“Well, they don’t send reporters out to where there’s fighting or real danger or nothing, do they, honey?” don Domingo asked.

“Sometimes they do, Dad. That’s the whole point of being a journalist,” Esperanza said quietly.

“Well, how come they’re sending you? You just got started. How come they don’t send someone with more experience, like la Diana Sawyer …!”

“Papi, it’s part of my job … I’m leaving Tuesday.”

And that was that.

Sofi prepared Esperanza’s favorite foods that weekend, like posole and sopa and lots of chili, because feeding is the beginning and end of what a mother knows to do for her offspring, even when she doesn’t know what to say. Esperanza did go and spend the night with Rubén, but no one asked how it went between them nor did she say, and Monday morning she went back to Washington.

Caridad’s second prediction had to do with don Domingo; well, it didn’t have nothing directly to do with Caridad’s father, but after the success of her first prediction, don Domingo made it his business to pay special attention to Caridad’s don, this faculty of prophecy that even don Domingo could not have imagined having in his wildest dreams. After Caridad’s second trance, Caridad told of a spectacular dream she had. She saw her horse Corazón leading a herd of one hundred and thirteen horses along a creek. There was some snow on the ground and the horses were all at a gallop, happy and free. “It was magnificent,” she said, stroking Corazón’s dark mane. “I felt like I was one with them.”

Don Domingo, who was never one to miss a cue where he might have an opportunity to make a profit, called his brother in Chicago to play the state lottery for him. “Put a buck on 113 today, will you?” That night, don Domingo’s brother called him to tell him that he had won eighty dollars on the daily number.

Needless to say, for the next few days it was don Domingo who insisted on feeding his daughter and keeping her company, hoping that again she might reveal a winning number through trance or dream. But no more numbers came to her head and within a week, he returned the task of caring for Caridad to his wife and youngest daughter.

The third occasion for a prediction caused Caridad to come out of her trance with a smile. “Wilma’s coming home,” she said. “And we’re all going to have our hands full with her …” La Loca was gleeful to hear this news because they had given up their Irish setter for dead months before.