“Mom?” Esperanza said, hesitating, but eyes still fixed on the empty space where Caridad had passed.

“Dios mío,” Sofi gasped. “Caridad.”

“Mom,” La Loca whispered, still on the floor, “I prayed for Caridad.”

“I know you did, ’jita, I know,” Sofi said, trembling, afraid to pull herself up, to go to the room where she suspected Caridad’s corpse was now waiting be taken care of.

“I prayed real hard,” La Loca added and started to cry.

The dogs and cats whimpered.

The three women huddled together went to the bedroom where Caridad was. Sofi stepped back when she saw, not what had been left of her daughter, half repaired by modern medical technology, tubes through her throat, bandages over skin that was gone, surgery piecing together flesh that was once her daughter’s breasts, but Caridad as she was before.

Furthermore, a calm Fe was holding her sister, rocking her, stroking her forehead, humming softly to her. Caridad was whole. There was nothing, nothing that anyone could see wrong with her, except for the fact that she was feverish. Her eyes were closed while she moved her head back and forth, not violently but softly, as was Caridad’s nature, mumbling unintelligibly all the while.

“Fe?” said Esperanza—who was equally taken aback by Fe’s transformation. She had stopped screaming.

Sofi, sobbing, rushed over to embrace her two daughters.

“I prayed for you,” La Loca told Fe. “Thank you, Loca,” Fe said, almost smiling.

“Loca.” Esperanza reached over to place her hand on La Loca’s shoulder. “Don’t touch me!” La Loca said, moving away from her sister as she always did from anyone when she was not the one to initiate the contact.

Esperanza took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She had spent her whole life trying to figure out why she was the way she was. In high school, although a rebel, she was Catholic heart and soul. In college, she had a romance with Marxism, but was still Catholic. In graduate school, she was atheist and, in general, a cynic. Lately, she prayed to Grandmother Earth and Grandfather Sky. For good measure, however, she had been reading a flurry of self-help books. She read everything she could find on dysfunctional families, certain now that some of her personal sense of displacement in society had to do with her upbringing.

But nowhere did she find anything near to the description of her family. And now, Caridad’s and Fe’s spontaneous recoveries were beyond all rhyme and reason for anyone, even for an ace reporter like Esperanza. It was time to get away, Esperanza decided, far away.

“I’m going to call Rubén,” Esperanza announced, but at that moment her mother was too overwhelmed by her two daughters’ return to the living that she didn’t hear Esperanza either.

“Rubén?” Esperanza said, when Rubén answered his phone.