Broken Lands (Benny Imura 6)

To be a witness.

Then there was that moment when Mama’s fingers tightened on Gutsy’s and she said, “I’m so sorry, Gabriella.” And this time, when Gutsy asked why, her mother seemed to swim back enough to answer, but the answer made no real sense. “The rat catchers are coming, mi corazón. Be careful. If they come for you . . . promise me you’ll run away and hide.”

It was so clear, so complete a thought, and yet it made no sense to Gutsy.

“What do you mean, Mama?” she begged.

Mama blinked her eyes, and for a moment they were clear but filled with bad lights, with panic. “Ten cuidado. Mucho cuidado. Los cazadores de ratas vienen.”

Take care, take great care . . . the hunters of rats are coming.

The rat catchers.

Gutsy tried to get her mother to explain what, if anything, that meant.

Then the coughing started again. Worse than ever, as if her ruined throat was punishing her for speaking. The fit racked Mama and made her body thrash and arch. Gutsy held on, though.

She held on.

Held on.

Even when Mama settled back down after the fit was over and did not cough again. Or gasp.

Or anything.

It took Gutsy a long time to understand.

Then she pressed the hand to her chest and held it tight, hoping that she was somehow strong enough to hold Mama here, to keep her from going away.

But Mama had already gone.

Gutsy held on and on until the fingers of that fragile hand curled around hers again.

“Mama . . . ?” she whispered.

The answer was a moan.

Not of pain. But of hunger. A deep and bottomless hunger.

It was only then that Gutsy Gomez screamed.

4

MEMORIES WERE NOT GUTSY’S FRIENDS.

As much as she wanted to remember all the things about her life that made her happy, the wound was too fresh, the hurt too raw. There was no real closure.

Closure. That was a funny word. One she’d used so many times, just like everyone else, when death came to someone else’s house. Church sermons, graveside services, the hugs from friends and neighbors, they were supposed to help the grieving get their feet back on solid ground. They were intended to remind people who lost someone that it wasn’t them who died; it wasn’t their life that had ended. There was more living to come, and at the end of grief there would be healing, and even joy. Happiness, like all other emotions, lived on a long street, and it only required that a person walk far enough down it to find those old emotions. There would be laughter again, and peace. None of that stuff died. Sure, it had been wounded, but it endured.

Gutsy had always understood that from a distance. She was part of the process for her friends and people on her block, and people in town.

It was different when Mama died. The hurt seemed to live on both sides of the street, and that street was a dead end

.

Over the last two days her best friends, Spider and Alethea, had tried to do for her what Gutsy had done for others: be there, be examples of normal life after the grieving time.

The problem was that the memories of Mama being sick were all too new.