Elena had only heard the stories of the gold offerings the ancestors made to a lake long before Bolívar crossed the Andes. How, for centuries, greedy, thieving nations sent explorers and divers to Guatavita and to the Siecha Lakes to scavenge for gold, even attempting to drain them. She’d seen the treasures of El Dorado on a school excursion to the gold museum in the capital. Knowledge seized, converted to what they call legend, and made so famous it was like it didn’t even belong to Colombia anymore. It made her sad they weren’t able to keep their most beautiful things secret in order to protect them from the rest of the world.

The real reason Mauro brought his family to the supposed holy place: Tiberio had said the Muisca believed gold to be the sun’s warmth and power incarnate; if a person harnessed it, one could make their own magic.

He told Elena they should turn their backs to the lake, holding in their hands an imaginary ball of sunlight, conjure their deepest desire, face the lake again, and blow their golden wishes to the water below.

His wish, to make a life for their family in the north with no need ever to return to what he believed was a forsaken land.

He suspects Elena wished for the opposite.

ELEVEN

Elena thought of destinies she and Mauro might have fulfilled if not for all the wrong turns. If he hadn’t argued with Dante, had let him keep those extra dollars, considering it part of their rent for the basement that was a haven for their family.

Fifty dollars. A fortune to them then, but for Mauro, it was also a question of principle and pride. But was it really? Not when Elena considered what it cost them. Maybe Dante hadn’t taken it. Maybe it was Mauro who had miscounted or misplaced it.

One of the alternate lives she imagined was if they’d never left Colombia. If their pull toward new frontiers had taken them only as far as another city. And seeing it was not as they hoped they could have returned to her mother’s house, which Elena grew up believing was meant for her and the family she would one day have.

Would they have stayed together if Mauro had not been forced to leave?

Would he have stopped drinking for good and kept the family afloat?

All five of them. And maybe Talia wouldn’t be the last child but an older sister to one more.

They could have lived in the house with Yamira and Dante a while longer until, with both their incomes, they would have saved enough for their own place. A small house with a yard for the children to play in. They were starting to build a community, and in that house of strangers found something like extended family. But from the day Mauro fought with Dante, even though the police would make him pay for the crime, Elena and the children were no longer welcome. If ICE showed up at the house to take Elena as a collateral arrest, Dante said it could endanger the other undocumented residents, who could then be taken too. It would be safer for everyone if she moved away. Yamira came down to the basement to tell Elena she’d tried everything to convince her husband otherwise, but he was so hardheaded, there was no point insisting. Especially because what Dante said was true. But she knew of shared houses that turned over tenants regularly up the parkway in Passaic County. She’d make a few calls and see if she could find a room for Elena and the children.