Sofi understood her daughter, while exercising to the fullest the patience granted to her to endure the particular life she had been given. Nevertheless, being only human, she answered with exasperation. “Of course I mean Caridad! I’m too scared to even think of la Esperanza … bombs falling, prisoners of war paraded on the television every night. ¡Dios mío! God only knows what has happened to m’jita …!”

“Did you __ think ____ Cari ____ eloped?” Fe suggested. Poor Fe, she never did get over Tom. All she seemed to think about were bridal gowns, floral arrangements, and the June wedding she never had.

“Caridad get married? To whom?” Sofi asked.

To whom indeed.

A year passed before Caridad was found one day living in a cave in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. It was Francisco el Penitente and two of the hermanos from his morada who found her quite by accident. No one knows why they were up there just before Holy Week, all on horseback that afternoon, when they spotted the traces of a fire someone had made and followed their noses to the cave that turned out to be Caridad’s home.

The young woman was hardly recognizable. You can imagine what she looked like after not having changed her clothes or been in contact with a single human being for four seasons!

More than likely she had bathed in the stream that ran a few miles down below, but Francisco would not have ventured to gamble on it. At least we know what her water supply was and from the other things the men found that day, jackrabbit pelts and the bones of other similar small animals, it was also apparent as to how she kept herself alive. Now, how she kept herself warm during that bitter winter that had just passed, besides with animal skins and maintaining a fire, no one will ever know.

“You’re coming with us!” one of the brothers said sternly to Caridad once they all were able to agree that she was indeed the woman that everybody had been looking for for so long.

Caridad shook her head. The man dismounted from his Arabian steed and went over to her to pull her firmly toward his horse. She resisted and let herself drop on the ground. He bent down to take her up in his arms, figuring she would be even easier to get on the horse without any resistance but he couldn’t lift her. “What the …!” he said, dumbfounded at how heavy she was although she was only half his size.