Chapter 5 Cruz
CRUZ
I catch the shape of her mouth from across the hall, the small brave curve of the words.
Yes, I am going to stay.
It lands in me like a coal cupped by two palms. Roman does not move.
He never gives away more than a breath.
Deacon looks past her shoulder to the window where the snow thickens, his mind already measuring how the night will settle around us.
I put my hand to the back of a chair to keep from doing something foolish, like crossing the space and lifting her clean off the floor.
The storm presses its face to the glass.
The pines wear frosting like crowns.
Inside, the lodge settles into the soft part of the day when plates are warm and laughter lives low. Dinner is not elegant, but it is right.
Roast chicken with pan drippings and rosemary, carrots stewed with orange peel, potatoes crisped in the cast iron and salted so the skin sings when your teeth break it.
She brought stollen that tastes like memory soaked in rum and good decisions.
I keep finding excuses to pass behind her chair, to set down another dish, to touch the back of the seat with two fingers as if the wood might tell me what she is thinking.
Isla anchors herself to Marisa’s side as if we have all agreed on this seating without saying a word.
My girl talks with her hands, crumb mustache bright on her upper lip, eyes flashing whenever I look at her. She is five going on forever.
She asks Marisa if angels bake and if so whether they use real vanilla or if heaven has something better.
Marisa tells her there is nothing better than real vanilla, which earns a solemn nod.
Deacon eats slowly, cataloging the spices as if they are structural elements in a cathedral.
Roman sits where he can see the room and the door, a habit he cannot put down, and he watches without blinking whenever Marisa laughs.
The men from the neighboring farm finish their plates, slap backs, and head out to their cabins with bellies full and faces ruddy.
A prospect asks if he should bank the fire or let it ride.
I tell him to let it ride.
The old stove in the kitchen clicks as it cools.
The lamps blink once, satisfied with themselves.
I pour water into a glass and set it within reach of Marisa’s elbow.
She takes it without looking, which means she trusts me, or it means I move like furniture.
I hope it is the first.
After dinner, Isla slides off her chair and announces that it is time for cards.
She points at the table by the fire with a queen’s command and adds a curtsy as if she remembers that we used to call the lodge Casa de Cupcake Defense whenever winter got rough.
Cards by the fire, she says, and penalty rounds.
Her idea of justice involves marshmallows and public embarrassment. I approve.
The guys haul out the battered box.
Someone produces honey whiskey from a cabinet that should be locked but never is. I tip the bottle, pour modestly, and catch Marisa’s eye.
“You play,” I ask.
“I work,” she answers, glancing toward the trays as if they might stage a coup in her absence.
“Work can wait,” I say, then lower my voice. “We will not play for anything you cannot afford to lose.”
Her mouth lifts, unsure, then sure.
She takes the seat beside me.
Isla climbs into the chair on Marisa’s other side, the kind of climb that starts with both feet and a determined grunt.
Roman stays in his chair near the hearth, not joining, not leaving. Deacon shuffles like a machine and deals without flourish.
Blackjack first, simple, clean.
I hit on sixteen, which is either faith or foolishness, and pull a five. Deacon folds with a decent hand because he says he refuses to win through luck.
The table groans.
Marisa studies her two cards, threads a strand of hair behind her ear, and taps the felt with her fingertip to stay.
Her hand is a perfect twenty.
When she flips it the cheer that rises is louder than the win demands. It is not about the cards.
It is about the lift in her shoulders when we make noise for her.
Isla gets bored with adult rules after two rounds.
She declares that we will now play Christmas poker, which is her invention and therefore ruthless.
We bet with candy canes. If you fold at the wrong time, you drink hot chocolate from a shot glass and try to keep a straight face. If you lose to a bluff, you take a dare.
The dares are on slips of paper Isla folded like fortunes.
They range from harmless to ridiculous.
My first loss is on purpose because a room needs to laugh at a man who can sing.
The dare tells me to perform the high note from Mariah Carey while kneeling to the tree.
I give it my best, which is not good, and the men howl. Marisa laughs into her palm, shoulders shaking, eyes squeezed shut.
I would lose twenty hands to hear that sound again.
Roman’s mouth softens, the smallest proof that he is listening even when he is not playing.
Deacon appears to have no weaknesses at cards and yet finds himself drinking three tiny cups of marshmallow vodka cocoa because he does not believe in Isla’s bluff face.
She takes this personally.
He tries to explain about tells and probabilities.
She tells him to pick a dare.
The dare has him wear the crocheted chicken apron for two hands. He ties it on without protest.
The room decides he looks distinguished.
We play until the candy cane economy collapses.
The pile in front of Marisa grows and shrinks in rhythms that would ruin a less patient person.
She is not unsteady, just learning when to risk and when to tuck her joy back into her chest to save for later.
I study her face the way I study a map.
Every time her smile warms and stays, my ribs loosen.
Every time it fades, I want to put it back where it belongs.
The storm gives a long sigh over the roof.
The henhouse door thumps as Cleopatra tests it and finds it worthy.
A prospect swears softly at the back door, snow spraying off his boots, then shuts the cold out with an apologetic cough.
The lodge breathes with us, big and old and forgiving.
Isla’s head droops.
She leans against Marisa’s arm and blinks like a cat at a sunny window.
The room softens at the edges, the way it does when it is almost time to put small people to bed.
I stand and hold out my hands.
She comes to me without complaint, oversized sweater swinging.
Marisa’s fingers trail over Isla’s hair as we pass.
The touch is careful. It makes my heart feel too big to fit under my shirt.
Upstairs the hall is warm and shadowed.
The quilts smell like cedar and winter.
I settle Isla into bed, tuck the llama under her arm, and hum until her breathing settles into that small steady rhythm I love.
The lamp blinks.
Once. Twice. It holds.
Deacon’s voice comes through the dresser radio, calm as a level line. “Freezing rain advisory just hit.
Thirty to forty minutes until glaze.
Grady is at the south lane with the plow.
Mae has the generator on and two extra beds made. Your call.”
I look at my girl, rosy and drowsy, then at the window where snow is starting to shine like glass.
This is why we plan in clear weather.
The Jackals keep a kid protocol every winter.
If ice moves in and we expect to run storm checks or pull a roof line, children sleep at Mae and Grady’s farmhouse in the valley.
They have the big generator, the wood stove that never quits, and a beagle that snores like a motorboat.
“Copy,” I say into the radio. “We move her now while the road is still safe. Tell Grady to hold at the porch.”
Roman answers from downstairs, voice low and certain. “We will run perimeter and roof after drop. Get her settled.”
Isla peeks up at me, eyes bright. “Night adventure,” she whispers, already awake again. “Like last winter.”
“Wake-up adventure,” I correct, kneeling by the bed. “Sleepover at Mae and Grady’s. Pancakes in the morning. Beagle patrol. You in, guerrera?”
She sits up solemn as a contract. “I am in. Do they still have the syrup that tastes like trees?”
“They do.”
I pull the small canvas bag from her dresser.
It lives there from November to March because the mountains do not care about best intentions. Pajamas with stars.
Wool socks.
Toothbrush with glitter.
The tiny flashlight she calls her saber.
I zip the bag and help her into boots.
She bounces once on the rug, then goes still so I can zip her jacket.
Hat crooked. Mittens clipped. Ready.
We head downstairs. The lights flicker again and return.
The front door opens to cold and pine and the orange sweep of the plow.
Grady stands on the porch in his knit cap, chains already on his tires, grin white in the dark.
“Window is closing,” he says. “Road is passable now. Mae’s got the stove hot and the generator humming.”
“Thank you,” I tell him.
I breathe into Isla’s scarf so it warms before I tuck it up under her chin.
She turns and hugs Marisa quick and fierce, a small face pressed to an apron that smells like sugar.
“Keep the house warm,” she commands, then points at me. “And the chickens.”
“On it,” I say.
Roman puts a hand to the door frame and scans the tree line like he can read the ice in the air. “Drop and return. We run the checks after.”
Deacon presses a knit cap over Isla’s curls and tucks her saber in her pocket. “Call when you arrive. Couplet code,” he says, which is our quiet way of asking for two proof-of-life details on the radio.
Dog snore and pancake count will do.
We hand Isla across the drift to Grady.
He buckles her into the booster in the big truck, then gives me a nod that has stood ten winters.
“Back to you in thirty,” he says.
The plow turns and throws its weight against the drifts.
The blade sings against the crust.
Tail lights blink red through the trees, then disappear.
I throw myself into prepping the chickens for the storm while I wait, and finally the radio clicks twice in my palm and crackles.
“Delivered,” Grady says. “Generator is steady. Beagle snoring. We will keep her through the ice. Check in at zero seven hundred.”
“Copy,” I answer. “Zero seven hundred.”
When I step back inside, the lodge feels lighter at the edges.