Barefoot with a Stranger (Barefoot Bay Undercover #2)(55)

“Cumplea?os,” a woman behind her said. “Un juego de su cumplea?os.”

Chessie turned around to find a pair of warm, dark eyes on her. The young woman looked to be about twenty, as thin and ragged as everyone else, with an infant wrapped in a carrier hanging from her neck. “A birthday game?” the woman asked. “That’s what I told them.”

“Yes, si,” Chessie said. “I could use the help. I’m…” Not Chessie, she remembered before her real name slipped out. “Elizabeth. And you?”

“Rosalia.” She took the hand Chessie offered. “Rosalia Ramos.”

“Se?or Ramos is your father?” Chessie guessed.

She nodded. “Si. Papa. And…” She pointed to the original line of teenage boys who’d greeted them, now engrossed in Mal’s video game. “My…brothers.”

All of them? And practically the same age?

But she was grateful to find someone who could help her identify the children. “And who is this little angel?” Chessie gave the infant a gentle touch on thick black curls.

“Miguel.” She smiled and lifted him a little higher. “My son.”

“He’s precious.” Chessie stroked the curls again and turned to the half-dozen young ones who’d gathered round. “So here’s what I’d like to do. I’d like to know all of their names and their birthdays so we can learn months and days,” Chessie said, speaking slowly and hoping the idea worked. “Do they know their birthdays?”

Rosalia’s smile wavered. “Maybe. Mostly. Birthdays mean presents.”


“And I’m going to give presents,” Chessie assured her, reaching for her bag and the little container of chewing gum she’d brought.

Chessie sat on the floor and helped Rosalia gather eight children around her in a semicircle, listening to the other woman explain the game in rapid-fire Spanish. There was some squirming and giggling, some jockeying for a position closer to Chessie, but finally they settled and stared at her.

“I want each one to tell me their name and their birthday.” Was one of these children Gabriel, born in the right year? Would they know the year they were born? They might know their age.

She glanced up and caught Mal looking at her, and she held his gaze. Her heart ratcheted up as the eye contact lasted long enough for her to get his silent message of approval. And they shared a smile that was as sweet as the candy she’d been giving away all day.

Rosalia pointed to the first child, a little girl with a heartbreakingly beautiful face, and gave the instructions in Spanish.

The girl’s eyes opened, and she held up four fingers. “Cuatro.”

“She’s four,” Rosalia supplied. “And your name?” she urged the child. “Y su nombre?”

Not that it mattered, Chessie thought. She wasn’t Gabe’s son, so she’d just move—

“Gabriella.”

Chessie startled. “Did she say…Gabriella?”

“We call her Gabrielita.”

Chessie’s heart clutched. “What’s her last name?”

“Ramos,” Rosalia said quickly.

“She’s your sister or cousin?”

Rosalia shook her head and leaned closer to whisper so softly no one but Chessie could hear. “She doesn’t have a last name yet.”

An orphan? And Chessie’s heart stopped just before it cracked into a million pieces.

Could the database have been wrong about the gender of the child? Could she have misread it? Was Gabriel really Gabriella?

She searched the child’s arresting face and big brown eyes, more the color of Mal’s than Gabe’s. “Gabrielita?”

The little girl suddenly shot up and lunged toward Chessie, wrapping eager, hungry arms around Chessie’s neck and squeezing all the love out of her heart.

Oh dear God in heaven, was this her niece?

Working for calm, she inched the little body back. “When is your birthday, Gabrielita?”

Rosalia leaned closer again. “We don’t know her birthday, really.”

Of course not. She was an orphan. Because her mother was dead, and her father was…waiting in Barefoot Bay. She tried to tamp down hope, but failed.

“Could it be in the summer?” Chessie asked, a little too anxiously.

Rosalia shrugged and touched the head of the boy next to her. “Let’s give the others a turn,” she said.

So Chessie had to back off and continue the game. There was no Gabriel among the rest, and only two who knew their birthdays, and those were in winter months.

If the child was here, like Gabe believed, wouldn’t he—or she—have to be among this group?

“Is anyone missing today?” Chessie asked the woman next to her as she liberally handed out sticks of gum to eager little kids.

Rosalia smiled and shook her head. “They never miss. School is like heaven to all of these kids. It is joy and happy.” Her expression grew sad. “We cannot lose what my father has worked so hard to have for the farmers and families of Caibarién.”

“Is there a chance of that?”

“Always a chance. The government will close us down if they discover we are teaching. The government must own the schools. And tell us what to teach.”

“But isn’t that changing?” Chessie asked, automatically reaching out as Gabrielita scrambled higher on Chessie’s lap.