“How old were you when this happened?”
“Fourteen.”
I shook my head sympathetically. “That must have been really traumatic.”
“Tell me about it. Just a couple of months before her face got sliced to ribbons we got knocked on our asses by her confession that she wasn’t…really our mother.” Her face contorted, she puffed furiously on the cigarette. “After she came home from the hospital, we had to get our s**t together and deal with all her medical and emotional problems. I’ll tell you what,” she said, her tone somber, “it was a b***h trying to handle schoolwork and keep the ranch running. If it hadn’t been for Ruben I don’t know what we would have done.”
She went on to explain that their longtime foreman and two ranch hands had single-handedly saved the Double G, while Clara’s cous
