Preston's Honor(97)

She pulled my arms more tightly around her and leaned back into me. “You make me weak in the knees, too, farm boy.”

I smiled. “Sit with me on the porch?”

“Yes, I just want to check on the kids.”

We went together, tiptoeing quietly into each room and covering up little bodies, lifting limbs that had been flung off in sleep back into bed, and removing books from chests.

Hudson, our eight-year-old daredevil with an easy grin and a heart of gold; Matteo, our serious and far too wise for his five-year-old body sweetheart, and three-year-old Luciana, who ruled her brothers—and me—with an iron fist and a heart-melting, one-sided dimple.

Satisfied that they were securely tucked in, we went downstairs and took a seat on the porch swing, Lia sighing with contentment as she leaned against me, and I put an arm around her, using my foot to move the swing slowly.

The late-summer night was noisy with activity: the chirping of crickets, the rustling of night birds in the trees, the hoot of an owl somewhere in the distance, and the very low hum of the central air conditioning unit I’d finally installed a year after Matteo was born.

The summer heat drew out the heady lushness of the farm smells: fresh-cut grass, the sweetness of the honeysuckle that grew nearby, and even from here, the richness of the soil, and sweet tang of the various plants we grew.

The stars were out, brilliant diamond shards twinkling in the darkness of the night sky. My brother was up there, among them. Sometimes, when I was making a difficult choice, I would feel a gentle nudge inside to go in one direction or another, and I always attributed it to Cole. And it reminded me that stars weren’t only beautiful, but that they could also guide your way.

The chains that held the swing creaked softly, and I rested my hand on my wife’s belly again, feeling the warm swell of the growing life within her. “Think it will be a girl or a boy?”

“A boy.”

I chuckled. “That’s just wishful thinking after Luci.”

She laughed. “Maybe. I don’t know if we can take more than one of her.” But her voice was filled with so much love, I smiled. Luciana was . . . a handful, but the most lovable handful God had ever created.

Lia sighed, the sound as soft as an evening breeze. “I love this house,” she murmured. I kissed the top of her head. I did, too. Seven years before, I had made the decision to build another house on the property, but when I’d told my mom about it, she’d admitted she was seeing a man in town—the man who owned one of the two banks in Linmoor—and he’d asked her to marry him. She’d moved in with him quickly after that, and Lia had moved back in with me.

On a gorgeous summer day that same year, Lia and I were married under the tree by the fence where she used to wait for Cole and me. It had just been Hudson and the two of us, along with the minister, but we’d felt Cole’s presence, too, and I knew somehow he was there that day, and he was smiling.

Afterward, we’d had a reception at Abuelo’s with my mom, several of her friends, Lia’s mother, and about three hundred of Rosa and Alejandro’s closest friends and relatives. We’d laughed and danced and drank far too much tequila, and they’d all been our family, too, ever since, taking not only Lia and me to heart, but her mother as well who now smiled on an almost regular basis.

I’d helped her with the process of becoming a permanent legal resident when Annalia was pregnant with Matteo. We’d thrown a party when it was granted, and her sister, Florencia, had traveled from Texas to join us. A cheer had gone up when Lia’s mother entered the room, and she had smiled shyly and with a pride that squeezed my heart.

We frequently hosted barbecues at the farm that included hot dogs and tamales, apple pie and churros, eighties music, and Spanish ballads when the sun went down. It was crazy and wonderful, and I always felt slightly stunned when it was all over as if I’d just stepped off a Tilt-A-Whirl of love.

Our new extended family had all descended on the hospital with each birth, setting up base camp in the waiting room with food that smelled so delicious, doctors and nurses from every part of the building showed up to partake in the celebration. And, especially with Matteo, Rosa and Lia’s mother had been there to assist Lia and me with the adjustment of having a newborn and to help Lia recognize the signs of the depression she’d suffered through alone with Hudson. She wasn’t alone anymore, and it’d made all the difference. We’d both missed so much the first time around, and we soaked in every moment of the sweet time with our next babies and navigated the choppy waters together.

The farm had thrived and grown, and we now employed twice as many people as my father had. Lia had become heavily involved in helping migrant farmworkers at the camp outside of town and being an advocate on issues that affected them. It wasn’t our job to make the laws, but we both helped where we could, in the ways that we could—me as an employer, and Lia as a champion for the rights of those who had no rights.

I wasn’t a politician. It was my job to feed people. And Lia did the same, not just with food, but with all the love and courage she’d learned how to set free from the boundaries within herself. She fed people’s hope-starved souls, and in so doing, she fed mine, and her own, and those of our children.

Sometimes I would see her coming toward me in the fields where I was working, a march in her step, her chin held high, and I’d stop what I was doing to watch her approach, knowing one thing or another had rubbed her the wrong way. I’d smile and say, “You’re about to make a fuss, aren’t you?” I’d feel my eyes go slightly lazy because she was damn sexy when something got under her skin and caused her to become so impassioned that she was like a tiny ray of light. And she’d put her hands on her hips and give me a look but then she’d smile and tell me what it was she was going to make a fuss about.