Nevertheless Caridad’s psychic don was fully honed after her return. Her dreams were not hits and misses no more like in the beginning, but very clear messages which, with the help of her mentor, doña Felicia, she became adept at interpreting. For example, if a client came and asked Caridad about a particular situation Caridad set her mind to dreaming about it and in a few days, she almost unfailingly came up with a satisfactory answer for the client. Take the case of the comadre who had inquired as to the fidelity of her husband, she brought Caridad the clairvoyant her husband’s underwear. Caridad put the man’s underwear under her pillow and concentrated on the man for three days and nights. On the fourth night, she saw the good-for-nothing husband in her dream sneaking through the bedroom window of his neighbor at night.

Caridad was perplexed because she knew that the neighbor was a married woman with three small children. She investigated: “Doña Felicia, isn’t la señora from down the road still married?”

“Yes, of course she is!” doña Felicia replied. “Where would she go with three little babies?”

Caridad scratched her head. “Where is her husband then?”

“Where is he?” doña Felicia stopped her needlework which she liked to do between clients. “Hmm. Oh! Sí, sí! I remember now! He’s been going up to Mora on the weekends … his father is ailing and can’t get around no more. The old man probably won’t last very long.”

When Caridad’s client returned for Caridad’s answer and for her husband’s tale-telling underwear, Caridad had the unfortunate task of telling the woman that her suspicions had not been wrong.

Sometimes Caridad did not even have to dream as a channeler, or as doña Felicia called her, a medium. She often fell into semiconscious trances and communicated with spirit guides as a way of communicating messages to clients. Eventually the word got around and Caridad earned herself a respectable reputation as a medium, if not as a miracle worker.

Her cynical sister Fe, however, stood by her original conviction about her sister’s year-long disappearance and insisted: “It had to have some____ to do __ fall__ in love.”

After all, Fe had no reason to think that Caridad (strange though she was by anybody’s standards!) was exempt from suffering the inevitable consequences of falling in love with the wrong person. For example, some people might constantly scream and beat their heads on the wall for a year. Others, perhaps, went to live in a cave. Big deal. After her experience with Tom, to Fe it was simply a matter of women just being “more in touch” with their feelings than men, just like she had heard a panel of jilted ex-fiancées say on the “Oprah Winfrey” show.