Yours to Keep by Serena Bell Page B

No papers. Not much she could do.” Nati shrugged again, as if to say that it had only been a matter of time until such a thing happened. “Now she’s banned.”
    “How long?” Ana whispered.
    “Ten years.”
    Ten years was the time bar—the length of time before she could reapply for entry—that Ana, too, would face if she was discovered. Ten years of exile from her family, her friends, her job, her homeland. The same penalty she’d pay if she were to come forward and admit that her visa had expired—a ten-year stay in D.R. before she could return here and seek a green card.
    “She doesn’t know anyone there. She came here when she was three years old. She doesn’t have friends there. All our family is here. There are people there who will take her in, but she has to start over there. It’s not a good place for her. Very poor, very unstable. We can’t see her, because we can’t travel. My grandchildren can see her, but how often? Once, twice a year? Their mother.”
    Tears pricked Ana’s eyes. Her chest felt tight. She had to get a grip. She was not the one being deported. And the Dominican Republic was not El Salvador. The island was a beautiful place, with thriving cities and a healthy tourist trade. Her aunt was there, a woman Ana barely remembered and spoke to on the phone, briefly, awkwardly, only every few years. And yet the idea of being sent away there, away from everything that mattered, away from everything she’d built here, made her light-headed with panic.
    She barely remembered D.R. Sometimes, in high summer, a certain trick of sunshine would bring memories back to her. She remembered that the lights went out, and sometimes there was no water. She remembered the rice shortages, her parents arguing about whether to leave or stay. She remembered that the hills were like no color she’d seen since—a vivid damp green.
    She’d heard that it was a different country now, that technology had arrived there, had made the urban areas more like the cities she knew, although the rural areas had changed less. If she ever got sent back, she’d live in a city. She’d teach English. She’d be wealthy and successful there, capitalizing on tourism. But, still, it was practically impossible to imagine being exiled there for ten years. To imagine spending ten years away from the people she cared about. To know that the businesses she’d built wouldn’t even exist in her absence. To have to start from scratch. She didn’t even really still have family there. Except her father, and he didn’t count.
    “Todo es suerte, ¿sí?” Nati asked. “It’s all a matter of luck, right? I’ve been here nearly thirty years, and I’ve managed to fly under the radar. You, too, right?”
    They’d never discussed Ana’s status explicitly, but someone who knew what to look for would see the clues. The jar of cash her students paid her with. The fact that she didn’t drive. Ana gave a tight nod of confirmation. Yes, lucky.
    “My daughter, she wasn’t so lucky.”
    Driving without a license was more bad judgment than bad luck, Ana thought, but she didn’t say so. She knew that Nati’s daughter had had her own good reasons.
    “Do you have a lawyer?”
    Nati shook her head. “There’s nothing we can do now. If we had hired a lawyer when she was still in the country, maybe—but it’s too late now.”
    Ana knew it was true. “I’m very sorry.” She put her hand on Nati’s arm.
    Tears spilled down Nati’s cheeks. “She was my little girl,” the older woman whispered.
    The past tense broke Ana’s heart.

Chapter 8
    With an extreme effort of will—and an ample serving of luck—Ethan kept his Monday more or less on the rails so that he could leave in time to see Ana. Even so, by the time he got back to his office to gather up his things it was nearly six.
    She’d run away from him on Thursday night.
    He had watched her walk toward the cinder-block building. Aside from his headlights, there were two