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By Root 1106 0

maintain the orchards, herbs, and flower gardens was more successful than even she had envisioned. The soil was as giving and fertile as reported by don Hernán and the monks, travelers, and scientists, whose accounts she’d devoured before she emigrated to Puerto Rico. In the gardens there was always something to do that focused her attention away from the miserable numbers and Ramón’s disregard for their financial affairs. She had to talk to him about the notes to don Luis, but Ramón avoided her as much as possible. If he sought her company, it was to argue, and the easiest way to raise her temper was to remind her that they’d assured don Eugenio that the hacienda would be profitable within five years. If the next two harvests showed losses, Eugenio would sell.

“Obviously, we’ll lose money again.” Ana waved the notes of credit in Ramón’s face. “You’ve squandered our savings and indebted our future at usurious rates to that awful Luis.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Ramón said, more disposed toward the neighbor than to her.

“He’s calling in the loans.” She shuffled them in front of him. “Or did you think they were gifts?”

“Of course I knew they were loans.” He didn’t even look in their direction.

“He robbed us even before we came here. He cheated don Rodrigo. He’s hoping that we’ll founder so that he can get the hacienda at a bargain. Don’t you understand anything?”

“You don’t trust anyone. That’s why no one will talk to you. I should’ve noticed that in Spain. You had no friends.”

“And you have an abundance, all of them taking advantage of you.”

He shook his head. “No one has taken more from me than you, Ana.”

She winced and hoped he hadn’t noticed. “According to you, I’m always the one at fault. You take no responsibility.”

“You’re wrong. I regret that Inocente and I believed you. You would have said or done anything to get us to come to Puerto Rico. Anything.” He paused to let her interpret his meaning.

“You always circle back to old grievances and arguments. You wallow in regrets while I work as hard as any man on this land.” She put the notes in their folios, knotted the ribbons to keep them from falling out. “I get no praise for our modest successes, but I’m condemned for whatever goes wrong.”

“What we have endured in Puerto Rico is the result of your conquistador delusion.”

“This is where you’re wrong, Ramón. It wasn’t my idea to spend all our cash on land when we had more urgent needs. It wasn’t my idea to put us in debt to don Luis. That was you, not me,” she said. Offended and unwilling to swallow her anger anymore, she slammed the folios on the table and vented her fury with her only weapons, words that would hurt him. “It wasn’t my idea that Inocente ride to San Juan when it was safer by sea. That, Ramón, is your handiwork.”

———

“There they go again.” Inés pouted toward the casona.

Flora looked up from the pants she was hemming. She’d been listening to the rising voices while keeping an eye on two-year-old Miguel playing with two other children. “Getting worse every day.” She finished the stitch, ran extra thread inside the seam, then snipped it with her teeth. “Where Efraín?” She picked up the next garment, a pair of shorts for Miguel.

“Don Severo took him with more of José’s carvings for the sailors.”

“How much he keep?”

“Half. He gives the rest to José. At this rate, he’ll be an old man before he can buy his freedom. We have less than twenty pesos. We need hundreds.”

“At least he has something to sell,” Flora said.

“Did you make money before you came here?”

“Doña Benigna didn’t let.”

“But the law says we can work in our free hours.”

“The law says if master agrees.”

“Where I worked before,” Inés said, “the mistress rented me to other houses. Supposed to be my free afternoon, too, but she kept the money, never gave me a penny.”

“You’re lucky don Severo give José half.”

“You always look on the bright side.”

“What else am going to do?”

Inés was about to respond, but she pouted again, this time toward the carpentry. Miguel was listening to the loud voices from the casona, his lower lip trembling,