Then she ran across the street, locking the gate behind her.

Esperanza continued to search for Santo out her window. Each time they caught each other’s gaze, Santo casually walked by and slipped her notes. What’s your favorite color? Flower? Day?

When he walked by her window, she would whisper the answer. Esperanza. Azul. Rosas. Lunes.

On Sundays, her father braved the trip to church, along with other faithful followers. Instead of taking Holy Communion, Esperanza lost herself in the crowd and sneaked away to meet Santo, who would wait in the small confession room in the back. When she stood, face-to-face with Santo, when she looked at his dark eyes, his tall, lean build, she forgot her father, she forgot they were hiding, she forgot that the city was in a civil war and that her father would never approve of him. Santo was a guerrilla, a rebel. Her father was working on Balaguer’s campaign and yearned for the kind of stability Trujillo had offered the people. And Santo’s beard was a sure indication that he could not care less about order.

For weeks he wrote her letters about the garden in Los Llanos, about La Lupe’s melodic wail, which cracked ice with its purity and passion, about his father being from China, about Los barbudos in Cuba, all the things that made her think he was a man of the world. A learned man. Not like the boys she knew at school who couldn’t carry on a conversation. So when Santo embraced her as if he had known her his entire life, she decided that he was going to be hers. And the thought brought on a perverse smile for stealing a kiss with her father’s enemy, to be with a man who didn’t care for laws, government, and order. She had had enough of such things under her father’s roof. But she couldn’t tell Santo about her father, who was a distant cousin to Emilio de los Santos, who, along with right-wing lawyers and businessmen, had deposed Juan Bosch in ’63. No, she wouldn’t tell him anything until she was sure he loved her.

Quepasó Street—Spofford Juvenile Detention

Each time Don Chan took the ride to Spofford Juvenile Detention, he hoped to see the veteran again. Esperanza grabbed the window seat and he took the aisle. She pulled out the cookies she’d brought Bobby and unwrapped them to offer some to Don Chan.

—I don’t eat sugar, Don Chan said. —It’s tragic how something so sweet killed so many.

—I could never do anything right by you. Esperanza took a bite from a cookie.

Don Chan didn’t respond. He looked past her, out to the East River. She pulled a photo out of her wallet.

—He sure does look like him, doesn’t he? she said, thinking about how much Bobby was changing and looking more like Santo, who was an indio version of Bobby Ewing. And when Santo wore that cowboy hat, ay papá, qué hombre! Esperanza buried Santo in the cowboy hat she had bought him for his birthday. —But my Bobby has a hardness to him that Santo never had. He hasn’t learned to wipe his own ass yet, and he’s already finding big trouble, spending the best years of his life locked up. It breaks my heart to think of it. Nothing like Santo, who wouldn’t hold a loaded gun even if his life depended on it.