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By Root 1144 0

forays into the past, and they each heard the other’s silences as much as what was said. Ana didn’t want to humble Severo because of his impoverished childhood by detailing just how privileged hers had been. He didn’t want to elevate her by revealing just how much suffering he’d endured in Boca de Gato, in Madrid, and on his arduous journey across the sea to the door of Marítima Argoso Marín. She didn’t say that she’d been a wife to two men nor did she reveal her relationship with Elena. He didn’t mention Consuelo Soldevida, who washed and pressed his clothes and shaved his face every day. She didn’t disclose that she’d traded her only child—her son—for the privilege of staying on the plantation. He didn’t divulge that don Eugenio paid him three hundred pesos a year to make sure she never left Hacienda los Gemelos.

“Remember when I took you and the twins to a site on my land beyond the north fields?” Severo asked Ana one evening, a few days before their wedding.

“I remember. You were thinking of building there.”

“The air is healthier. The ash from the chimney and from burning the fields won’t bother you as much.”

“I can see that’s a good thing.” She set aside the shawl she was hemming with crochet lace. “But frankly, I’ve accepted the ash and the dust and even the insects as unavoidable.”

“You drew plans for a house,” he persisted. “Ramón kept them at the finca, and we discussed them.”

“I haven’t seen those plans in years.”

“Let me show you the place again.”

“It’s so far, Severo, and I’m so busy.”

“It’ll take a morning. You’ll like it once we’re there.”

The next day, Flora unpacked Ana’s old riding habit from the cedar chest in the rancho. Ana had forgotten how heavy the skirt was, its many pleats. Over the years she’d learned to do more with less, and her simple cotton skirts and blouses no longer had the fashionable excesses of her youth. The kid riding gloves and boots, the veil over her hat brought memories of her first ride from the sandy cove where she landed after the harrowing sea voyage from the capital. So much has happened in six years, Ana thought, as Flora fastened her boots.

They rode at first light, the air still moist, as night creatures burrowed into their diurnal rest and day-flying birds started their matins. Marigalante, her new paso fino mare, a gift from Severo, was thrilled to be venturing beyond the windmill, across the river that curved around the hill. Severo led the way, higher and higher up the path newly shorn of vegetation. His favorite hounds, Tres, Cuatro, and Cinco, bounded ahead, then doubled back to where they could see him when he whistled. As they took the last turn, the path widened, and as they reached the top, a line of men and women holding trowels, hoes, and rakes stood closely together across the path, so Ana couldn’t see beyond them. Her heart jumped to her throat. Had they come upon a group of runaway slaves? But this was no insurrection. Each of them—Teo, Paula, José, Inés—was familiar, and each was smiling. Severo dismounted, helped Ana from Marigalante, and told her to close her eyes.

“It’s a surprise,” he said.

He took her elbow and reminded her to keep her eyes shut as he led her farther up the hill, across what felt like grass underfoot, up a wooden ramp until there was tile beneath her boots. He turned her so that she’d be facing where he wanted her to look when she opened her eyes.

“Now.”

Below was an expanse of many shades of green, from deep olive to the chartreuse inside a lime. A purple sash divided the Caribbean Sea from a cloudless azure sky.

Ana was speechless.

Severo grinned boyishly. “Do you like it?”

She nodded.

“I knew you would,” he said.

She peeked over the edge of the improvised railing of what she guessed would be a balcón. This part of the house was perched on high stilts over the crest of the hill. Looking down made her dizzy. In the valley below, surrounded by the cane, were the familiar structures—bell tower, windmill, chimney, barns and warehouses, cuarteles, bohíos, the casona in the center. Paths led from the house toward the