All those hours she had spent with Mr. Hernández. Nearly four years. Longer than Bobby had been in juvie. Bobby would be returning home soon. How time flew by. All those years Mrs. Hernández had saved one dollar here…one dollar there…and now she had enough to build something. Esperanza knew that trick. That’s how she’d saved the money to come to New York in the first place. But since her arrival, she couldn’t accumulate a dime. Every dollar went to a plátano, a gallon of milk. And what was extra went to the bills. No matter what she did, she sank deeper in debt. She had only succeeded in accumulating days, months, years. If she could only sell all that time lost. Her time. Bobby’s time in prison, Santo’s unlived time. All lost. What would their lives have been like if they had stayed in Los Llanos? Or maybe if she would’ve stayed in D.R., and moved to la capital, maybe Bobby would’ve been enrolling himself in the university, like her sister’s daughter, who was studying law. But if Esperanza had never left, she wouldn’t have been able to send the twenty dollars here and the thirty dollars there that helped pay for her niece’s books, paper, and pencils.

—At least we have each other, Esperanza told Mr. Hernández, who grunted when she said anything. She massaged Mr. Hernández’s legs and feet. She read in a magazine that it was good for him. Maybe he didn’t feel much, but it was good for his circulation. He still had strength in his legs though he refused to exercise on the walker.

—What’s the point if I have nowhere to go? he slurred.

Esperanza combed his hair and trimmed his nails. She clipped his cuticles and pinched his cheeks for color. He didn’t like that, but didn’t fight her, either. She dabbed cologne behind his ears after she bathed him with a moist towel, and tried not to look at his privates when he went to the bathroom. He didn’t say it, but she was sure he liked to have her around. Maybe even more than his wife.

Los Llanos

1964

It was the scent of burning cilantro that woke the people of Los Llanos. In the darkness of the night, they turned in their sleep, dreaming of stewed goat with onions and peppers. Fried tostones. Garlic and yucca. Roasted almonds. Grilled pineapples. —Is it morning? Don Chan asked Caridad, nudging her warm body, wondering why the chickens were awake.

Miraluz ran out of her house and saw them. The two men lighting the garden, their silhouettes a trace darker than the blackened sky, blending in and out of the dark shape of the trees and plants. Something went hot inside her, as if she were watching her own self lit on fire. She tried to find her voice to scream for help. She reached out her hand to stop them, as if they were close enough to get caught. —Don’t, she wanted to say. Not the avocado tree, no, no, not that hibiscus she planted for her medicinal tea. And when she found her voice, when she realized that the burning garden was not a nightmare, she felt a callused hand against her mouth. A knife on her throat.