A blast of warm summer air hit Rita as she disembarked at the airport in Chihuahua, Tony in her arms. She struggled down the stairs with two pieces of hand luggage on her shoulders, collected their two suitcases into which she had packed their entire wardrobe and entered the terminal searching the room for Marco.

'Querida,' he cried, swinging her into his arms. 'I missed you,' he whispered repeatedly into her hair. Relief filled him as he pressed her closer to him unwilling to release her lest one of them disappear.

'I missed you too,' she sniffed, placing Tony in one arm and hugging him tightly with the other. 'It's been tough. We got evicted two days ago.'

Marco rubbed his face, humiliation burning his cheeks. 'I'm so sorry, princess. I arranged your ticket as soon as I could. Where did you go?'

'An old friend of my father's,' she explained, handing Tony to him. 'You remember that police captain? He gave us a room and swore he wouldn't let my mother know. Actually, he gave us the master bedroom and he moved out to the guest room as there was no crib for the baby. We kinda took over his house. He says hi!'

Anxious eyes examined her face before he nodded. She's not quite ready to dump you yet, Almeida! Better pull yourself together real fast or she'll run for her life, though. Gentle fingers stroked the baby's warm cheek. 'You named him yet?'

'He's called Antonio,' she told him, watching his eyes fill with tears as he repeated the name. 'You like it?'

'Aha,' he agreed, squeezing her hand reassuringly. 'I love it! Antonio.' He stroked the baby's hair gently. 'God I missed him. I was so scared something would happen and I'd never see you two again.' His eyes moistened as he kissed the child who blinked groggily at him.

'Ready to go?' Rita inquired softly; terrified she would break down and weep.

He nodded. 'Sí. Sweetheart, I got my father's pick-up truck. We haven't got a car. It's not the most comfortable thing in the world but it'll get us there.' He took the hand luggage from her, slinging it over his shoulders before he stooped to collect the suitcases.

Rita followed him across the parking lot, clutching Tony tighter as she caught sight of the battered truck. Marco glanced at her anxiously as he placed the suitcases in the back. 'It's the only thing we got, querida,' he told her, unlocking the door.

'It's fine,' Rita agreed, her mouth dry. She allowed him to help her up and she settled the restless baby closer to her. Marco started the engine, bending over to kiss her. She clung to him, beads of sweat trickling down her forehead.

'They're gonna love you,' he told her gently, sensing her anxiety. 'They've talked of nothing besides meeting you and the baby since my return.' The engine coughed twice and died. Unperturbed, he turned it on again. 'It's okay, sweetheart. Once it gets going it won't stop, it just hates starting. We're gonna need a new battery.'

'Why don't you get one from here?' she demanded, puzzled. 'It's a large place.'

Marco avoided her gaze as he backed the truck out of its spot. 'We'll get one soon.' Your ticket took the very last of our savings, sweetheart. None of us got another peso and we still owe Tio Pedro 200 dollars. This battery will just have to do for a bit longer. 'It'll take four hours to get home,' he explained as they entered a narrow road. 'I brought us lunch and plenty of water. Let me know when you're hungry.'

She nodded, placing her hand in his. Marco grinned at her, driving one handed, explaining features of the terrain they crossed. Several farms petered away engulfed by arid dryness, leaving them crossing stretches of land covered by low shrubs with the occasional cactus. 'I almost feel like we're in the Wild West,' she admitted, awestruck at the isolation.

Marco chuckled, squeezing her hand. 'You're fine, querida.'

They stopped for lunch in the shade of a large rock. Rita fed and changed the baby before she ate her tacos snuggled deep into his arms. Marco munched in peace for the first time since his deportation. Breathing in the warm air he leaned against the rock, wiping a crumb from her lips. 'I'm so sorry, Rita,' he apologized. 'If you gimme another chance, I promise I'll get a job and somehow complete this degree and take better care of you and Tony.' Hearing no response he bit his lip, tilting her chin gently with two fingers. 'You got every right to be mad at me, sweetheart.'

She shook her head, tears forming in her eyes.

'Rita, you don't need to cry anymore. I promise I'll do better,' he assured her in alarm. He kicked himself mentally, picturing how alien the surroundings must seem to her. 'I'm so sorry,' he repeated.

'No, Marco, it's not your fault,' she began, bundling the uneaten food back into the truck.

'Sure it is,' he protested, throwing the rug in the back. 'I should've checked whether I was permitted to go part time.'

'Marco, stop,' she insisted, placing a finger on his lips. 'Promise you won't just abandon me right here if I tell you something?'

This is gonna be real bad, Almeida. Wonder what happened now? 'You should know I'd never do that,' he assured her.

'My mom reported you,' Rita admitted, her eyes on the blazing sand. 'No one cared about your enrolment before she pointed it out. I'm the one who's sorry. It's my fault you got deported. Will you ever forgive me?'

The breath caught in his throat as he considered her words. Unconsciously his fists clenched at his sides as he threw an empty water bottle beside the suitcases refusing to look at her. It figures. She's hated you from the moment she heard of you. She's finally hounded you out of the country, but lost her daughter and grandson in the process.

'Marco,' she said in a small voice, tugging at his t-shirt. 'I'll make it up to you somehow, I promise. When Tony's a little older I'll find a job and put him in day care and…'

'You'll do nothing of the sort,' he cried, horrified. 'A child's place is home with its mother!'

'But we're gonna be at least six months behind…'

'So we'll be six months behind,' he replied, turning to face her. 'And if we're a year behind, or even two, it won't change anything. Tony's safest at home with you. Come here.' He pulled her into his arms, stroking her hair. 'You got yourself a useless husband and a real unpleasant mother, querida. Between us, we're really ruining your life!'

'You're the only good thing I got left,' she assured him, hugging him tightly. 'I'm never leaving you again, Marco, not for a minute.'

He laughed, her words warming his heart. 'Sure you will, when you get hot in the sun,' he said cryptically. 'Sweetheart, my parents are getting older. Normally my older brothers help out on the farm but they got their own lands and families, so right now I'm their laborer.' He grinned at her in genuine amusement. 'Your mother was right after all, princess. You're married to a peasant, though a literate one! And none of us have fleas!'

Rita giggled, shaking her head at him. 'It's fine with me,' she assured him. 'Ah, will all your family be working outside?'

Marco nodded, an eye on the deteriorating road. 'Aha. Everything's about ready to be collected now. My mom doesn't do as much as she's got her own work inside but she helps out too whenever she's got a moment.'

Rita chewed her lip in alarm. The closest she had come to any kind of agricultural work was noting a few laborers working the fields she drove past. Her heart sank. She was reduced to relying on the charity of a couple whose son's life had been ruined by her and she was useless on top of it all. She clutched Tony tighter against her.

'You've stopped chatting, querida,' he said lightly, sensing her unease. 'Want to tell me what's wrong?'

'Ah, I done a little weeding a few times,' she began hesitantly. 'Not real often as we got a gardener. I've never even seen vegetables in the ground.'

'And you're worried my parents will be annoyed,' he guessed. 'Sweetheart, nobody's expecting you to do anything. You got a baby; you got more than enough work watching him.'

She glanced at him in relief, uncertain whether to believe him. All too soon the journey ended and they turned onto an ill maintained track amid a wheat field. 'This land is my father's,' Marco explained, wishing he could relax her. 'You'll see the house soon. It's a lot smaller than yours but it's well built. You'll love it.' He desperately hoped so as he studied her face, noting her eyes widen at the sight of the stone house.

'It's not small,' she said, relieved.

He shook his head. 'No. My family planned on staying here so they built a good home. Back in those days it was about as far from authority as it was possible to get. We're not like you, honey. We're not into joining the diplomatic service, getting ourselves noticed. My family prefers to live in peace and hopefully be ignored.'

Rita grinned in wonder at the idea. 'You write to no one and you hope no one writes to you?' she guessed.

'Something like that, sí. You should see my father's reaction whenever he receives an official looking letter. He treats the envelope as thought it's some poisonous scorpion. He even promised Tio Naldo, the mailman some money if he never brings official letters here again!'

Rita gave a weak grin while he held her in his arms stroking her hair. He searched for something further to amuse her as he noted the house was temporarily abandoned. 'When I was about seven I figured I'd help him. I collected a bag of nails from the shed and put it out near the mailbox and he got his tires slashed. You know what? My father wasn't grateful! It took him months to pay for the damage.' Rita giggled harder.

Marco opened the door and helped her out with the baby, collecting their bags. 'Come on,' he encouraged, leading her up the two steps to a verandah which ran the length of the dwelling. 'Door's this way.'

She entered a large tiled room, the end of which served as a meals area. A playpen stood in the center of the room with bags of toys scattered about. 'My sister's husband left,' Marco explained, picking his way over them. 'She came home with her kids. Jose is three and Pedro is Tony's age.'

'I'm real sorry,' Rita muttered, following him upstairs.

'Don't be, he was an asshole! She's much better off without him, believe me.'

'So she'll stay till she finds a place?' Rita guessed, peering down from the top of the landing.

Marco's eyes widened. 'She's come home, querida. Papa's given her the upstairs part of the house. We got four rooms there. Right now we're going to be using one, my old bedroom. Come in.'

She entered shyly, noting a collection of trains and trucks in a box with a much loved bear on the bed. Marco winced, removing it. 'My mother must have put it out for the baby,' he muttered, blushing as she threw him a doubtful look.

'You telling me that's not yours, Marco Almeida?' she pressed.

Marco examined every corner of the room bar her as he fidgeted. 'It was mine,' he admitted reluctantly, placing the bear carefully on a chair. 'It's Tony's now.'

Footsteps from below interrupted them, indicating that her dreaded introduction to his parents had approached. Heart beating faster she reached for the baby, clutching him in one arm while clinging to Marco with the other. He led her downstairs, pulling her forward. 'Mama, Papa, this is Rita,' he said, eyes shining with pride. 'Rita, these are my parents.'

A middle aged couple with warm eyes smiled back at him, as enchanted by her appearance as he had been.

'Thank you for inviting us,' she began, her heart pounding. 'Especially after I managed to completely ruin your son's life.'

They spoke at once, insisting she had done nothing wrong. 'M'ija, Marco is my most intelligent son. He's made his own decisions for a long time now and most of them are sound. Now that we've met, I agree with him on his choice of wife. You're real welcome, Rita.'

Rita blinked back her tears as Marco's mother hugged her, while his father reached to take the baby from her. 'And this must be the little angel,' he cried enthusiastically at the baby who opened his eyes for the briefest moment to examine him before falling asleep. 'He looks sleepy.'

'He should be,' Rita agreed. 'He yelled all the way from Chicago. 'Little angel' isn't the word any of the passengers on the planes would use, trust me!'

'Of course he was upset in the air, m'ija, what do you expect? It was much too noisy for such little ears,' the old man cried, beginning his lifelong support of Tony's every action. 'Would you trust me enough to let me walk with him a bit?'

'Sure,' she agreed, charmed by the old man's delight with her son.

'Marco, we're having chicken tonight,' his mother interrupted. 'I want a little time to chat with Rita, so if you could…'

'I'm on my way,' he agreed, kissing Rita on the forehead. 'I won't be long, querida.'

'I didn't see any town nearby,' she began, confused. 'Where are you getting the chicken from?'

'There's dozens of places,' he assured her, hurrying through the door. Rita followed her mother-in-law into a dim living room, relieved the blinds were opened a crack and sat on the couch she was pointed to, racking her brains as to which part of the invitation to 'tell me all about yourself,' she should respond to. To her relief Tony's howls reached their ears half an hour later, moments after she began describing her swimming lessons giving her a welcome escape. She rushed upstairs and grabbed him from the bed covering his face in kisses.

'You haven't a clue where you are, sweetheart,' she guessed, soothing him. 'We're in your father's house. Let mommy take you outside to the verandah.' She carried him out and settled on a swinging sofa, humming a lullaby as they rocked together when she caught sight of what appeared to be a headless chicken, blood squirting from its neck dancing along the lawn. Her horrified shriek brought both her mother-in-law from the kitchen and Marco from the shed.

'It's okay, querida; I just cut her head off. They all run for a little while, they gotta get it out of their legs,' he explained, grabbing the terrified baby before she could drop him. Tony was bundled into the house by a dubious grandmother while Marco hastened to wash his hands and settled beside her, stroking her hair. 'Sweetheart, it's fine, I promise. Look, it's stopped now. I gotta hang it upside down a bit to drain the blood before I can remove the intestines,' he explained, hanging the chicken on a hook. 'I pluck the feathers outside too,' he told her, squeezing her trembling hand. 'My mother's from Hermosillo and they never had hens, so I get to do that job as well.'

'I'm not hungry,' Rita groaned when her voice returned. 'Don't you get anything from a store round here?'

'Store sells things for money, querida,' he said gently, settling her on his knee. 'We don't have a great deal of it.' He stroked her hair rhythmically in silence till he felt her shaking subside. 'Wanna come watch me disembowel it?' he asked lightly, pulling her from the couch. 'Come on - for someone who studied nursing it should be real educational.'

'I was trained to save lives, not disembowel patients,' she retorted, a little of her humor returning. Despite herself she was unable to resist watching while he made a neat incision reached inside and withdrew the intestines together with the lungs, throwing it aside for the dog. 'What about the feathers?' she pressed.

He nodded, proud to show off his skills. 'I'll get some boiling water, it helps to loosen them.'

By the end of the second month Rita felt as though she knew all about subsistence agriculture. As far as she could tell, nothing was wasted. Whatever the Almeidas didn't eat themselves was handed over to neighbors. She saw little of Marco as he worked in the fields from dawn till dusk, oftentimes missing his siesta. He would return home suntanned and exhausted, curling into her arms. By the second month she left Tony for a few hours with his grandmother and accompanied him, resolved to spend a little time with him to chat. The day opened her eyes to a different interpretation of the meaning of the word 'busy.'

Marco handed her a bucket and told her to collect the ripe tomatoes, working beside her in the watermelon field. She watched as he crawled along, parting the leaves and pulling the ripe fruit, tossing it onto his wheelbarrow. Once it was too full to contain a single extra melon he would trudge over to the cellar and deposit them outside the door before returning on a run. He ignored her offers to help him, assuring her it was men's work.

There were peas, beans and lentils, agave, a small patch of potatoes, lettuce, cabbage and the backbreaking pumpkin to collect all of which fell to Marco as he gave his father the 'lighter' task of picking the fruit. T-shirt soaked to his skin he stacked the fruits of his labor in the deep cellar. Rita struggled to help him throw the carrots and potatoes into vast wooden containers in gathering dismay. Looking at his smudged face and filthy hands she had a horrible fear he would elect to remain.

Sensing her preoccupation he pulled her closer to him in the bath that evening, rubbing her shoulders with lavender soap. 'Wanna tell me about it, querida?' he questioned.

She shook her head, wishing the scalding water would ease her stiff muscles. Marco moved to face her, narrowing his eyes.

'We don't seem to spend anymore time together,' she began, twisting strands of hair through her fingers. 'There are so many people here, your parents, your sister, the kids…' She paused and he nodded, aware of her dislike of his sister. 'We haven't been anywhere together alone since I arrived…' Tears flooded her eyes as he pulled her into a hug.

'I'm sorry, Rita. You came at the busiest time. Things will settle a bit soon, I promise. I'll take you with me to the Sierra Madres to collect wood. We'll have to spend the night,' he promised, grinning at her. 'Alone out there, you feel like you're on top of the world.'

'Sounds great,' she sniffed.

'And tomorrow we'll go for a walk in the evening,' he decided, relieved to see a smile on her face. 'I'll show you our very own stream. We can follow it.'

The following evening proved sultry. Guiltily she kissed Tony goodbye, watching him bounced around on his grandfather's knees and followed Marco across the familiar fields to the stream. Waist deep water gurgled past them and he stripped, nodding his head at her. 'It's clean round here. Join me.'

'I didn't bring my bathers,' she sighed, envying him the cool water.

Marco joined her on the bank, removing her clothes. 'You see anyone else round here, sweetheart? Come on. I used to go to school this way, to the village school when I was young,' he told her, leading her into the water. 'Sometimes the temptation to stop and play here for the day proved irresistible and I just stayed.'

Rita giggled in joy, splashing him. He splashed her back at once, laughing.

'Rosa could hardly wait to get home to tell Papa,' he sighed.

'Oh no, she didn't,' Rita cried, convinced that his sister, whom she was beginning to rather uncharitably consider a bitch would have acted precisely that way.

'Sure she did. She had this habit of sitting on his knees and telling him everything I'd done that day at school,' he remembered. 'There were few kids so we had one teacher for all six grades and she saw everything I was doing. I was being silly, I pushed someone, I was late, I didn't share the paint, I wasn't listening or I was talking too much! And Papa had this terrifying way of beckoning with one finger,' he demonstrated, rolling a finger round pointing it at her. 'That meant he wanted me right away for another little 'talk.''

'And you never told her to shut-up?' she asked.

'I told her once that if she told Papa about a fight after school I'd kill her dolls,' he told her while she pressed a hand over her mouth to contain her laughter. 'Of course she told him all about it the moment she got home and I got a belting, so that evening I got ALL her dolls, every one of 'em and threw the whole lot down the well. There was one slight problem I'd overlooked. Plastic floats on water.'

Rita laughed merrily.

'Yeah, you can picture it. There they were, like real drowned people, floating with their faces turned upwards, and they absolutely refused to sink, not even when I threw a few stones after them. And that same day the pump broke down so Papa went to fetch water in a bucket and he saw them all!'

'Oh,' Rita whispered.

He nodded wordless.

They continued their walk, Rita leading the way. The evening proved a success, restoring her faith in the future. 'We gotta do this every night,' Marco decided as they returned. 'I'd almost forgotten what a lot of fun we have together. I love you, Rita.'

She opened her lips to him, returning his passionate kiss. 'I love you too, Marco. I just hope you haven't forgotten what you learned at college,' she whispered, voicing her greatest fears.

'Querida, come here,' he said gently, tilting her chin upwards. 'I'm missing six months from an architecture degree, a degree I fully intend to complete one way or the other. I love to come home and help out but it's not what I wanna do all my life. Let me show you something. You'll see that I'm thinking about our future.'

She nodded intrigued, following him to a small cellar on their property. To her surprise he produced a key and unlocked the door. Wondering what could be so important it needed a lock when the house was invariably left open she followed him down the stairs, staring in wonder at a row of barrels and tubes. 'Wine,' he told her, nodding his head at a barrel. 'Tequila,' he muttered, pointing to the rest.

'Isn't that illegal?' she whispered, the breath catching her throat.

'Yeah, but we need money. The truck's not going anywhere without a new battery and I'm trying to save a bit to pay for the last six months I'm missing. I lost my funding when I was deported,' he reminded her. 'Rita, we're gonna make it. I promised you a house in the suburbs and we'll get one. By the time my Green Card comes I'll have about enough to finish the degree.'

'What if you're caught?' she groaned, throwing her arms round him.

'By whom? The only policeman we got is married to my cousin. We always take him a coupla bottles. He won't say anything. Everyone's making the stuff. I started helping Papa when I was around 15.'

'So where do you sell it?' she breathed.

'To a guy in Chihuahua who bottles it and exports it to the…' he paused awkwardly.

'To the States,' she finished.

He nodded. 'Yeah. Rita, it's good quality, trust me. We drink it ourselves and he always tastes it before he pays us.' Moving past her he took a bottle from a shelf, pouring the contents into two glasses. 'To the future,' he said, clinking glasses with her.

'To the future,' she said, wishing silently for his Green Card and several more babies.