Dancing in the Moonlight Read Free Page A

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 tightlyMaggie 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