Page 61 of A Brambleberry Summer

“How did you get here?”

That was a long and twisted story.

“I told you my mother died. I had no money and no family. A friend of my mother’s told me I could find work at a factory in the city. She helped me find a place to live with some other girls and gave me a little money.”

“That’s nice.”

“Yes. But then some men came to the factory telling us they knew of many jobs we could do across the border. I was afraid and didn’t want to, but other girls, my friends, said yes. Then I...had some trouble with my boss at the factory and he fired me.”

She thought of how innocent she had been in those days. Her mother had tried to shelter her when she was alive. As a result, Rosa knew little about the world or how to protect herself from men who wanted to take advantage of her. First her boss, then those offering riches and jobs in a new world. She had been monumentally naive, had thought maybe she would be working in another factory in the United States, one that paid better.

She had been so very wrong.

She was not going to tell any of that to Wyatt.

“What did you do then?”

“I came here and shortly after, I met Daniel and Lauren and they took me in and helped me go to school and then become a citizen,” she said quickly.

He gave her a searching look through the darkness, as if he knew full well there had to be more to her story. She lifted her chin and continued walking, pretending that Fiona had led her a little ahead of him and Hank.

She didn’t want him to press her about this. If he did, she would have to turn around and go back to the house without him. To her relief, he seemed to know she had told him all she was going to about that time.

“They must be very kind people.”

She seized gratefully on his words. “The best. I told you Daniel is a sheriff in Utah and Lauren is a doctor. I was very lucky they found me.”

She knew it was more than luck. It was a miracle. She had prayed to the Virgin and to her own mother that someone would help her, that she could find some light in the darkness. And then, literally, a light had found her hiding in the back of a pickup truck in the middle of a January storm. She had been beaten and bloodied, and had been semiconscious when Daniel and Lauren had found her. They had pulled her from that pickup truck and had saved her. An answer to her prayers.

They had stood by her then as she had spoken out against those who had hurt her. And they had stood by her later when she had to make the most difficult decision of her life.

“Carrie talked about how much courage it must have taken you to make your way in a new country.”

Rosa loved her country and her people. People from Honduras called themselves and each otherCatrachos, a name that had come to mean resilience and solidarity.

She would always consider herself partCatrachabut this was her home now.

If her mother had not died, she might have stayed and built a happy life there. She probably would have married young and would have had several children by now.

After Daniel and Lauren rescued her, she had been able to get an education that would have been completely out of reach to her in that small, poor village.

“Courage? No. I had nothing there after my mother died. And here I had a family. People who loved me and wanted the best for me. That was everything to me. It still is.”

Wyatt could not doubt the quiet sincerity in her voice. She loved the people who had taken her in.

He was suddenly deeply grateful for them, too. He would have loved the chance to have met them in person to tell them so.

They walked in silence for a few more moments, heading back toward Brambleberry House, which stood like a beacon above the beach a short distance away.

He could tell Rosa did not like talking about this. Her body language conveyed tension. He should let it go now. Her secrets were none of his business, but since she had told him this much, perhaps she would trust him and tell him the rest of it.

“You said you were fifteen when you came here?”

“Yes,” she said, her voice clipped.

How had she even made it across several borders? And what about the men who had promised her work in the United States?

He wasn’t stupid. He could guess what kind of work they wanted from her and it made him sick to his stomach. Sex trafficking was a huge problem, especially among young girls smuggled in from other countries.

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