The Journal of Antonia Montoya. Rick Collignon

touched his son’s arm. “Let’s me and you have a soda, José,” he had said. “We can watch the storm from inside.”

      When Ramona turned off the dirt road onto the highway, José began to cry silently. Ramona looked at him out of the corner of her eye and thought that this had been a foolish idea. She should turn the truck around and return José to Flavio and Martha, who would care for him properly. Maybe it was true that Loretta had come back from the grave to ask a favor of Ramona, but it wasn’t necessarily true that just because Loretta was dead, she knew any better.

      Ramona drove through town and took the road behind the village office and pulled up to the front of her house. She shut off the engine and looked at her nephew. She would feed José some lunch, and then she would see. José looked over at her, and Ramona reached out her hand and brushed lightly at his hair.

      “Let’s go inside, José,” she said. “We’ll have some lunch and drink something warm.”

      The two of them climbed out of the truck. A slight breeze blew, and the water from the cottonwoods fell on them in large fat drops. Before they reached the house, the front door swung open and Ramona’s grandfather, Epolito Montoya, who had been dead for thirteen years, stood in the doorway. “Why are you out in the rain?” he said.