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"You
gave us everything we wanted. Everything except yourself. I used to think you
were consumed by your career, but now I know it was because you didn't give a
damn about anyone except yourself. And fifteen years hasn't changed that."

During
the course of our argument our voices had risen, apparently unnoticed by either
of us. Cate had moved around her desk and was standing close enough that I had
to restrain myself from smacking her just because it would have felt so damn
good. She must have had the same idea because her hands were balled into fists.
Whatever thoughts I was having were interrupted by a knock at the door. Before
Cate could respond, the door opened partway, and a woman stuck her head into
the room. She smiled at us uneasily.

"Do
you need some assistance, Cate?" she asked with a quick look at me.

"No,
Susan. Ms. Carlisle was just leaving."

Susan
remained at the door and opened it further, pulling wire-rim glasses from her
face, and stared at me. I would have guessed that she was a few years younger
than me, but the gray in her hair made it hard to tell.

I
turned back to Cate and leaned closer to her. "Don't call me again."

Before
she had a chance to respond, I turned and walked to the door. I stopped and
glared at Susan until she moved away from the door. As I went down the hallway,
I heard her ask, "Who the hell is that?"

"A
dissatisfied former client." Cate's response was bitter.

Chapter
Eleven

I
COULD'VE SLEPT in Wednesday morning, but I'd been restless since returning to
the ranch. The sun was just beginning to break through the treeline in front of
the house when I carried a cup of coffee out on to the front porch and settled
into my father's favorite wooden rocker. Except for the chatter of a few birds
and the repetitive squeaking of the rocker on the wooden porch, everything was
peaceful.

The
quiet of the morning was broken by the roaring sound of a car engine, and I
squinted down the road leading to the house. A cloud of brown dust was
billowing up from the unpaved road, and I knew Lena was on her way. I like
being left alone but never got the hang of housekeeping. I hired Lena Rubio to
come out once a week to dust, wash, and do other little household jobs.
Wednesday was Lena's day in the country.

She
was a no-nonsense woman of forty although she looked older. I hadn't asked many
questions about her past and wasn't interested in credentials when I met her at
a local bar. Best guess was that once upon a time she had been a real
heartbreaker. Now she was usually a little overmade and hadn't missed many
meals over the years. She always had an off-color joke to tell, smoked like a
chimney, cussed like a sailor, and threw back drinks with the best of them. I'd
met some rough-around-the-edges women in my life, and Lena ranked at least in
my top ten most memorable women. But she had a heart of gold and was a sucker
for anyone's sob story after a few beers.

Her
old car slid to a stop near the porch, sending a cloud of dust toward me. I
leaned against a porch post to wait as she hauled herself from the vehicle and
had to smile when I saw her. Her black hair was piled haphazardly on top of her
head with several strands falling down onto her face and neck. She reached into
her car and pulled out a large fabric bag and slung it over her shoulder before
slamming the car door shut.

"Rough
night?" I asked as she trudged toward the front steps.

"Fuck
you, Jo," she said as she continued up the steps and past me into the
house.

From
her response I knew immediately that she had overslept and hadn't had her
coffee yet. I caught the front screen before it slammed shut and followed her
into the kitchen. She threw her bag onto the kitchen table and grabbed a coffee
cup from the cabinet next to the sink. When she turned around, I was already
there with the pot of hot, black heart-starter. She shoved the cup toward me, and
I poured. Carrying the cup to the table and sipping noisily as she sat, she
stopped long enough to dig through the bag, finally fishing out a pack of
generic cigarettes and a scratched-up Zippo lighter. She took a long drag on
the cigarette as she snapped the lighter closed with a metallic click.

"God,
I hate mornings," she said through exhaled smoke.

"Then
come later. I don't give a shit when you get here," I said.

"Too
damn hot later." She smiled at me, showing teeth that would have made an
orthodontist drool. "Maybe I just move in here with you, sugar," she
continued, squinting as smoke slowly rose over her face. "Then Lena won't
have to worry about gettin' too hot...'cept maybe at night."

"Afraid
I couldn't handle that one, Lena."

"You
skinny women all alike." She laughed loudly. "Shit, I squash you like
a bug in bed."

"But
if you're any good, it'd be worth dying for, right?"

"Don't
you worry youself 'bout that. Lena good enough. What you got today? Same as
usual."

"Yeah,
I haven't been back long enough to make much of a mess."

"It
ain't like you use all the rooms or nothin'. Three, four at the most." She
leaned toward me. "I tell you the truth, Jo. I a'most feel guilty 'bout
takin' you money."

"I
don't feel guilty about giving it to you, so what's the difference?"

"You
know, some of the nosies in town are thinkin' you and me got somethin' goin'
out here."

"Really?"
I chuckled, remembering Cate's questions about Lena.

"You
bet you ass. 'Fore long everbody gonna believe I'm Jo Carlisle's woman."

I
had to laugh at the idea of the old-timers around Kerrville gossiping about me
and Lena. Most of them hadn't seen me since I was eighteen and went off to
college, although I liked to think I'd left one or two broken hearts behind
when I left.

"No
one believes that, Lena. You're too much woman for me," I said.

"You
fuckin' right 'bout that."

She
crammed the cigarette between her lips, picked up her coffee cup, and waddled
into the laundry room behind the kitchen. As I left the kitchen, I could hear
her singing to herself and water running into the washing machine. Lena was a
good woman who had developed an unsavory reputation when she was younger and
never bothered to set the record straight. She had never married and had no
children. Most people regarded her as easy, and I had heard plenty of men
bragging about being with her, but somehow I couldn't bring myself to believe
everything I'd heard.

Half
an hour later I was ready to go out the door. Lena was vacuuming the living
room as I came down the stairs. She was wearing headphones and had a cheap
cassette player clipped to the waistband of her polyester pants. In between
pushes and pulls on the vacuum she undulated to whatever she was listening to.
Watching her, I couldn't begin to imagine what kind of music could possibly
inspire those particular movements. When I tapped her on the shoulder, she
jumped nearly a foot, ripping the headphones off.

"You
tryin' to give me a fuckin' heart attack, you stupid bitch! You shouldn't sneak
up on a body like that."

"Didn't
mean to scare you. I'm taking Jack out for a while. I'll be back in an hour or
so."

"You
think I give a damn where you go? Ain't like nobody ever calls or comes out
here. You live like some kinda hermit anyway, like you 'fraid of folks. If you
die, nobody know or care."

She
pulled another cigarette out of her pocket. As I was going out the door, I
glanced back and saw she had resumed her dance with the vacuum cleaner.

When
I moved back to the ranch, I sold off all the livestock except Jack. He still
had some fight left in him but was reliable, and like me, getting too old to
care about very much. We hadn't gotten off to a great start, and I doubted that
a friendship would ever develop between us because we were both too accustomed
to having our own way. But over the last year and a half, I came to admire his
independent nature while he tolerated my stubbornness.

After
lunch, I locked myself in the darkroom to develop some film I'd shot before I
went to San Antonio on my Good Samaritan mission. I was in the middle of
developing the first roll when Lena banged on the darkroom door.

"Jo!
You got company!" she hollered through the door.

"Who
the hell is it?" I yelled back.

"'Nother
woman. You really be robbin' the cradle with this chica."

"I'll
be out in a minute."

"Don't
take all day. I ain't no hostess here."

Damn!
The road to my house was turning into a tourist attraction. The advantage to
living away from town was supposed to be that no one wanted to drive all that
way just to visit.

No
one was in the living room six or seven minutes later when I left the darkroom,
and I thought maybe whoever it was had already left. As I entered the kitchen,
Sarita Ramirez was sitting at the kitchen table with Lena, looking a little
uncomfortable as she twisted a glass of tea in front of her. She stood up
quickly when I came into the room.

"How
are you, Miss Ramirez?" I said, going to the refrigerator and grabbing the
pitcher of tea.

"Sarita,
please. I'm sorry to intrude on you, Ms. Carlisle, but I really have to speak
to you," she said.

"About
what? Refill?" I asked, taking a glass from the cabinet next to the sink.

"No,
thank you. I've spoken to Kyle's mother, and she told me she had asked you to
help him. I wanted to tell you that I appreciated that. He's very stubborn, but
he does need someone's help even if he doesn't want to admit it."

"I've
done everything I can without knowing more about his story. I have to have a
starting point."

"I
can tell you what the story is. If you know that, will you help him?"

"Go
ahead," I said as I poured tea into a glass and took a drink.

She
glanced at Lena and then back at me.

"Would
you prefer to go into my office?" I asked.

"It
don't matter none, honey. She gonna tell me everthin' after you gone
anyhow," Lena said with a chuckle.

Sarita
blushed slightly and followed me to my office.

"Does
Kyle know you're here?" I asked.

"No.
I called in sick today after he left for work."

"If
he finds out he might not be too happy that you came here."

"But
he'd still be alive."

"You
know that Kyle and I aren't on speaking terms, and I assume you know why,"
I said.

"Cate
explained it to me, and I've seen pictures of the three of you together when he
was a child."

"Have
you ever asked him about them?"

"He
doesn't discuss his past with me."

"All
right," I said with a shrug, "tell me what you know."

"Before
I moved to San Antonio and met Kyle, I taught school not far from here, in
Mountain View, for a couple of years. It was a nice little town until ABP moved
in."

"ABP?"

"American
Beef and Pork. They bought the old meatpacking plant in Mountain View and
expanded it. Almost as soon as they bought the plant, ABP started bringing in
workers from someplace else and laying off the local workers who were in the
union. The new workers are earning half what the union workers were."

I
looked at her and shrugged again.

"Anyway,"
she continued, "the whole town changed almost overnight. Most of the
workers hired by ABP were Hispanic and spoke virtually no English. In fact, the
Hispanic population of Mountain View grew by nearly four hundred percent in the
time I was there. Hispanic children flooded the schools, and the school
district couldn't afford to fund a bigger bilingual program. They asked ABP for
more tax money, but the company only made a one-time payment and refused to pay
more."

"Is
that why you left?"

"The
workload became intolerable. I was the only Hispanic teacher in the school.
Over time, in addition to my teaching duties, I was spending more and more time
acting as a translator for administration as well as other teachers. It wasn't
the money, and I don't mind hard work, but the town was becoming unsafe. There
were a lot of assaults and burglaries. So eventually I decided to apply to one
of the San Antonio school districts."

"Do
you think these new employees are illegals?"

"They
had to be, but most of the ones I spoke to about their children were eager to
show me their papers. If they were fakes, there's no way I would have
known."

"Did
anyone report any of this to INS?"

"Of
course, but when they finally came, they didn't find more than two or three
illegals. Another teacher told me she had heard that most of the ABP employees
didn't go to work that day. They may have been warned."

"Did
the children stay in school all year?"

"No,
there was a very large turnover of students."