I gave this doll to Catalina years ago. I recently found it inside a box in the storage room of the hacienda and took it with me. This is the only memory I have of our father, the only gift he ever gave me when I was a little girl.

It is, also, the only thing I can give you as a peace offering and an apology for all the suffering I caused you with my petty, rash actions. Perhaps one day you will find it in your heart to forgive this girl who only wanted to be close to her father, but didn’t know how to do it right.

With much regret,

Elisa.

I refolded the letter and carefully stored the doll behind the shop’s glass counter, right next to my husband’s typewriter. Then, I headed to the room in the back of the shop, where my twenty-month-old son, Cristóbal, napped in his crib. I picked up his chubby hand and gave it a soft kiss. He was more perfect than I’d ever envisioned my child would be—with long curly eyelashes and bright eyes, just like his father’s.

I’d discovered I was expecting shortly after Martin left. I’d been afraid to lose this baby, too, but somehow my pregnancy came to fruition and my baby was born healthy and strong. I often wondered why I could carry Martin’s child and not Cristóbal’s. Had it been the conditions of this land, my more leisurely life, maybe even fate? I would never have an answer. To everyone’s eyes, though, this child was the son of Cristóbal de Balboa, a man of simple ambitions who knew that true happiness lay in the things we couldn’t own.

Author’s Note

Author’s Note

In an obscure corner of the internet, I once found a list of women inventors that included a Spanish woman who allegedly developed the cacao bean roaster in 1847. Her name was María Purificación García. My imagination wandered after learning this piece of information—whether it was true or not. What would have prompted a woman in the nineteenth century to come up with such an invention? Despite my many attempts to confirm the data, I never unearthed more details about who she was, but I found her name in a historical archive in Spain, which proved that she had, in fact, patented the idea.

While studying women inventors, I learned that in the past, many of them had to have their patents registered under their husbands’ names, which led to another interesting discovery. Since women were not allowed to develop in several fields, such as warfare or medicine, they cross-dressed.

I had to do something with all this information.