Dark Reservations Read Online Free PDF Page A

pequeño joya, their little jewel.
    Grace’s parents lived in Matamoros, a city on the U.S.-Mexico border, across from Brownsville, Texas. But a few months before Grace was due, her mother moved to Brownsville and delivered her first baby at Mercy Hospital, or La Merced, as the locals called it, ensuring Grace’s birthright citizenship. Grace grew up attending the best private schools in America. Later she attended the University of New Mexico, which wasn’t the best, but it did have the largest Hispanic population in the country and was close enough for Gustavo Sedillo to check up on his only daughter. At age twenty-two, she met an older man, Arlen Edgerton, a transplanted blue blood from Massachusetts, who became a campus activist and her college lover. At age twenty-six, she was the wife of Congressman Arlen Edgerton, the beloved New Mexican, the celebrated liberal, and her political role model. At age thirty, she was Congresswoman Grace Edgerton. And now, at an age that she tried her best never to divulge, she would be Governor Grace Edgerton.
    Her office door flung open. She wiped away a tear.
    â€œWe’ve got trouble.” Christopher Staples, her campaign manager, strode into the office, an invisible cloud of cheap aftershave in tow. He plopped his two-doughnut-a-day bottom onto the burgundy leather couch she kept in there for those long nights during the campaign. “Big trouble. Godzilla sequel–size trouble. King fucking Kong–size trouble. This is the shit you can’t foresee. The shit that can torpedo a run at the last minute.”
    Her chest fluttered. “What is it?”
    â€œThis could sink us. Sink you.”
    â€œChris, calm down and tell me.”
    â€œSo close. So freakin’ close.”
    â€œChris!”
    â€œArlen’s vehicle was riddled with bullets.”
    â€œOh God.”
    â€œSee what I mean. A shitstorm is about to hit and stink up your campaign.”
    â€œOh God.”
    â€œYou can say that again.”
    She whispered, “Arlen.”
    Chris stared at her.
    â€œI’m sorry,” he said, but his tone didn’t agree. “I shouldn’t have dropped it on you like that. But we need to move.”
    Grace took a deep breath and wiped away another tear.
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œKendall called. There’s a Washington Post reporter already sniffing around, working the angle that you knew about the affair and maybe you put a hit out on your husband and that tramp.”
    â€œHer name was Faye and she wasn’t a tramp and they weren’t lovers. I shouldn’t have to be telling you this. You’re supposed to be on my side.” She looked down at the paper on her desk. At the picture of her and Arlen holding hands. “Those rumors are old. No one cares about them now.”
    â€œThis is the Washington fucking Post. You know, the Watergate folks. They put the FBI to shame.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Damn it, Grace. Take your blinders off. Arlen’s disappearance never amounted to much back then because no one had any answers. No one knew what happened. Anything goes now. They could find the gun in your desk drawer, for all I know.”
    She sprang to her feet. “What the hell do you mean by that?”
    â€œKendall’s concerned, and I don’t blame him. If he endorses you now, there can be blowback later. He wants you in office so you can return the favor when he announces his run for the White House. But you go up in flames with this, he gets burned.” He leaned his head back, pressing the palms of his hands against his eyes. “Shit. You may have been considered for the VP ticket. I so wanted out of this state. You know, I was even checking out condos in D.C.”
    â€œKnock it off. I’ll talk to him.”
    He dropped his hands and met her gaze. His expression suggested he was witnessing humanity’s fall from grace. “Look, I’m neither your