bodies. The men had gone off trail. The boys had no respect for them, so as far as they were concerned, the vultures could have them. They were many miles from their run-down cabin, and by the time someone did find the bodies—if they did—there would be no tracks leading back to them.
Rubin glanced down at the tracks around his cabin. They were recent. The grass was barely pressed down, as if either the person going in and out of their home didn’t weigh much or enough time had passed that the grass was beginning to stand again. He’d let his brother figure it out. Diego was amazing at tracking.
“You going inside?” Diego’s southern accent had deepened as it often did when they returned to their roots.
“I’m thinking on it,” Rubin said. “It was a long trip and I’m tired, but if I go inside and the place is a mess, I’ll be upset and won’t be able to settle for the night.” He wouldn’t anyway. There were too many memories crowding in. It always happened that way when they came back. He was always conflicted when he first came home. Always. How could he not be? They’d lost so much.
The flu hit the winter they turned thirteen. Ruby, Jayne and their mother all came down with it. Rubin had never felt so helpless in his life. He tried to nurse them back to health. He tried every potion and herbal medicine he knew to cure them. Nothing seemed to work. He couldn’t bring down their fevers. They buried Jayne first. Three days later, Ruby died. Their mother was down for six weeks. She never spoke a single word after that. She sat in a chair and rocked back and forth, humming songs and refusing to eat or acknowledge any of them no matter how much Star tried to coax her.
The winter they turned fourteen was a bad one and they had no choice but to go out hunting, often long distances, or starve. When they returned from one particularly long hunt, Star was sobbing. Their mother’s body swung from a rope hung from the center beam of the miserable little cabin. Star was inconsolable, certain their mother’s death was her fault. She’d fallen asleep for just a few minutes. It was left to Rubin and Diego to cut their mother down and bury her alongside her husband and children in the graveyard behind the cabin, a nearly impossible task in the hard, frozen ground.
They woke the next morning to find a note from their sister explaining she couldn’t stay. She was sorry and hoped they would forgive her, but she was going to the nuns in the neighboring town a good distance away. Rubin and Diego were alarmed. The snow and ice were bad and the distance too far. None of the family had good winter gear. She was dead by the time they found her, frozen in a small crevice near the stream where Lucy and Jayne had been attacked. It took them three days to dig a hole deep enough to bury Star in the family graveyard.
The graveyard was still behind the house. They planted wildflowers over the graves and kept it nice each year they returned. They also worked on the cabin, improving it just a little, knowing they would return to help those who distrusted doctors and refused to go anywhere near cities or towns and outsiders but would trust one of their own.
“You going inside or just going to stand there with your hand on the door?” Diego prompted him again.
“I’m contemplating.” Rubin gave him a look. Sometimes being ten months older meant he could be bossy, not that Diego ever acknowledged anyone was his boss. He preferred to think they were twins and therefore the same age.
Diego flashed a little cocky grin. “If you keep contemplating, we’re both going to have white beards by the time you make up your mind whether to open the door.”
“Did it ever occur to you this could be a trap? Someone might have a grenade strapped to the doorknob, and if I turn it and walk inside, that’s the end of both of us? We’ve got a few enemies. I could be saving your life.”
“I don’t make enemies. No one ever knows I exist. I’m a ghost,” Diego pointed out.
That was true enough, Rubin had to concede. In a forest, or just about anywhere really, Diego was difficult to spot. He was one of the best, and