"I asked him to come to Bearpaw Ridge for the party, and he said he couldn't." She didn't have to fake her sigh. "It's really short notice, you know. And it's still fire season. I'm pretty sure that Steve can't ask for any time off right now."
Abuela Inez snorted. Maggie looked up and met her grandmother's sharp brown gaze.
"They're going to make him fight fires with an injured leg?" she asked skeptically. "Last night, he told us that he was grounded for the next few weeks and spending his days folding parachutes and repairing things."
Crap.
"I did my best to convince him," Maggie protested, still telling the truth. "He doesn't want to come."
"What do you mean, he doesn't want to come? Didn't you tell him how important this is?"
"I did. He said no. I can't force him." Now Maggie was getting angry.
It was so unfair! She'd tried so hard to disentangle herself from the unhealthy web of family expectations and clan obligations. Now here she was, all tied up like a spider's dinner, the silken cords wound tighter than ever.
Abuela Inez's frown struck terror in Maggie's heart. "Something doesn't smell right. First you tell us that you want to mate someone you've only known for a week, and now he doesn't want to be formally introduced to our clan?" Her eyes narrowed. "Margarita, what's going on? And don't try to lie to me."
What am I going to tell her, that she'll believe?
Maggie swallowed hard. Her mind went blank.
Then her phone began to ring.
"Sorry," she said to her parents and grandmother, thankful for the interruption as she pulled her phone out of her purse. The Caller ID displayed the very last name she expected to see. "It's Steve. I have to take this. Will you excuse me, please?"
Without waiting for a reply, she pushed back her chair, stood, and strode out of the restaurant in search of privacy.
* * *
Rocky Mountain Smokejumper Base
Earlier that day
Steve left his lunchtime meeting with the attorney with his head spinning. He was in a state of information overload.
During the free consultation, the attorney, an older Black man with a no-nonsense air, had described the steps required to object to Aarón and Tina's petition for conservatorship.
Then he'd laid out the list of expenses that Steve would be facing if he decided to go ahead and challenge the conservatorship: not only a hefty retainer for the attorney's time but also fees for hiring a specialist to perform an independent evaluation of Abuelita's health and mental acuity, not to mention all of the time and legal costs associated with filing and serving an Objection to the Petition for Conservatorship in the San Diego Superior Court.
But first, Steve needed to find out whether his brother had actually filed the petition for a conservatorship over Abuelita Delfina.
Back at the smokejumper base, he resumed inspecting and packing parachutes. While he worked, he tried to fight a growing sense of despair at the dizzying amount of money required to help his abuelita like he'd promised.
The rest of his work day crawled by at a frustratingly slow pace.
As soon as he was off the clock, he tried phoning Tina again. She hadn't answered his previous calls or replied to any of his texts, so he was surprised when she actually answered the call this time.
She opened the conversation with, "Stevie, you have to stop spamming me like this. Please believe that we're doing the right thing for our abuelita." She sounded exhausted.
"But something just doesn’t feel right about this," Steve insisted. "Do you really trust Aarón to have our abuelita's best interest at heart? What if he's just doing this to get control of the family business?"
There was a long silence, and Steve began to hope that Tina might actually be reconsidering her support of their older brother.
But when she spoke again, her tone was hostile. "You have no idea about what's been going on, because you left us—left me—and moved to Colorado for that crazy job of yours. When was the last time you were home, huh? Christmas?" She gave a bitter-sounding huff.
"I'm sorry," Guilt stabbed him like a red-hot needle.
Not only had he abandoned his grandmother by taking a job far from San Diego, but he had left Tina to fend for herself as well. Whenever they spoke, she reminded him of how tough it was to get ahead as a woman in their clan, especially without a brother to advocate for her.