It just so happens that the doctor in attendance tonight is Dr. Trotter, Sam’s colleague, whom Antonia has met on a number of social occasions. She’s okay, was Sam’s lukewarm assessment, perhaps unfairly based on Beth’s appearance: overweight, often out of breath—a not-so-good advertisement for the medical profession. But Beth is a kind soul who will go out of her way to help.

I feel awful, Beth confesses when she comes to the phone. She has been meaning to be in touch with Antonia, that’s why she took the call tonight when she heard it was Sam Sawyer’s widow. Sam was such a generous mentor to so many of his younger colleagues, including Beth. Anything she can do?

Antonia recounts the situation: the undocumented teenager about to give birth, the disgruntled boyfriend, the farmer’s short window of welcome.

Beth is full of sighs—or maybe it’s just her shortness of breath. Her first, I assume? Beth queries.

I think so, Antonia conjectures. So much she doesn’t know about Estela. The girl did show Antonia her birth certificate—she’s actually seventeen, looks no older than fifteen—and a primary school ID, the same sweet, round face, with two tidy beribboned braids rather than the single one down her back.

A perfect storm all right, Beth sums up after hearing all the details. And of course, she’ll arrange a ride for the girl to be brought to her practice for a prelabor checkup. She’ll also alert the ER and Admissions over at the hospital to notify her directly if a young Mexican mom in labor is brought in. And here’s her cell number in case Antonia should need to reach her directly.

In a matter of minutes, Estela is set up with a safety net of options. These are lucky breaks, courtesy of Sam’s practicing in a small Vermont town for over forty years. Antonia, and by association, Estela, can tap this network, bypassing those entrails of the medical care system. Theirs is still a small-town hospital with a handful of satellite practitioners. But change is on the horizon. Soon the tiny hospital will go the way of the one-room schoolhouse. The large medical center up in Burlington will be taking over the hospital and satellite practices this summer. Their CEO has been issuing reassuring bulletins: Nothing will change. You will still be able to . . . The notices posted in every office and examining room. We shall see; Antonia tries to stave off her cynicism. But it is, after all, the nature of the corporate beast to gobble up small fry without noticing at all, ensconced as it is in the upper floors of an office building with picture-window views of Lake Champlain, far from the madding crowd of faces on the street, in grocery stores, waiting rooms, the P.O., the co-op, as well as invisible ones who increasingly enter Antonia’s line of vision and become visible: Estela, José, Mario with a bloody cut in his right palm from the blade of the saw. Even the hulking sheriff with a thistle hooked into a burning eye will soon not have the option of being examined gratis by a kind doctor on his own time but will first have to undergo a formal admission at the ER, a plastic bracelet affixed to his wrist, his information typed into the system, an electronic trail leading directly to that wallet in his back pocket.

Antonia fills a satchel with things Estela might need in the days ahead, next door or at the hospital, if she gives birth before Antonia gets back—what Antonia is hoping for: let someone else take over the problem that has knocked on her door. It’s unlikely that Mario and José will have extra sheets, towels, blankets, or that Roger will come over with a welcome basket of bath soap, shampoo, conditioner. Do men even use conditioner? Sam never did, but then his hair had gotten so thin. What was there to condition? A hair brush, deodorant, baby oil, hand lotion—what to offer an impoverished teenager on the verge of labor? She recalls how Sam’s church, a liberal, well-intended congregation, put together care bags for him and Antonia to distribute when they next went down to the Dominican Republic. In addition to Antonia’s practical suggestions, donors included products Antonia had never used herself—backscratchers, exfoliant foot peel, vitamin boosters made from natural products. Once, a can of feminine hygiene spray, whose function Antonia deduced from reading the instructions.

Strange bread people cast upon another’s needy waters.

On the drive over, Estela is full of questions. When will Antonia be back? Where is Massachusetts? ?Cómo se dice vaca, árbol, sol, nube, conejo, estrella? ?Cómo se dice parir, me duele, tengo hambre, tengo miedo? This sudden endearing need to get the words right in English. Cow, tree, sun, cloud, rabbit, star. The barking-dog ringtone goes off, startling the girl, who looks around the car for el perro. Antonia laughs. It’s just my sister calling. ?Cómo se dice ringtone in Spanish? Antonia pulls over, as they’re almost at Roger’s and she doesn’t want to sit in his driveway talking. She has been waiting for Mona to call back or text with the exact meeting point in Western Mass. She plans to set out after delivering her cargo.

Mona has met with Realtor Nancy. She’s super nervous, like she’s hiding something. A pandemonium of barking breaks out in the background. Not her ringtone gone rogue. Has Mona flown her dogs up from North Carolina?

No, no, no. They’re Maritza’s labs, Mona says, annoyed that Antonia doesn’t already know that her rescues sound nothing at all like that. Shades of Sam’s annoyance when Antonia didn’t automatically know the thoughts and feelings in his head.

As I was saying, Mona says, this woman is, like, totally creepy.

Creepy as in Unabomber creepy? Or just nerdy creepy? You think she’s done something to Izzy?

The mango doth not fall far from the tree, Mona cackles, an expression the sisterhood has Latinized and loves to quote whenever one of them is acting like their mother. Mami Mango was the mother of all sleuths: always suspicious of their friends, figuring out their whereabouts, indiscretions, alibis, sniffing out their pot smoking, discovering their diaphragms, packets of birth control in their sock drawers. There wasn’t a stranger Mami encountered after they arrived in the United States of los Locos de Remate that she didn’t suspect of dubious motives. It wasn’t as simple as gringo profiling. She was equally wary of her fellow Dominicans in exile.

What I think, Mona says after calming down the dog clamor, is that your sister might have paid a hefty cash deposit Nancy is hoping she won’t have to return. Izzy also picked up an application for a loan at the local bank, a loan she’s not likely to get. She told Nancy that, if all else fails, she’d borrow the money from her sisters.

How did Mona find out so much? Baby sister has only been a few hours on the ground. Antonia is filled with a grudging admiration for Mona’s cunning and persistence. But Mona defers. A local investigator Kempowski uses for the Boston area has dug all this stuff up.

Mona reports that the same source found out Izzy closed her account at the bank before leaving Boston, to the tune of ten something grand. Must be the bundle that Maritza saw in Izzy’s bag.

Izzy walking around with that kind of ready cash! Criminal bait to be sure. Even if no one mugs her, who knows how long it’ll last her? How often did she say to attendants, waiters, Keep the change? Even times when the change was more than the price of the purchase or service she was paying for? On a visit last summer, Antonia and Sam took Izzy to the local farmer’s market. A darling waif of a boy, no older than ten, with round glasses, freckles, and an icing-on-the-cake cowlick, was playing his violin, shoppers occasionally stopping to listen before unloading their quarters, at most a single dollar, into the instrument’s case. Izzy stood enthralled, calling for encores, before tossing down a twenty. The boy’s eyes widened with shock as a beaming Izzy shouted out BRAVO! at the top of her lungs.

He’ll never be satisfied with less from now on, Sam muttered as they walked away. Your sister (here we go again, no one wanted Izzy on their relay team) always has to upstage everyone, even a kid playing his violin for mad money.

I don’t think that’s why she did it, Antonia defended Izzy, though Antonia herself couldn’t figure out what motivated most of her sister’s grand gestures. Was it some pathology, as Mona and Tilly believed, or a case of too large a spirit crammed inside too small a personality? As for Sam’s disgruntled response, how much was it the good cop not liking to be upstaged by an even better cop?