didn't figure on grandkids.
Who would take care of the ranch when Becca was gone?
They rode to the Bonner family cemetery where eleven white headstones stood. They dismounted and went inside the white picket fence under the shade of a tall oak tree. Bode's great-grandparents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, mother and father, and big sister. Emma had been special. Blonde and beautiful, tough and smart-she had been the queen of the rodeo and the rodeo star. She was the Bonner who would make the family proud. Then she was gone. Then they were all gone. His sister when he was thirteen, his parents when he was sixteen. Ramon and Chelo had taken him the rest of the way to manhood. They had cheered him in the stands as if he were their own son. Ramon was a wise old man who had helped Bode the boy through the dark days. He had something to say.
'When Senorita Emma died, I knew more death would follow. After your madre died, and then your padre so soon after, you were lost… until the senora came into your life. Your path is with her. It has always been so.'
Ramon mounted up and rode off to check on the herd in the west pasture. Bode rode on to the far hills, the highest point on the ranch. From there he could see the entire ranch-and the entirety of his life on the ranch. It had been a simple life, a good life, the country life. He had been happy living this life. He had been a boy here, until his father taught him how to be a man here. He had buried his mother here and then his father. He had married and become a father here. He had lived his life here. And the life he had lived here had been a real life.
Why had he left this life?
He had told himself back then that he was leaving to do good, and perhaps that was true at first. But there was no lying to himself now. His parents had put him on a straight path here on this ranch, but he had veered off course onto another path, one that took him to the State Capitol and then the Governor's Mansion and might even take him to the White House. Was that Bode Bonner's path in life?
He sat on his horse and pondered Ramon's words.
And he wondered if Bode Bonner had made the family proud.
He rode back to the house and joined the kids in the pool. He put on a good face for them, but the image of Mandy's face being blown off kept him constant company now. He still couldn't believe she was gone. Because of him.
He got out and sat in a lounge chair under an umbrella next to Becca. It was good to have kids playing in the pool again. They had wanted more children, but the pregnancy was difficult; the doctor said the next one could be dangerous. So Becca was an only child.
'I wish Mom was here,' she said.
'Me, too.'
'Do you really?'
He nodded. 'We need her.'
'You hurt her.'
'I know.'
'What are you going to do about that?'
'I don't know.'
'Are you going to try to get her back?'
'I'm not sure she wants me back.'
'You're part of her.'
Josefina played in the pool. The therapist had helped her. Each day Bode saw the little girl emerge from the frightened soul they had rescued that day in West Texas.
'We need to buy her a new dress,' Becca said. 'Her yellow one is getting ratty, she wears it every day.'
'Find her a new one in town.'
'I don't want to leave the ranch.'
Bode patted his daughter's hand. Josefina now climbed out of the pool and came over. Bode tossed her a towel. She wrapped the big towel around her little body then stepped to him and gave him a hug.
'What's that for?'
Becca had learned Spanish from Ramon and Chelo and the vaqueros. She translated. Bode had never bothered to learn their language. So he spoke Spanglish, the Tex-Mex butchered version, like a Texan cooking Mexican food. It was about time he learned the language.
'?Por que tan carinosa? ' Becca said.
' Quiero ser tuya,' Josefina said.
'She said she wants to be yours.'
Bode frowned. 'No, no, honey, it doesn't work that way in America. What those men did to you, that was wrong, okay? Men in America, we don't have little girls for our-'
'Daddy,' Becca said. 'She didn't mean it that way. She wants to be your daughter.' She turned to Josefina: '?Hija? '
She nodded. ' Si. Hija. '
Becca grinned at Bode.
'I always wanted a little sister.'
'Lindsay, if El Diablo learns that you are the governor's wife, he will kill you before the sun again rises over the Rio Grande. You must go home.'
'I am home.'
Jesse and Lindsay got out of the pickup truck and walked into the house followed by Pancho. They placed the grocery bags on the kitchen counter next to the phone. The red message light was bright. Jesse hit the PLAY button and listened to messages from Mayor Gutierrez and Latino legislators and business people from around the state-all pleading with him to be the Latino who takes Texas back from the Anglos. The latest polls showed Jesse in a dead heat with the governor.
'Of course,' the mayor said on the recording, 'we might not have to beat the governor-for-life because he might not be alive much longer.'
Jesse stopped the message and turned to Lindsay.
'Sorry. Gutierrez and these other old Latinos, they are of another generation. They are still angry over past injustices. They want to fight the Mexican-American War again. But fighting past battles again does not help the people today, here on the border.'
'No,' Lindsay said. 'It doesn't help them at all.'
'And the leaders from the state and national Democratic Party, they think if I beat your husband here in Texas, he could not win the presidency.'
'Losing governors don't win the White House.'
'But they are just using me to further their agendas.'
'That's what they do.'
'The Democrats do not care about the people here on the border any more than the Republicans. I am just useful to them. They just want me to take the governor's job so to save the president's job. As if the president needs me.'
The phone rang. Jesse picked up the receiver and put it to his ear.
'Hello.'
'Dr. Rincon?'
'Yes.'
'Please hold for the president.'
THIRTY-FIVE
German immigrants settled most of the Texas Hill Country in the mid-1800s. The liberal Germans settled in Comfort. They called themselves 'free thinkers.' They opposed slavery and the Confederacy during the Civil War. Twenty-eight of those Germans paid for their beliefs with their lives; they were ambushed and massacred by the Confederates in 1862.
