now she’s this beautiful woman that all the boys are looking at.”

Joe started nodding in agreement, slightly redeeming himself from his earlier gaffe. She nodded as well. Gil leaned closer and said, “Rose, is it possible he did more than look?”

She nodded again. Gil felt some of the tension he had been holding on to leave him. “What makes you think that? Did something happen?”

“I don’t know . . . when Ashley was little, he would always tell her to pose sexy when he took her picture,” she said.

“And that bothered you,” Gil said. “That would bother any mother.”

“Then when she was older, he would buy her these tight shirts,” Rose said.

“Were there any other times?” Gil said. He was waiting for more, because he knew from experience there had to be.

“This other time, I came home and he was in the living room pulling his pants up and Ashley was sitting next to him,” she said. “He said he was just adjusting his belt, but you don’t pull your pants down to do that.” She looked up sharply, realizing that she had just described an awful scene in an almost nonchalant way. It was likely she had never told anyone that story. Certainly she had gone over it again and again in her head, cataloguing excuses for her husband and supplying logical explanations of how it was just innocent behavior. Now that she had told the story out loud, she could no longer pretend there was anything innocent about it.

Gil had one last question that he needed to ask before he could free himself from the conversation. “Rose, do you think your husband could have gotten Ashley pregnant?”

Lucy finished the labyrinth and then headed toward the sound of the music. She took the long way around, wondering why the street names downtown were so different than in the rest of Santa Fe. Here, there were no avenidas, calles, or caminos. It seemed strange that the oldest part of town was the one with the most Anglo-sounding streets. She dodged down Washington Street, trying to figure out what its original name had been. The road had already been in existence for a hundred years by the time Washington became president. Some long-dead conquistador captain was probably wondering what had happened to his street.

Lucy loved this part of town. When you stared at it, the history seeped out where the cracked edge of a building showed the adobe underneath. Every building was connected to the next with mismatched roofs and walls, and all of them were built in different architectural styles that were called things like “Territorial” or “Pueblo Revival.”

As she got closer to the Plaza, the music and noise from the crowd got louder, making Lucy hurry up a step. She had never been to fiesta. It held the title of oldest continual celebration in the country, but it was really about a people who made a promise three centuries ago to throw a party if they were given back Santa Fe. And party they have. Every year since.

Lucy suddenly found herself in the throng. This wasn’t like Mardi Gras or Carnival. There was no raucous celebration or purposeful nakedness. This was nice fun. Family fun. That’s probably why the party had continued all these years. Because it was about family, and what was the native Hispanic population of Santa Fe but one big, genetically isolated family? This was the biggest family reunion in the world.

Mrs. Rodriguez went back into the room to see Ashley while Gil and Joe went to find a doctor. It was time to question Ashley. Beyond time, really. Clearly she had never been interviewed properly, but it wasn’t as simple as just going into her hospital room.

Gil had been there when both of his daughters were born and knew the drill. There were two stages of labor before it was time to push the baby out: the early stage, when the contractions last about thirty seconds and come every twenty minutes, and the active stage, when the contractions are longer and come every few minutes. If Ashley was in early labor, she could hold a conversation, but, if she was anything like Susan, during the active stage she’d be screaming out the pain. Gil needed to know what stage Ashley was in, and for that he needed a doctor.

They found one standing at the nurses’ station. She introduced herself as Dr. Mariana Santiago. Gil explained the situation as best he could to the doctor, then