her vaguely queasy but she fought it back and took another step, then another until she reached the steps to the small front porch.
Once, she would have bounded up these half-dozen steps, taking them two or three at a time. Now it was all she could do to pull herself up, inch by painful inch, grabbing hold of the railing so hard her fingers ached.
The spare key wasn’t under the cushion of either of the rockers that had graced this porch as long as she could remember, but she lifted one of the ceramic planters and found it there.
As quietly as possible she unlocked the door and closed it behind her with only a tiny snick.
Inside, the house smelled of cinnamon coffee and corn tortillas and the faint scent of Viviana’s favorite Windsong perfume. Once upon a time that Windsong would have been joined by Abel’s Old Spice but the last trace of her father had faded years ago.
Still, as she drew the essence of home into her lungs, she felt as if she was eleven years old again, rushing inside after school with a dozen stories to tell. She was awash in emotions at being home, in the relief and security that seemed to wrap around her here, a sweet and desperately needed comfort even with the slightly bitter edge that seemed to underlie everything in her life right now.
She stood there for several moments, eyes closed and a hundred childhood memories washing through her like spring runoff, until she felt herself sway with exhaustion and had to reach for the handrail of the staircase that rose up from the entryway.
She had to get off her feet. Or her foot, anyway. The prosthesis on the other leg was rubbing and grinding against her wound—she hated the word stump, though that’s what it was.
Whatever she called it, she hadn’t yet developed sufficient calluses to completely protect the still-raw tissue.
The stairs to her bedroom suddenly looked insurmountable, but she shouldered her bag and gripped the railing. She had only made it two or three steps before the entry was flooded with light and she heard an exclamation of shock behind her.
She twisted around and found her mother standing in the entryway wearing the pink robe Maggie had given her for Mother’s Day a few years earlier.
“Lena? Madre de Dios!”
An instant later her mother rushed up the stairs and wrapped her arms around Maggie, holding her so tightly Maggie had to drop the duffel and hold on just to keep her balance.
At only a little over five feet tall, Viviana was six inches shorter than Maggie but she made up for her lack of size by the sheer force of her personality. Just now the vibrant, funny woman she adored was crying and mumbling a rapid-fire mix of Spanish and English that Maggie could barely decipher.
It didn’t matter. She was just so glad to be here. She had needed this, she thought as she rested her chin on Viviana’s slightly graying hair. She hadn’t been willing to admit it but she had desperately needed the comfort of her mother’s arms.
Viviana had come to Walter Reed when Maggie first returned from Afghanistan and had stayed for those first hellish two weeks after her injury while she had tried to come to terms with what had been taken from her in a moment. Her mother had been there for the first of the long series of surgeries to shape the scar tissue of her stump and had wanted to stay longer during her intensive rehab and the many weeks of physical therapy that came later.
But Maggie’s pride had insisted she convince her mother to return to Pine Gulch, to Rancho de la Luna.
She was thirty years old, for heaven’s sake. She should be strong enough to face her future without her mama by her side.
“What is this about?” Viviana finally said through her tears. “I think I hear a car outside and come to see who is here and who do I find but my beautiful child? You want to put your mother in an early grave, niña, sneaking around in the middle of the night?”
“I’m sorry. I should have called to make sure it was all right.”
Viviana frowned and flicked a hand in one of her broad, dismissive gestures. “This is your home. You don’t need to call ahead like...like I run some kind of hotel! You are always welcome, you know that. But why are you here? I thought you were to go to Phoenix when you left the hospital in Washington.”
“It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I stayed long enough to pick up my car and pack up my apartment, then I decided to come home. There’s nothing for me in Phoenix anymore.”
There had been once. She had a good life there before her reserve unit had been called up eighteen months ago and sent to Afghanistan. She had a job she loved, as a nurse practitioner in a busy Phoenix E.R., she had a wide circle of friends, she had a fiancé she thought adored her.
Everything had changed in a heartbeat, in one terrible, decimating instant.
Viviana’s expression darkened but suddenly she slapped the palm of her hand against her head. “What am I doing, niña, to make you stand like this? Come. Sit. I will fix you something to eat.”
“I’m not hungry, Mama. I just need sleep.”
“Sí. Sí. We can talk about all this tomorrow.” Viviana’s hands were cool as she pushed a lock of hair away from Maggie’s eyes in a tender gesture that nearly brought her to tears. “Come. You will take my room downstairs.”
Oh, how she was tempted by that offer. Climbing the rest of these stairs right now seemed as insurmountable to her as scaling the Grand Teton without ropes.
She couldn’t give in, though. She had surrendered too much already.
“No. It’s fine. I’ll use my old room.”
“Lena—”
“Mama, I’m fine. I’m not kicking you out of your bed.”
“It’s no trouble for me. Do you not think it would be best?”
If Viviana had the strength, Maggie had no doubt her mother would have picked her up and carried her the short way off the stairs and down the hall to her bedroom.
This was one of the reasons she hadn’t wanted her mother in Washington, D.C., through her painful recovery, through the various surgeries and the hours of physical therapy.
It was also one of her biggest worries about coming home.
Viviana would want to coddle. It was who she was, what she did. And though part of Maggie wanted to lean into that comforting embrace, to soak it up, she knew she would find it too easy to surrender to it, to let that tender care surround her, smother her.
She couldn’t. She had to be tough if she was going to figure out how to go on with the rest of her life.
Climbing these steps was a small thing, but it suddenly seemed of vital importance.
“No, Mama. I’m sleeping upstairs.”
Viviana shook her head at her stubborn tone. “You are your father’s daughter, niña.”
She smiled, though she could feel how strained her mouth felt around the edges.
“I will take your things up,” Viviana said, her firm tone attesting to the
