When she met Antonio by his horse that afternoon, before he could say anything, María Isabel made her request: “If I could be so bold as to inquire, and forgive me the indiscretion, as to the title of the book you placed on—”

“What makes you think it was I?” Antonio’s smile stretched his pockmarked cheeks. María Isabel instinctively gathered her skirt to leave.

But Antonio stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Cecilia Valdés,” he said. “A novella. I did not know you cannot read. I should not have been so presumptuous. I hope you’ll forgive me and accept a sincere assurance I meant no harm by it.”

“Why did you give it to me?”

“I will probably sound trite in saying you embody the protagonist, Cecilia Valdés. Perhaps that is why I am drawn to you.”

She did not know how to respond, so she only looked away and said, “I must get home before dark,” after which he’d asked her name.

“María Isabel, will you let me read to you?” he said.

“You mean to say outside the workshop?”

“It would be my greatest pleasure.”

She handed the book to him.

“Thank you for an offer so generous,” she said. “But I’m afraid I cannot accept.”

María Isabel had thought she was ready to accept, to fulfill her obligation. Can one learn to fall in love with a mind? She regarded the bull-necked lector. How amusing that men thought they could so easily know a woman. She would wait until she couldn’t.

Her mother was getting worse though. This she knew by a cough that doubled her over and shook her. Some evenings Aurelia so lacked an appetite that she retired early and left María Isabel to eat alone. And still her mother woke each day and prepared for her trek to the sugarcane fields. María Isabel pleaded with her, but Aurelia would work to the day of her death—and afterward if she could. This they both knew.

And then the war bled into Camagüey. Inevitable, she understood. Every year, La Aurora informed of more Cubans and fewer jobs; the economy increasingly concentrated on sugar, on plantations run on slave labor. Also in the paper: the abolition movement, Spanish taxation worse. She’d heard a wealthy plantation owner in Santiago freed his slaves and declared independence from Spain. She’d heard whispers of clandestine meetings. But she hadn’t expected the fight to reach her life so quickly.