Splashing water onto his face from the kitchen sink, Jack blots off with a towel. Feels the doughy flesh under his windburned chin and jaws, the white hairs that had sprouted along his eyebrows, the shadow of frosty stubble, and the dimness of his blue eyes. In business, he can do anything, but now, stripped of his family, with no money, he realizes he has nothing. No formidable skills. Nothing he can do with his hands. He isn’t athletic or mechanical, never was. Laying the towel on the sink, turning around, walking to the kitchen table, where a clay cup sat with steam rising from it. Reaching for it, he says, “This is only coffee, correct?”

Fabiola nods. “Sí. Sólo café.”

Raising it to his parched lips, he sips. It warms his mouth, his insides, its sharp, fresh taste enlivening his senses. “Thank you,” he says.

Seated across the little square table, Fabiola raises her hand. “No need to thank me. You’re my guest.” She regards him in silence for a moment. “You know, I dreamed my husband’s, son’s, and grandson’s death the night before. It’s a cruel thing to admit, having that intuition, that premonition, but it’s true.”

Jack is at a loss for words. How is he to register this confession of witchery? Better yet, how is he even to accept it as fact? But he is in her home, so he shows respect. “I cannot imagine the weight of that,” he says. “I imagine that it is a heavy burden to admit, to carry.” He sips the coffee and says, “Back in America, in the world I come from, this is all crazy talk. Nonsense. I mean, all this is a lot of mumbo jumbo. It’s a huge amount of information for me to gather and translate, and it’s really hard for me to accept any of this as real. But I’ve lost so much. And you’re correct, I have not dealt with any of it. I don’t mean to come across as disrespectful, but I don’t know what any of this means, I’ve never really had to sit down and realize that everything I once had in life is now my past—a past I was never really present for. I was always working. I buried myself in my work. And that’s why I loaded up a backpack and bought a plane ticket.”

“You ran away from a world that you controlled. Because you couldn’t control what you had lost.”