I lengthen my strides as I head toward Eduardo’s car, slightly out of breath by the time I slide into the bucket seat and shut the door behind me, my heart pounding madly.

A minute later, their voices become louder, their footsteps heavy. Eduardo walks beside the two men who arrived, heading toward their parked car.

I flatten my body against the car seat, turning my head to the side, careful to keep my face shielded.

The trunk opens, followed by a thud, the car lowering slightly as the crates are loaded. The trunk closes, and a few moments later, Eduardo climbs into the driver’s seat.

“Did you miss me?” he teases.

Miss him? At the moment, I could cheerfully kill him.

The other car leaves.

“What’s the dynamite for?” I ask.

“Jesus, Beatriz.” He shakes his head. “I should have known better than to bring you.”

“Yes, you probably should have. What’s the dynamite for?”

“One of those other plans I was telling you about.”

“One of the ones the CIA knows nothing about.”

He nods, turning the key in the ignition and putting the car in drive.

“Why do you need that much dynamite?”

He gives a short little laugh. “Why do you think?”

In Cuba, we weren’t afraid to use violence to achieve our ends. We wanted to bring about a revolution and were willing to use a variety of means to do so. But this isn’t Cuba. And if Eduardo is intending to use the explosives in the United States or to hatch a plot here that the CIA isn’t privy to—well, that doesn’t seem very smart.

“You can’t be thinking of using it here.”

“I’m not doing anything. I’m merely a facilitator. For the right price.”

“It’s for Cuba, though, isn’t it?”

“There are other ways to get the Americans’ attention, to bring the fight to their home.”

“We can’t afford to alienate the Americans,” I caution.

“You let me worry about the Americans. You just do your part in catching—and holding—Fidel’s interest.”

* * *

? ? ?

I get out of the car when we arrive home, eager to head back to bed, annoyed with Eduardo, with myself for following him. He was reckless in Cuba, and it’s clear he hasn’t learned his lesson.

I don’t have the appetite for unnecessary risks anymore.

“Beatriz.”

I stumble at the sound of my name, at the sight of my father, our gazes connecting across the driveway. He’s dressed in one of his suits, standing at the front door, car keys in hand.

Is he heading to the office? It must be five A.M. The rest of the household is surely asleep at this hour.

“Where were you?”

The hardness in my father’s voice surprises me most. He’s always been a firm parent, and I’ve certainly heard that same tone directed at my brother in the past, but he treats his daughters with a softer touch, and me most of all.

“I—”

No excuse comes.

“Out with some boy?”

That’s the easiest—and safest—explanation I could provide.

I shouldn’t be surprised by the sight of my father at this late—or early—hour, even if I wasn’t prepared to give any explanations. I’ve heard he leaves for the office before the sun comes up and works late into the night, but there is a difference between hearing that my father is working harder than he ever has before and seeing it with my own eyes.

He’s in his sixties now. In Cuba, he’d talked about retiring, turning the business over to Alejandro. Now he’s starting over again, decades of work and sacrifice erased because of Fidel.

“I was with Eduardo. There was a party,” I lie. “You know how he is.”

“I do. That’s what worries me.” My father is silent for a moment. “This isn’t Cuba, Beatriz. I can’t protect you. Not that I could . . .”

My brother isn’t here with us physically, but his presence consumes the family. Is my father’s drive—his obsession with accumulating more wealth and power—his attempt to make up for the fact that his efforts in Cuba weren’t enough to save his only son?

“I know,” I reply, stepping forward and wrapping an arm around him, as though our roles have shifted, and I’m the parent comforting the child. “I am careful,” I add, even as we both know my words are a lie.

I doubt I’ve been careful a day in my life.

“It’s dangerous, Beatriz.”

“I know.”

“After Alejandro—don’t let your mother see you sneaking out of the house at all hours of the night. There’s been enough trouble in this family. No more.”

“I won’t.”

My father sighs.

“I’ve always liked Eduardo. He comes from a good family. But you’ll learn that people are all too eager to take advantage of what you can do for them, what you can give them. Even more so when they are desperate.”

“Do you think Eduardo is desperate?”

My father gives me a sad smile. “Aren’t we all?”

chapter seven

The season drifts on, February turning into March, the social scene in full swing. We’re never really invited to the intimate events, the ones hosted by families that have wintered together for decades, are never admitted to the lofty inner circles people like Nick Preston occupy. I don’t know if he’s still in Palm Beach, or if he’s gone up north to prepare for the coming election, but either way, our paths do not cross again.

After Easter, many will move on to the next whirl, another set of parties and charity events, to northern climates where the temperature is more bearable leading up to the summer heat wave that will make Florida a less palatable destination. Glittering homes will be shuttered, their running handed over to caretakers, billowing white sheets covering the expensive furniture until it is to be dusted off in the winter for the start of the next social season. Some families will remain, Palm Beach their home year-round, but the traffic on Worth Avenue will slow considerably, society’s gaze shifting away from the locale that has been under a microscope these past few months. The newspapers will be filled with the same girls, the same families, different settings, new scandals.

My mother’s displeasure over the fact that we are to remain in Palm Beach long past what is fashionable permeates the walls of our house, her complaints filling the room, her ire toward Fidel occasionally turning toward our father, his insistence that we can’t afford another house, that he can’t send us up north to compete with the venerable families, that his business keeps us here, Cuba a fading memory in the face of the new fortune he seeks to build.

My mother’s religion is our family’s status, the social capital she accumulates not nearly as adroitly as our father rebuilds his empire, his world dominated by sugar and land, the money he hoards in Switzerland and other places, his mistrust of the government magnified by the audacity of Fidel’s actions. I choke on their messianic fervor, on the fever pitch in our house as my mother’s growing insecurity over our diminished position in society and our father’s need for more reach inexorable levels.

And then with the late April showers, it’s over as quickly as it started; the world to which my mother desperately hopes to gain an entrée has moved on without us, the majority of her daughters still unmarried, Palm Beach a veritable ghost town compared to the golden months.

We spend our afternoons in the sitting room once Maria is home from school, the three of us flipping through magazines, reading books, our mother sipping her afternoon cocktail and deciding our futures. We’ve had nine days of rain, too many hours spent cooped up inside the house. The waiting wears thin, manifesting itself in the sharpness in our tones, sisterly glares, a thickening frost covering the veneer of my parents’ marriage.

“I have a cousin in Spain,” my mother announces one afternoon from her perch on the settee. “You could visit her, perhaps. Her husband is a diplomat. Surely, you could attend some embassy parties. There’s your father’s sister, of course. Mirta has offered her help. Her husband’s quite wealthy, you know.”

She frowns, as though she’s just realized the flaw in that particular plan.

Our aunt Mirta, our father’s younger sister, came to visit us in Cuba a few times, but I always gathered my mother didn’t approve of her husband. For all his money, the American lacks the pedigree to satisfy my mother. No, there will be no trips to visit our aunt to marry us off.

“I don’t want to go anywhere,” Maria interjects.

“Don’t worry. No one is sending you away. You have ages to go before you’re considered a spinster,” I tease. “Enjoy it.”

“I wouldn’t be laughing if I were you,” my mother retorts. “At your age, I was already a wife. Had a child.”

Isabel is silent through all of this conversation, as though not speaking will render her invisible, and keep our mother’s attention off her.

My mother swallows. “Two more on the way.”

Surprise fills me. It is the closest she has come to acknowledging Alejandro since his death.