Excerpt from Chapter Seven

of Rio Hondo

by Preston Lewis

Sarafina’s cries became so frequent they adjusted to them, never realizing when they ceased. Not until they caught the jarring wail of a newborn did they realize that the delivery had finally come. For ten or more hours, Sarafina’s cries had worried Wes, but now not hearing them terrified him even more. He stared at Jace, pacing around the front room, afraid to check on his Sarafina for fear she had died. How would he take care of the boys and a newborn without her?

When the midwife appeared in the kitchen door, she smiled. “Es una chica,” she announced as she wiped her bloody hands on a rag.

“Congratulations, Papa,” Jace said, “I hope she gets her mother’s looks instead of yours.”

Wes raced past the midwife, running into his bedroom, lit by the sickly pale light of a lamp on the bedside stand. He saw Sarafina propped up on a pillow, her eyes filled with sadness and fatigue, as the swaddled newborn suckled at her breast. He rushed to her side, bent over, and kissed his wife on the cheek.

“Are you okay, Sarafina?”

Her lips quivered and tears flowed down her cheeks to her frown.

“You have a daughter, yes?” he asked.

Slowly Sarafina lifted her free hand and pulled the wrap from the baby’s head.

Even in the pale yellow light, Wes could see the red tint of the newborn’s hair. The baby wasn’t his. He sighed, lowered his head, and patted his wife’s fingers as they covered the baby’s head again. How could he ever look at the baby and not recall the violation of his wife? How could he ever see the little one as anything but Jesse Evans’s daughter?

Sarafina managed a somber smile. “Would you do me a favor, mi esposo?”

“Yes, Sarafina, anything.”

She pulled the whimpering newborn from her breast and offered it to her husband.

Wes carefully took from his wife’s hands the daughter that wasn’t his. He cradled the infant in his arms as his wife spoke.

“Take her to the river,” Sarafina said, “and drown her.”