When weather permitted, she walked.It was only six blocks from her two-bedroom cottage to the Cantu Corner Store—Dolores Cantu baked the muffins herself and saved the plumpest of the batch for Jamie—and only another ten to Weldon Pediatrics, the small West Texas practice where Jamie had worked as office manager for six years.Because she walked, she usually finished her coffee before she arrived. Her mother knew this, being as familiar with Jamie’s daily routine as with her own.On those days, Dr. Kate, as she was fondly referred to by the county’s residents, would bring Jamie a refill, picking it up with her own breakfast—an egg, potato, cheese and chorizo burrito, loaded and folded by Dolores’s husband, Juan—before making the drive five miles north to the Danby Veterinary Clinic.This morning, Jamie was still outside the pediatrics office, a boxy building of brown siding with rock beds of succulents hugging the front, fitting her key into the door, when her mother’s black Suburban pulled into the lot that would soon be teeming with bilingual mothers and children.Jamie turned briefly, squinting against the sun as she watched Kate swing the SUV in a semicircle, the big vehicle’s tires grinding on the gravel and creating a cloud of dust thick enough to gag a horse.
