They were coming back, the men and boys lost so long ago. The ones with forged papers. The unaccounted for, the ones listed on roll sheets. The ones caught in the ages they had been because no one had ever laid their bodies or names or memory to rest.
For so long, the rumors had spoken for them. Their lives and deaths had not been spoken of, so the truth had been handed over to those who did not know. What had happened became twisted into stories about a family of women and their dangerous hearts.
Now, Estrella and her cousins were stripping away the gardens enough to let the land tell the truth. And the land was giving back those it had held, those everyone else had forgotten.
This was what Fel understood, that the force and rage in the Nomeolvides women was enough to tear down every bloom and vine.
But it also pulled those he had worked alongside back from the deep place he now knew.
Fel registered the shock moving through the women like water. But it did not slow them. They drew out boys Fel recognized, their clothes earth-stained, and men whose faces Fel had only ever seen stern and unmoving. But now they opened with wonder, like they had woken from sleep.
These were the men Fel had known. The ones who told him It doesn’t matter what we do, we’re always gonna be breaker boys to them, and You wear this for your family, and Our mothers’ll never know if we’re in the ground.
There was no gentleness in the women’s hands. Only certainty. They pulled these lost men from the ground as hard as if they were dragging them out of the sea.
Bay followed Dalia to where she caught the ground moving, the stirring of the quarry beneath the garden. From this distance she almost looked like one of the men, plain trousers, suspenders, and a willingness to stay close to the ground as though it was her home.
But all this Fel only took in with half-second glances. All these lives flowed around him like a soundless storm. His hands and Estrella’s were helping a man out of the ground near the deep pond. A man shrugging off dirt and grass.
Estrella did this with the same fierce resolution as tearing up the gardens. Fel knew she wasn’t taking in the man’s face. She was more set on getting him to the surface.
Fel’s hands worked with the distance of helping a stranger. His fingers numbed with each second of understanding who he was touching, the warmth of this man’s body coming through the chill of the earth.
This man was a mirror of who Fel could be. This man had taught him to find blue mushrooms at dusk. He had been the one to tell him stories about the snows of cherry blossoms over los Pirineos, because Fel had been too young to remember.
They had inherited the same history, one of terraced gardens and wild olive trees that died in a hard frost. That shared history had helped Fel take this man with him, even when he had lost him.
Fel sensed the stares turning toward them, this matched set of brothers.
Now Estrella was watching them both.
Fel could see how they were different. Adán’s brow bone harder, his skin one shade lighter brown. But to anyone watching, they were identical, set apart only by years.
It broke Fel open like a bud cracking its own green shell. He felt grown into this patch of ground, the two of them becoming twin trees that shared roots.
He wanted to thank Adán for how his face had never shown disappointment or judgment, not even when Fel had gotten the scars that marked him as a criminal. He wanted to say, because he had never said it before, that he had never thought how Adán loved was some sin or trespass. He wanted to tell Adán that he knew this was only the way his heart showed itself, careful and slow as the moon.
But Fel was silent. These things would not leave his tongue.
At Adán’s hands on him, Fel startled. They were not children, and he felt it in their bodies. They hadn’t been since they left their home of esparto-covered hills and frost-wrecked olive trees. They were both men grown by their country and broken by this place.
Adán’s skin was damp from the earth. When he laughed, it was the humming of caballucos’ wings.
He felt the hitch in his brother’s stance and remembered that his right leg was just a little shorter than his left. Not enough that anyone noticed, but enough that after six days in the quarry he could not move enough to attend church on Sunday. The hem of one pant leg frayed to threads while the other held.
Fel remembered the times he’d tried blinking away the feeling of tears along his eyelashes, saying I’m not crying. Adán always held a kind laugh under his words when he said, Yes, you are. Not an accusation, an assurance that Adán thought no less of him.
Adán pulled away, hands still on Fel’s arms, like he wanted to get a better look at him.
The other men found their footing on the ground, as though they had stepped off ships and needed their bearing on still land. When they saw Adán pulling Fel into him, they echoed it. They threw their arms around each other as though they were all brothers. The Nomeolvides women laughed because they could not help catching their shock and their joy at existing above ground.
The Nomeolvides grandmothers watched, clasping their hands as though they were praying but keeping their eyes open, small smiles lighting their faces.
Fel turned his head, finding the girl who’d touched him when the night sky was all blue horses. She was the wild will in this ground, her fingers both making and wrecking oceans of petals.
“Estrella,” Fel said. “This is my brother.”