“I wanted to leave and return home, but I did not know how. One day as we marched onward, the soldiers riding before us set the buildings aflame. I realized where we were. It was my own place; it was the hacienda where my father used to work. I heard some of the men say that Villa was putting villagers to death, that he had taken two men who had refused to join their band and had them shot in the middle of the square. I did not wait to find out if such a story could be true. In my heart, I knew it was.

“Without telling any others I ran toward the burning hacienda and caught one of the escaping horses. I rode north to Los Algodones, where my madrina lives with her husband. She had told me to come to her if I was ever in trouble. She has always been my savior. I have always known the way to her home, even as a child: It is not far from the dunes that lay between El Norte and Baja, where the land is like one country. Abandon the train tracks before the border and walk west, past the dance hall to the grove of mesquite. There stands a tree with a double trunk, twenty meters high, the tree that everyone knows. My madrina’s home is five hundred paces north. When I arrived, the horse was stumbling, foaming at the mouth.

“I stayed for many months while she nursed me back to health, listened to my stories, held me when I cried. One day a letter arrived from Esperanza. ‘Come and stay with me, Adelita. Your own house is waiting for you here,’ she wrote.

“My madrina encouraged me. ‘Be with young people again,’ she said. ‘Perhaps find another husband. Go back among the living.’”

When Adela finished speaking, Ram did not know what to say.

“You do not believe me, Ram?” she said, after moments of silence.

“I believe you,” he said. She had told him so much. He felt it was a gift.

The sun had set now, the evening had turned chill, and Alejandro still had not returned. They realized he was not coming. “Perhaps something has happened with the wagon,” she said. “He does not like me much.” She gathered the plates before Ram could say no. She helped him scrub the dishes in Kishen’s tub. He sensed she wanted to work alongside him, that with the telling of her story, she felt unburdened.

“Buenas noches, Ram,” she said, drying her hands on her skirt. “Thank you for the food. Gracias.”

He could not meet her eye. “It is nothing.”