She tucked the birthing book back into her bag, but not before Jonah saw her thumb brush once, lightly, over Paloma's name on the first page — the way another woman might touch a locket. Fourteen years old now, that furious-hearted baby. Somewhere under a number, under a borrowed name, under six years of other people's paper.
They were going to find her. The paper would tell them where.
The Foundling Home sat on the hill above Río Verde like a promise the town had made to itself.
Tala saw it first from the road, whitewashed to a glare, its iron fence painted black and standing straighter than any fence had a right to stand. Flower beds ran along the front in disciplined rows — marigolds, mostly, orange as candle flames — and behind them rose the house itself, two stories of clean adobe with blue shutters and a porch wide enough to hold a congregation. A brass bell hung by the door, polished to a mirror shine.
"It wasn't always white," Jonah Mercer said beside her. He rode with his hat pulled low, his right hand resting on his thigh to hide the tremor. "Five years ago this was a freight office. Ashford bought it, painted it, and put orphans in it. The town wept at the dedication."
"Did you weep?" Tala asked.
"I was in Santa Fe, drinking. I read about it in a newspaper and felt nothing. That should have told me something."
They tied their horses at the hitching post. Before they reached the porch, the door opened, and a man in a black coat came out with his arms already spread in welcome.
"Mr. Mercer! And this must be the curandera we've heard so much about." Reverend Oates had the kind of voice that filled a room without asking permission — round, warm, practiced. His beard was white and trimmed square, and his handshake was dry and firm. "Welcome to the Home. Welcome. Mrs. Quill will be delighted. She so rarely gets visitors who understand the work."
"What work is that, Reverend?" Tala asked.
"Why — the Lord's work, of course. Taking in the lost and giving them a future." He beamed at her as though she had asked for directions to heaven. "Come, come. Mrs. Quill!"
The woman who appeared in the doorway might have been carved from the same whitewash as the house. Mrs. Quill was perhaps fifty, her gray hair pulled into a knot so tight it seemed to pull the wrinkles smooth from her face. She wore a gray dress with a white apron, and she smiled with her mouth while her eyes did the measuring.
"Mr. Mercer," she said. "How kind. And Miss — ?"
"Tala," Tala said. "Only Tala."
"Of course." The smile did not move. "The Reverend tells me you are a healer. How wonderful. We are always in need of — well. Come, let me show you what your charity supports. Or may support, should you feel moved."
The tour began in the entrance hall, where a wooden plaque bore the names of donors in gold leaf. ASHFORD CATTLE & RAIL, it read at the top, the letters larger than all the rest. Beneath it, a framed motto: *Every child a seed. Every seed a harvest.*
"Victoria Ashford's own words," Mrs. Quill said proudly. "She visits twice a year. The children adore her."
Tala said nothing. Her medicine bag hung from her shoulder, heavier than usual, or so it felt.
They moved to the dormitory — a long room with twenty narrow beds, each made with corners sharp enough to cut. The blankets were gray wool, identical. The children stood beside their beds in two straight lines, hands clasped, eyes forward. Boys on the left, girls on the right. Not one of them fidgeted. Not one of them whispered.
Tala had seen children in mining camps, in villages, in the walled yard of a cholera hospital in Chihuahua. Children were noise. Children were elbows and laughter and tears. These children were a photograph of children, and the wrongness of it crawled up her spine like a fever.
"How well-behaved they are," she said.
"Discipline is love made visible," Mrs. Quill said. "Isn't that right, children?"
"Yes, Mrs. Quill," twenty voices said at once.
Tala walked the line slowly, her healer's eyes doing what they always did — reading bodies the way other people read letters. A boy at the end of the row held his left arm stiff against his side. She stopped beside him.
"Does it hurt?" she asked softly.
The boy's eyes flicked to Mrs. Quill before he answered. "No, ma'am."
"He fell from the woodpile," Mrs. Quill said quickly. "Boys will be boys."
Tala looked at the boy's wrist, where the sleeve had ridden up. On the inside of his forearm, faded to the color of an old bruise, was a mark in ink: H-31. She had seen its brother on Tomás's wrist — H-17 — and the sight of it here, in this white room, on this silent child, landed in her stomach like a stone.
"May I?" she asked, and before Mrs. Quill could object, she took the boy's arm gently and turned it. The wrist was swollen, heat coming off it in waves. Not a fall. A sprain at least, days old, untreated.
"You should wrap this," Tala said. "Cold cloth, then warm. I can show your — "
"We manage our own infirmary, thank you," Mrs. Quill said, and her smile had gone thin as paper. "H-31, back in line."
The boy stepped back into line. He did not look at Tala again.
In the schoolroom, a girl of perhaps ten recited multiplication tables while the others sat with their hands folded. In the dining room, the tables were already set for the noon meal — tin plates, tin cups, each in its exact place. Everything clean. Everything in order. Tala found herself looking for dust the way another woman might look for a lost earring, and finding none, and feeling colder for it.
"You keep a beautiful Home, Mrs. Quill," Jonah said quietly. Tala glanced at him. His face was a mask, but his right hand had found his thigh again.