clenched. “She’s gone, too.”

“You didn’t mourn her, I think.”

“You’re right. All I ever had from her was hatred. She blamed me for trapping her into a life of poverty on a little farm with a man who could hardly spell his own name.”

“She considered that she married down, I gather.”

“Yes. She never let my father forget how he’d ruined her life.”

“Which of them died first?”

“He did,” she said, not wanting to remember it. “She remarried very soon after the funeral. Her second husband had money. She finally had everything she wanted.”

“You would have benefited, too, surely.”

She drew in a slow breath and shifted her weight. “The judge considered that she was dangerous to me, so, with the best of intentions, she put me into foster care. I went to a family that had five other foster kids.”

“I know a little about foster homes,” he said, recalling some horror stories he’d heard from comrades who’d been in state custody, however briefly. Cord Romero and his wife, Maggie, came immediately to mind.

“I think life with my mother might have been easier, even if it had been more dangerous,” she murmured.

“Were you there a long time?”

“Not too long.” She didn’t dare say any more. He might have heard the Pendletons talk about their stepsister. “What was your childhood like?”