A wounded bird was the cliche they used to describe her, but instead of scare me away, that drew me to her. It was a favor to my father because her aunt and uncle whom she was visiting had asked my father if I would hang out with her because I was her age and I spoke Portuguese because her didn't speak English, and I expected it to be just that; a chore to talk to her that I would put up with just once, but I didn't expect her to be beautiful. Her father had killed himself in front of her, and her only way of coping was to lose herself in barrel racing, which was why she was here; a beautifully capable award winning Brazilian barrel racer who was so fragile so you couldn't see it. We were to hang out again, she had made sure of it, and I wondered what that meant. She was named after a flower and I hoped she would bloom here away from the ranch of her troubles.