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had it so convoluted, so confused, that I’d finally told him to keep quiet, let her tell me and I’d judge for myself.
    So now I stood there listening, waiting, looking at her. What I was thinking was: Not attractive, yet something solid about her and … troubled. Yes, a troubled young woman.
    It gave me a pang. How would it make Bobby feel, seeing that his little girl had apparently grown up to be gawky, lacking confidence and seemed to be unhappy?
    She was what? Twenty-four, maybe twenty-five years old. About the same age as Bobby when I knew him. But gaunt as she was, she did not have the look of health, only endurance. Had dull, brittle-looking hair—it didn’t get much attention—and long wading-bird legs with calves traced by varicose veins. Runner’s legs. And the way she dressed: everything baggy; clothes that were chosen not to look good but because she could hide in them. Shirt and shorts were feminine and casual like “Who cares?” but also vaguely defensive, with maybe a hint of aggressiveness. A T-shirt that read:
Thirty-Second Rule Strictly Enforced.
    What the hell did that mean?
    But a good face. Strong nose, but a little too much of it; solid jawline but flat cheeks that made her lips seem thin,pale. Bits and pieces of her mother and father bonded together, no doubt about it, but the proportions were just a tad off. It was hard to believe that two people as attractive as Bobby and Gail Richardson had produced someone as plain as this girl who now sat in my house. Gail was Latina by birth, mother and father both from … South America? Maybe Mexico or Central America, I couldn’t remember. Bobby had bragged to me more than once that his wife was a direct descendant of pure Castilian royalty. Her great beauty, he claimed, had been handed down through the blood.
    There didn’t seem to be a hint of Latin blood in Amanda. Well … perhaps a touch in her dark eyes. No place else, though. But the vagaries of genetics are ever-surprising and cannot be predicted.
    Or maybe … maybe it’s just the way that Amanda Richardson chose to look.
    Some makeup, maybe. A decent haircut. Some clothes chosen to set off her lean lines; better posture.
    I wondered….
    Every now and again she’d glance up and catch my eye—a searching look of appraisal—then return her attention to Tuck.
    Tuck had been talking about his years shipping and working cattle in Central America with his old partner Joseph Egret: “But the Indian bastard up and got hit by a car. Killed him deader than two smoked hams, which taught me once and for all, no more Injuns for partners. The poor fools got no brain for modern times. Took me fifty years with Joe to learn that an Injun can’t be trusted, but I finally did. These days, ma’am, I work strictly alone.”
    Which is when I finally made a move toward the table, planning to tell Tuck, enough, for God’s sake, take a walk so the woman and I could talk.
    But Amanda intercepted me. First, it was with a look—
Don’t hurt his feelings
—and then by touching her fingers to the back of my hand—
Let him talk for a little longer.
    So I did. Listened to the old man ramble for another fifteen or twenty minutes before she finally cut him off.Asked him for half an hour alone with me so she could share the contents of a letter—“It’s confidential,” she explained—and Tuck left as meekly and amenably as I had ever seen him, charmed by her or manipulated by her, it was difficult to say which.
    I studied the girl’s face, thinking maybe she wasn’t as troubled or as defenseless as I’d believed.
    “The rule has to do with this idea some friends and I came up with. The thirty-second rule. The way it goes is, a guy comes up—this is usually at a bar, a concert maybe, someplace like that. Nothing to do with business, but like at a party or something. So a guy comes up and he’s got exactly thirty seconds to prove he’s not plastic or full of crap or a fake. If he doesn’t say something