“Yes.” Mike’s eyes closed.

Vera tucked the blanket around her daughter. “Right now, my feet feel like I’m standing on lava and I need to cool them off. Tomorrow morning early I’m flying to Brazil to cover a story.”

“Okay.” Mike turned over and went to sleep.

That had been years ago and Mike knew that now the ground under her mother’s feet was already beginning to heat up.

As for Mike, she’d been quite successful in extinguishing the fire inside herself. Her life was here now. Everyone she loved was here, and switching from one job to another kept the restlessness under control. Settled, she reminded herself. That’s what she needed and wanted.

“I don’t know about you two,” Miguel said, “but I’m starving.” He sat down on the grass where the cellar used to be. The women sat down with him.

“If Kelly were here, there’d be a perfect little cloth to sit on,” Vera said.

They looked at one another and smiled. They had done things they didn’t dare tell the people at home. When Mike was older, she and her father had gone with Vera and kept it a secret.

Mike opened the wrapping on her sandwich. “I’m grateful when there isn’t any tear gas.”

“Snipers for me,” Miguel said.

“No dictators!” Vera said, and they laughed. “So tell me what’s going on around here.”

Mike wanted to groan. That was her mother’s journalist voice. Papi called it her get-into-trouble voice.

“The town’s mayor is embezzling funds. I hope the money from the carnival isn’t stolen. The governor is on the payroll of some contractors who’re building skyscrapers with substandard steel. The buildings will probably collapse and kill thousands.”

Vera’s eyes didn’t change. “No abused children?”

“I hear one Mason kindergarten teacher is a brute. She—”

“You two!” Miguel looked at his wife. “Tell her about your new project. The one that’s going to keep you so busy that you stay out of people’s hair.”

Vera’s eyes lit with excitement. “Remember Joe Harding?”

“Of course,” Mike said.

“About six months ago, his grandson contacted me. He wants to write about what Joe did, who he met, where he went. All of it.”

Mike frowned. They hadn’t mentioned this before and she was feeling left out. “But you already did that.”

“But now things are different. When I wrote that book, the censorship was horrific. I had to leave a lot out.”

“And Joe’s family was young. You wanted to protect them,” Miguel added.