Free Yesterday's Embers by Deborah Raney

hair and Dad’s rich brown eyes. But even if that might have helped her fit into Clayburn’s Euro-American population, the Valdez name—and the Catholic faith that came with it—would still have set her apart from a phonebook full of Andersens and Petersens, Schmidts and Johannsens.
    She would die before she’d tell her brothers, but truth was, a chance to change her name was just one more reason she’d always longed to find a husband. Her brothers had all married nice Latina girls—never mind they were Mexican, not Cuban. They’d joined their wives’ churches and settled down to raise large, noisy families. And they were happy. Nauseatingly happy. They didn’t seem to feel out of place in the Midwest. Of course, they hadn’t stuck around Clayburn. Rick had headed to college, and Tony and Alex to trade school, straight out of high school. And they’d never come back to Clayburn except to visit her.
    She wasn’t ashamed of her Cuban ancestry, but Mama’s Swedish blood was in her, too. Pure native Clayburn blood. Why did people have trouble remembering that?
    She would never deny her surname, but she wouldn’t be sad to shed it someday. Maybe then everybody wouldn’t automatically assume that her father had worked the railroad (which he had) and against Grandpa Swenson’s will, Mama converted from her Lutheran faith so she and Dad could be married in the Catholic church (which they had).
    Dad had been a good man and a good provider, and Grandpa Swenson mostly forgave all when Mickey’s brothers started coming along. But Mama always said it was Mickey who finally melted his heart. She was christened Michaela Joy, after Michael Swenson, and that sealed the deal.
    Grandpa died when Mickey was ten, but she had happy memories of the white-haired man with twinkly blue eyes like Mama’s.
    She missed her parents and ached to think her children would never know their Papa and Nana Valdez the way most of her brothers’ kids had. She looked into the playroom and saw the DeVore twins playing with Harley. Sometimes it made no sense that God allowed someone like Kaye DeVore to die while Mickey Valdez, who had no one who depended on her, no one who waited for her to come home at night, went unscathed.
    Dad and Mama had raised their four children to believe that lifewasn’t fair, wasn’t supposed to be fair, but that didn’t keep Mickey from wondering why . If God was omnipotent, as she’d been taught to believe, then he had the power to balance the inequities in the world. Why didn’t He just make things fair?
    She glanced at the clock. Doug would be here any minute. He’d been much better about picking the kids up on time since that night she’d had to bring them home. Mickey suspected Brenda had said something to him, though she denied it. At any rate, neither of them had stayed late waiting for Doug for several weeks now.
    She’d thought often of her time at the DeVores’. Kayeleigh and Landon hadn’t been in daycare since the end of January, since Kaye’s mother was back and helping out with the older kids after school. The twins and Harley seemed to be getting along okay—they laughed and played like the other kids, though they seemed to stick together and play apart from the other children more than before. She had to wonder what kind of lasting emotional damage they would have. Even as an adult, you didn’t lose your mother without it affecting you deeply.
    She heard the front door open and looked up to see Doug making his way through the maze of toddler-size furniture and bookshelves to where she stood.
    He nodded at the watering can in her hand. “Trying to keep a little green in your life?”
    “Trying. I haven’t done a very good job lately. Things are looking a little wilty.”
    He pinched the leaf of a hibiscus between his index finger and thumb. “A good watering, they’ll spring back.”
    She winced. “I just hope I haven’t waited too long.”
    He gave her a sympathetic smile, digging in