“Mothers always know,” she tells him. “When I met Esteban at the Fiesta de San Pedro y San Pablo when I was fourteen—a festival in honor of the town’s patron saint—my mother told me, ‘He will bring you pain someday, but he will be a good provider.’ My mother, she always had that sixth sense. Esteban asked me to dance. I accepted. He asked me to marry him. Again I accepted. We wanted a child. Had a boy. Before he was eighteen, he gave us a grandson, and next thing I know, I have three generations of men. It was beautiful.”

Listening to Fabiola reminds Jack of his own love. Sarah, his high school sweetheart. Long blond locks and piercing emerald eyes. Soft, creamy skin. He is lost in the memory of her, can even detect her flowery-fresh smell. He notices that the stone floor is beading up with sweat. Some distant corner of his mind finds this odd, and it occurs to him that he is babbling incoherently. Fabiola and whatever she gave him to drink have loosened emotions and memories, fragmented images and sounds and thoughts and words he has not discussed or even thought to speak of, with anyone, ever. He has kept them bottled and sealed like small-batch Kentucky bourbon.

“When my wife passed, it caught me by surprise. I watched her fight so hard for months, and I watched days drop from the calendar. I found her the best hospital, the best doctors. The best care money could buy. All the years we had together, ended by a rampant division of cells in her body. That’s how the doctors explained it to me.” Jack stops to compose himself. Then he tells Fabiola, “And every time a roadblock came up, my Sarah, she’d forge her own route and fight harder. Then her fight was over, and I wasn’t prepared for that day.” Wiping tears from his cheek and snorting mucus, Jack says, “We have a son. His name is Duncan. It kills me, but he’s an off-again, on-again addict. And of all the professions to earn a degree in, he becomes an electrician. He’s way too smart for that. I mean, I went to an Ivy League school. Not Duncan. Nope, he went to a community trade school. Became a journeyman. But he has issues with addiction. And then there’s our daughter, Megan. She was adopted. But she committed suicide. Things just weren’t right in her head. She had some loose wires—lot of awful things mashed up there that Sarah and I didn’t know about. She . . . she did some horrible things that could have shed a bad light on my family.”

Jack feels the lightness of his cup. Craves more. Fabiola sees him looking into the empty vessel and grabs it. Goes back to the counter, picks up the bottle, fills Jack’s cup. Brings it back and hands it to him.