She’d just picked up that picture when she heard someone come into the room behind her.
She turned to see Eli.
“You’re all finished with Liam?”
“I am. He’s still upstairs working, but I figured I should make him do as much as possible.” She almost put down the photograph. She felt guilty snooping around but was too curious about the people in that photograph, and her connection to them, not to take advantage of the opportunity. “These are your grandparents?” she asked, indicating the couple in the middle.
“Yeah. Hank and Consuelo.”
“Your mother mentioned that Consuelo is a Nicaraguan immigrant.”
“That’s true. She had one son when her husband left her to come to America. He promised he’d make a better life, then send for them.”
“And?”
“She never heard from him again.”
Cora felt her jaw drop. “He moved on without her?”
“He was killed trying to swim across the Rio Grande to reach Texas. She came looking for him as soon as she could cobble together the money. But she couldn’t find him. It was two years before she learned what happened. By then she was living in a small shack on Hank’s farm with her son—German, who was six at the time—picking fruit.”
“And Hank fell in love with her?”
“Eventually. Consuelo married two other guys first, Aiyana’s father, who was an abusive jerk, and another man with whom she had her last two boys. That didn’t work out, either. He walked out on her or something.”
“Then she married Hank. So Hank’s her fourth husband?”
A fond smile curved Eli’s lips. “Yes. She finally got it right.”
“How’d they get together?”
“He says he fell in love with her cooking first. Her third husband wouldn’t pay his child support, so, to get by, she’d make homemade tortillas and tamales to sell on the weekends. Hank would come to her stand first thing Sunday morning, which was her only day off, and buy almost everything she had.”
“Wow. He must’ve loved her cooking.”
“That wasn’t all there was to it. He couldn’t have eaten that many tortillas and tamales. Once they started dating, she found he had a whole freezer full.”
Cora laughed. “What a story!”
“I’ve never seen a man adore a woman more than Hank adores Consuelo.”
His wistful expression caught Cora’s attention. He loved them almost as much as Aiyana. “So...these three must be your mother’s brothers.” She pointed at the other men in the photograph.
“Yes.” He fingered the one with the darkest skin. “None of the children actually belong to Hank, but he claims them all and loves them as if they do.”
For which they should all be so grateful. Eli didn’t state that, but the subtext was clear, and that subtext made it difficult for Cora not to bristle. She’d heard a lot of that type of thing herself. “Aiyana’s name is unusual. Is it Nicaraguan?”
“Consuelo claims it’s Native American for eternal flower. A woman who was part Cherokee came to her rescue one night when she was so hungry and tired she was ready to collapse. German was crying. Neither one of them could go a step farther. So she hid in a barn, hoping to rest before pushing on—only to be discovered by this woman whose name was Aiyana. Consuelo thought she’d be reported or turned out, but Aiyana fed them dinner and gave them a bed to sleep in. To this day, Consuelo says Aiyana was an angel sent from God, that she wasn’t really human.”
“That’s a beautiful story, too.”
“Consuelo’s lived a challenging but interesting life. Fortunately, other than old age, her worries are behind her. Hank takes care of her every need. Grandma Sway, as we called her growing up, is the one who gave me my horse,” he added.
“Atsila?”
“Yeah. Apparently, the Aiyana who helped her had a horse by the same name, which she gave to Consuelo so that Consuelo would have some mode of transportation, and so that German wouldn’t have to walk anymore. Without that horse, Consuelo swears she and German would not have survived the next two weeks. Not long after, she had to sell it, which broke her heart, but she claims she would’ve starved without that money.”
“How kind. What does Atsila mean?”
“I don’t know. I tried looking it up once but couldn’t find anything definitive—other than that it has Native American roots.” He came closer and took the picture from her to look more carefully at it himself. “I figure the real meaning doesn’t matter, anyway. To me, it means compassion.”