She should take him to tonight’s dinner party. Poor Mario has a question for our group.

She knows what her friend Vivian would do. Vivian supports worthy causes, just as she does her poor friends. She would write a check. No questions asked. But then Vivian can afford casting her bread upon the waters. She married the bakery owner, so to speak. Franklin’s surname is a famous brand name. Yes, that family. He doesn’t have to work for a living, which is why he went into teaching, he explained at one dinner party. Didn’t even register that there were teachers present, the kind who needed to work to pay their property taxes, health insurance, their kids’ college tuitions.

Ay, do?ita querida, Mario says, in the cajoling voice of a young man flirting with an older woman. He knows it is a lot to ask—but would Antonia be willing to loan him the money to buy the bus ticket? Loan, a way for the poor back home to save face. A loan, not a handout, which the gracious and generous always forgive.

She gives him a nod of consideration, not a yes, but not a no. Highly sensitive people need time and quiet as they are easily overwhelmed, especially when they are grieving. Who is she kidding? She has already decided. Of course, she will buy Estela’s bus ticket, but she will make the arrangements herself to ensure the money goes where it should go. The charitable gesture, hemmed in by suspicion. Not Izzy’s way or Sam’s. Sam, who got taken left and right, so that she always had to be the vigilant one, the bad cop. Don’t you think I’d like to indulge myself for once, she complained to him. Be my guest, he said. Why not two good cops?

Mario is beside himself with gratitude. He grabs her hands, kisses them, a nearly extinct gesture only seen these days on stage, Shakespearean plays at the college, and in telenovelas.

?Ya, ya, ya! she says, dismissing his lavish response. She knows what she has been thinking. Thank God people can’t see inside each other’s heads.

While he waits beside her, she checks online for tickets. Several options are available. The northern route goes through Toronto, then drops back down to Vermont. Best not to cross an international border with no passport or papers. The southern route is better, but it will involve a number of transfers. Estela might have trouble finding her way. Maybe Greyhound has a service? How does Antonia find out? Call the 800 number and ask the rep if they can help transfer an undocumented person from one bus to another? She notes the different time options. Meanwhile, Mario is to let her know when he has wired the money to the coyote, so Antonia can finish booking the ticket for Estela to pick up at the station in Denver. Mario provides all of Estela’s information. The full name. Estela Adelia Cruz Fuentes. For home address and number, Antonia will have to use her own. God forbid Greyhound should contact Roger.

When they are done, Mario again grabs her hands. Ya, ya, she stops him. He must not confuse her with a truly good person—a truly good person would not feel relieved about hightailing it to Chicago and leaving these kids in the lurch. But how much can one person take on? We live in America, she reminds the disapproving Sam in her head, where you put your oxygen mask on first.

But either way, the plane is going to crash. So why not tender a little kindness before she, too, is a body in a ditch on the side of the road, availing herself of whatever afterlife will be afforded in somebody else’s head, if that? Unlike Sam, who can enjoy his afterlife romping through her head, Antonia will not have Sam to keep her alive in his imagination.

On the ride back to Roger’s with Mario, Antonia sees the sheriff’s car in her rearview. Very calmly, as if she were speaking to a highly sensitive person, Antonia tells Mario la policía is behind them. He is to slide down in his seat. Clear the window. Mario does as he is told. She turns on her blinker to go into Roger’s driveway, the cautious widow making a breakfast purchase at the honor store. The cruiser goes by, someone is riding with the sheriff, someone with disarmingly blonde, shoulder-length hair. The sheriff does not wave or look over her way.

Antonia calls Izzy purportedly to report on her plans for her birthday. Mostly, she wants to gauge her sister’s state of mind for herself. Too often in their family, things are blown out of proportion. Was it growing up in a dictatorship that skewed their temperaments toward doom and gloom?

Izzy is full of news about her own plans. You know that Latino arts center I told you about? I found the perfect place. Western Mass! It’ll be a way of importing diversity into that part of the state, a model to be copied throughout other white-bread areas of the country. Instead of migrant workers on farms, a cultural takeover: migrant poets, dancers, and artists. Would Antonia agree to be on the board, convince some of her writer friends to join?

Izzy, honey, how are you going to pay for all this?

We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it, Izzy proclaims. (Precisely what she would do, Antonia thinks.) For starters, maybe Antonia’s publisher is interested in putting together an anthology of their stories, profits to go to—

Antonia cuts her off. Izzy, honey, I haven’t been in touch with my publisher forever. I’m really not up to it right now.

It’d be a way for you to get back in the saddle, Izzy says in her older-sister voice. Anyhow, think about it, okay? Izzy’s actually headed to Western Mass now. Would Antonia like to join her for her birthday?

I’m going to Tilly’s, Antonia’s decision is now definite. I just bought my ticket. A little white lie. Antonia has a stash of them locked away in that closet of half-truths she has told the sisters over the years to avoid their disappointment, ire, or worse.

But I heard you didn’t want to go anywhere for your birthday. What made you change your mind?

Oh, I don’t know, Antonia hedges. It might be nice to get away. Chicago is a few weeks ahead of Vermont in spring weather. As if her whole reason for going to Tilly’s is to check in on her sister’s daffodils.

Well, whatever, I think it’s a great idea, Izzy opines. Antonia is always impressed by other people’s certainties—she often has to borrow from their assurances to make up her own mind. Along with their checkbook, decision-making was another area of their lives she ceded to Sam. He never second-guessed himself, never fished any of his cast-off bread back out of the waters. A good cop with no self-doubt. Was that a good thing for a cop? One of these days, she had cautioned herself, Sam would leave her, tired of her questions, of her intense need to get not just the words but the world right.

One of these days is here. Sam has left her, but not in the way she had feared.

Don’t be so sure he isn’t getting something out of it, her therapist had said, shaking her head, full of her own certainties. Have you ever asked yourself why he married you? Here’s a thought, the therapist had offered, as if setting a piece of merchandise down on the counter for Antonia to consider buying. Maybe you are the one carrying the doubts in the relationship? Maybe your husband needs the balance of a highly sensitive wife? Maybe Sam isn’t all that sure himself where Burkina Faso lies?

three

Rules of the sisterhood

Her sister is waiting at baggage claim. Antoni-AH! Tilly shouts, making a point of calling Antonia by the name she prefers, rather than by Toni, the childhood nickname the extended family still insists on using.

People turn to look. Foreigners with loud voices, expressive faces, gesticulating. Pipe down, their American classmates were always hushing them those first years after their arrival.

The two sisters hug, let go, hug again, ready, not ready to let go.

The first rule of sisterhood: Always act pleased to see them.

Antonia is pleased to see Tilly. They are the middle sisters—Izzy and Mona at either end. A mere eleven months separate each sister from the next in line. Sometimes it feels as if only together are they a whole person—referred to reverentially as “the sisterhood.”

Antonia and Tilly last saw each other in Vermont right after Sam’s death. Tilly flew in the morning after. The first responder of all Antonia’s friends and family.

But then, that’s always been Tilly’s role. She is the doer—whether true or not anymore, by now their roles have self-perpetuating lives of their own. The mask stuck to the face; take it off at your own peril. Who am I going to be anymore? Antonia had asked Tilly in the wake of the wake. No longer a teacher at the college, no longer volunteering and serving on a half dozen boards, no longer in the thick of the writing whirl—she has withdrawn from every narrative, including the ones she makes up for sale. Who am I? the plaintive cry.