Return to Sender: Parts 7–9

“I sure can’t spare him even if it’s just for a week. And how’s he going to get there and back? I mean, it’s not like he can hop on a plane. And as I told him, I don’t have that kind of money lying around to loan him.”

“Up to your room, Tiger,” his mom adds.
Tyler interprets the order liberally as his mother just wanting him to go away and heads over to Grandma’s house.

Grandma closes her eyes as if she’s hoping that it’s all a nightmare that will disappear when she opens them again. “You might as well know because Marfa will tell you anyhow. Mr. Cruz has to go buy his wife back from some sleazy guys who are holding her hostage.”

The bright sunlight blinded me after the dinginess inside the station.

“Last thing we need is for the authorities to be called and for her to be apprehended. Can you imagine?”

“About eight months ago,” Mamá continued, “this head coyote had to go back to his home base in Mexico. He left a brother in charge who was not as vigilant.”

We walked quietly down a winding path beside the wall, as if into the earth itself, to thank the soldiers who had died for us. Every once in a while, a visitor would stop, head bowed, touching a name, whispering a prayer. It was beautiful in a sad, solemn kind of way.

Dad starts mending fences, so that he can put the calves and heifers and dry cows out to pasture.

But even rain can’t dampen Tyler’s high spirits.

“Of course not!” Grandma lets out an exasperated sigh.

The guests are quiet, digesting the information.

She sounds a little miffed that no one but her Mexican family seems especially happy about her plans.

“Who needs to change their life at our age?” Mr. Rossetti speaks up in that ornery tone of voice Tyler hasn’t heard since town meeting night.

Maybe now that she’s getting older, Luby realizes that two stuffed puppies are not going to protect her from the bad things that can happen. For some reason, this makes Tyler feel wistful for something he can’t put his finger on.

His mom has told him that being an adult is about navigating your way through choices and challenges using the North Star of your heart and conscience.

Again he feels that welter of contradictory feelings, right and wrong so mixed in with each other that he’s bound to do wrong even when he does the right thing.

Mari unwraps the gift daintily like the paper’s too valuable to tear.

“Grandma, are you really eloping to Mexico to get married to Grandpa?”

At one point, as Tyler is angling the telescope lower in the sky, he notices a clump of stars he has never seen before. Puzzled, he stands up to orient himself.

Those lights are not in the sky but on the dark edge of the horizon and getting closer. As he watches, the glare coalesces.

Grandma’s hand was at her chest, her breath coming fast. Even she was in a fluster.

Mr. Rossetti grumbled about the gall of some people not letting him use his own phone, but he did finally sit down.

“My sentiments exactly, Elsie. I called up Roger and told him I couldn’t blow for them today, either. And it’s a crying shame, because if anyone deserves our gratitude it’s our vets.”

“These boys did not die in vain,” Mr. Rossetti said in a gravelly voice. Then he cleared his throat and said it again.

It turns out that Mamá is in the clinic at her detention center in Boston “under sedation,” which Tyler says means they are giving her pills to keep her calm.

“You’re a brave and noble young lady,” he said. His gruff voice had softened.

“I can’t make any promises, but I’m sending this information down to our regional office in Boston, along with my recommendation that your mother be released pending her hearing. I’m also going to add a personal note, commending your exemplary behavior.”

“I can’t make any promises, but I’m sending this information down to our regional office in Boston, along with my recommendation that your mother be released pending her hearing. I’m also going to add a personal note, commending your exemplary behavior.”

The two farmhouses with the trailer between them and on the flat stretch behind the houses, the big red barn with the little cupolas that look like birdhouses.

“But it’s not ours,” I pointed out. “Plus, it’s kind of conceited to put our names on the Paquettes’ farm.”