Don't Go L.J. Breedlove (books to read fiction TXT) 📖

Where was she? He wondered. Was she OK? And then he went home to his son. Emily and Cage could deal with the newsroom just fine.

Chapter 22

Dusk, Monday, Oct. 26, 2020, Nampa, Idaho — Teresa had inadvertently created a new game with the kids. She’d been teaching them rhymes after the cat/hat lesson. And that led her to use examples from music, both English and Spanish. By the time the harvest workers got home for supper, the kids were chanting poetry at them. In Spanish and English. After supper, one of the men pulled out a guitar and put some music behind the children’s rhymes. Teresa watched, sitting in the shadows of one of the RVs, contented at what she’d just done.

An older man pulled up a chair and sat down next to her. He was the Abuelita’s son, she thought. He seemed to be the leader of the group. They sat in silence for a bit, listening to the children sing, and then giggle, and then sing some more.

“You have been good for us,” he said at last.

“It’s been a pleasure,” Teresa said sincerely.

“I wish that I could offer you passage to Michoacán.”

“But?” Teresa prompted when he stopped.

“There were rumors today that ICE is in town, that there may be a raid coming,” he said. “That would be bad for you. For us.”

“I need to leave.” Teresa said, numbly. Where could she go?

“We all will,” he said. “But some of us are slower. We have to pack up. We have the children. So, we will send two young men ahead to set up a place for us. To negotiate with our next employer to start early. I thought perhaps you would like to go with them? And along the way, you might make your call.”

He shrugged. “If you want to take the risk and stay with us, we are heading to Twin Falls. Probably for a week, maybe longer now. But the route we take is a common one. And if this is not a coincidence, if ICE is hunting you? They know where we will go.”

Teresa tried to visualize a map. Twin Falls would take her inland, the opposite direction from Portland and Rafael. And Ryan, she admitted. Knowing the two she loved were together, made it harder to ignore her feelings for Ryan. She wondered if that was true for Ryan. Did Rafael remind him of the good things they’d had?

Or was Rafael just a burden? Ryan would keep him safe; she had no doubt. He was a protector, although he probably wouldn’t believe that. But she had seen it in the newsroom, with his friends. He took care of people. He would take care of Rafael.

But would he love him? Was he capable of loving him? That, she wasn’t sure of. But she hoped.

“Is there anything between here and say Medford?” she asked. She had studied the map well before she’d joined this group, but it seemed like there had been a whole lot of nothing out there.

“There is Burns. It isn’t on our route. We have never gone there. That’s more ranching country than orchards,” he said. He considered her. “Twin Falls is the opposite direction from that.”

She nodded. “Well, it can’t be helped. I cannot make a call from here. And as you say, I should stay with you until they tell me differently.” She didn’t mention the attorney’s names; there may have a go-between. Decision made, she added, “I will go with your young men to Twin Falls and wait for you there.”

“Use Joseph’s phone when you get about an hour out so that it is roaming. I will tell the men to go the back way. When you get to the Birds of Prey, be careful,” he advised. Obviously, he has done this before, Teresa thought. She was comforted by that.

He stood up. “And thank you for this.” He said, gesturing to the children who had been joined by the teens in creating songs that rhymed.

Tomorrow she would call Vic Ruiz and see what was to be done next. She didn’t like that ICE was here. It might be that they were everywhere. It seemed that way at times. But it might be that they had a list, and that she was on their list. She didn’t want to bring Valdez trouble to this family.

Teresa smiled contentedly at the children. And the opening lines of a May Sarton poem wafted across her brain:

Now I become myself. It’s taken

Time, years, and many places....

She’d taken a seminar about May Sarton, a poet and memoirist who wrote about solitude and aging. It surprised her how much she had related to this old white woman. Surprised the whole class to the professor’s satisfaction. She had memorized of her several poems.

I have been dissolved and shaken

Worn other people’s faces....

She was finding her own face here, she thought, and she went to bed in her shared tent.

Joseph and Carlos were anxious to get going after breakfast. Teresa packed her few belongings, and joined them in their pickup, a newish white Chevrolet. Carlos put her bag in the truck-bed storage box and locked it. Joseph took the wheel; Carlos gestured for her to get in. Oh joy, I get to ride the hump, she thought humorously.

She thought them to be her age, maybe a bit younger. This could be fun, she thought suddenly and laughed. It felt like it had been forever since she was just out with friends having fun. At her laugh, the guys relaxed. By the time they hit the Nampa city limits they were arguing about music as if they had known each other for ages.

When they saw the sign for the wildlife preserve, Joseph pulled over and handed her a phone. She looked at it curiously. It was one you could buy at Fred Meyers or Target and add minutes for people who didn’t have bank accounts or credit cards.

That’s me, she realized. She no