“It sounds as though you’re willing to play the villain in order to defeat one.”

“Please don’t think that I have become as bad as Batista, that I am driven by the same power and greed that fuels him.”

I’m afraid, and that thread of doubt threatens to unravel whatever relationship exists between us. I worry I’m surrounded by madmen who desire to burn the world down without thought for the consequences of their actions, without regard for all the innocent lives that will be charred by the flames.

“Please don’t look at me like that.” There’s a plea in Pablo’s voice I haven’t heard before and a hopelessness in his gaze.

“Like what?”

“Like I repulse you. As if I’m a monster like Batista and his cohorts. Please, Elisa.”

I want to believe he’s different, but right now both sides blur before my eyes, each claiming to possess the answer to Cuba’s future and willing to do abominable things in order to bring that future about.

“I don’t understand. I’m trying, but it’s difficult. Doesn’t the violence wear on you? The killing?”

“How can I not fight for my country? Nothing changes. If we continue on, if we don’t alter our strategy, if we don’t give them a war, then Cuba’s current state, the government’s failure, is our responsibility.

“Look at what Batista has turned us into. Look at what he has brought into the country. Gangsters and drugs—that is Batista’s legacy. Not to mention the casinos, the brothels. He has handed our country over to the Americans. They have more power here in a foreign land than we have in our own home. And in turn they give Batista military aid, weapons he uses against his people to maintain an iron grip on the country. The Americans preach liberty, and freedom, and democracy at home, and practice tyranny throughout the rest of the world. Batista is a despot. You know this.”

He’s right; but my father was one of the men who donated large sums of money to Batista’s presidential campaign years ago, is frequently welcomed at the Presidential Palace. How can I condemn my own family, my parents? That’s the difference between me and my brother—for better or worse, I am a Perez before I am a Cuban.

“Batista is bleeding us dry,” Pablo continues. “But because he is in bed with the Americans, he is untouchable. He has slaughtered tens of thousands of Cubans, and still he remains in power. We’ve endured his cruelty for far too long and look where it has left us.”

“And yet you think you and your friends can defeat him.”

The hubris in his words terrifies me; they are tempting God and the rules of nature to think that such a small group of men can do such a thing.

“Yes.”

“And the Americans?”

“If we are loud enough, if our voice is one, if we are successful in defeating him, then what can they do? They will accept us eventually.”

I’m not so sure about that. It all sounds so easy when he puts it that way. But if it is so easy, why has Batista held such power over the island for so long?

“And if you aren’t successful?”

“Then at least I will have spent my life serving a cause I believe in, a cause greater than myself.”

“You think it’s worth dying for.”

I try to imagine loving something so much that I would die for it. I would die for my family. For my child. For the man I loved. But a country?

“I cannot imagine anything more sacred than the willingness to give one’s life for one’s country,” he answers, his voice solemn.

Those are a martyr’s words, and perhaps one day they will honor him in the annals of Cuban history, but I don’t want to love a martyr. I don’t want this war or bloodshed to touch my corner of the island more than it already has. I don’t want to lose him. And suddenly, I feel young and foolish, impossibly coddled. He speaks of revolution, and I worry over my heart.

“Then you are to sacrifice your life for Cuba?”

Pablo attempts a smile. “Hopefully, not. Hopefully, it won’t come to that.”

“And if it does?”

He wraps his arm around me, his forehead resting against mine, his lips inches from my mouth.

“At the end of the day, the only thing you have left is what you stand for. If I said nothing, if I did nothing, I could not live with myself. I would not be a man. This is the position I choose to take, and for better or worse, I will accept the consequences of my actions.”

I take a deep breath.

“Will I see you again?” A tear trickles down my face. “This feels like the end.”

Pablo kisses me, his arms wrapped around my waist, his body against mine.

“Have faith, Elisa.”

“Will you come back when it’s all over?”

“Yes.”

Chapter nine

Marisol

I place the last letter in the box, momentarily speechless. After all the times I asked my grandmother about her life in Cuba, why didn’t she tell me she fell in love? What happened between them? Were they separated by the revolution? Did she forget him when she met my grandfather?

My grandmother loved a revolutionary. I can’t quite wrap my mind around it.

My grandmother spent her days decrying Castro’s regime, volunteering with groups speaking out against Cuba’s government, donating money to causes designed to remove Fidel from power. She went to Mass every Sunday, yet never took Communion because she said her heart was too filled with hatred for Fidel, for the men who stole her country from her. But she loved one.

Did he come back to her?

The letters in my hand fill me with questions, offering little in the way of answers. I have half of their romance—his letters to her—letters my grandmother clearly thought were precious enough to save, but what of her words to him? Did she love him? And if so, why did they part?

I need to know the end of the story, need to know what happened, and Ana’s earlier warning returns to me now.

You can’t understand what those times were like, how our world was shattered in the span of a few months. Whatever you find, don’t judge her too harshly.

She has to know some of it at least. Do my great-aunts know? There’s no mention of whether they were my grandmother’s confidants in the letters, and there are so many pieces I need filled in for me.

Is her lover alive? Is he still in Cuba?

It’s late—just after midnight according to the clock on my phone—but I can’t sleep, questions running through my mind. I want to share what I’ve learned with my father and sisters, and at the same time, I need more information before—if—I tell my family this news. Besides, Cuba’s telecommunications challenges don’t make it easy. A part of me welcomed the reprieve from real life, but now I feel almost unbearably lonely, cut off from my friends and family.

Why didn’t my grandmother tell me these stories? Why didn’t she trust me with this?

I need fresh air, the four walls closing in on me. I grab a robe from my suitcase, belting it around my tank top and yoga pants, tiptoeing from the room. The Rodriguezes’ part of the house is quiet. Upstairs their neighbors are still awake, domestic noises filtering through the water-stained ceiling. Footsteps thud, joined by the whoosh of water running down the pipes. The faint sound of a baby crying.

The stairs creak, and I wince with each one, praying I don’t wake the whole household. I walk past two closed doors and reach the back of the house, opening the glass door that leads to the paladar’s outdoor dining area overlooking the water. The wind whips my hair around my face, the lulling sound of the water calming my racing heart.

“Couldn’t sleep?”

I whirl around. Luis lounges in one of the chairs previously inhabited by diners. A bottle of rum and a half-filled glass sit on the table in front of him.

The moonlight shifts. I freeze.

A sliver of light illuminates the left side of his face. His eyelid is bruised, a nasty-looking gash on his cheekbone that definitely wasn’t there earlier this evening.

I gasp. “What happened? Are you okay?”

Luis reaches for the drink in front of him. He drains the liquid, setting the glass back on the table with an angry clank.

“I was robbed.”

“Oh my God. What did they take?”

He unscrews the bottle, filling the glass. He doesn’t drink it.

“Mostly, my dignity.”

“Did you report it to the police?”

His lips curve in a sardonic twist. “I highly doubt the police would concern themselves with a simple robbery.”

“I thought Cuba didn’t have a ton of crime. The guidebooks I read mentioned it was fairly safe,” I say, feeling a bit foolish with the evidence to the contrary staring me in the face.

He snorts. “Don’t believe everything you read. Crime doesn’t cast the regime in a favorable light.”

“Do you need something for your face? Antibiotic cream, maybe?”

Luis lifts his drink in a silent toast. “I already have it.”

He gestures toward an empty chair on the other side of the table with his free hand, and it occurs to me that he just might be a little drunk.

He’s married. Go back to your room. Do not sit down.

I sit, and when he slides the full glass across the table to me, the liquid sloshing around the rim, I don’t hesitate as I lift the drink to my lips and drain it.

The rum is better than expected. I’ve seen the brand before in my travels abroad, its distinctive logo jumping out at me as a sign of yet another thing Castro’s government has taken, but I’ve never tried it. Was it once the Rodriguez family’s before the rum companies were nationalized?

“Are you sure you don’t want to patch up your face?” His eye looks like it must be throbbing; he’ll have a hell of a bruise tomorrow.

Luis shakes his head, seemingly unconcerned with the fact that he’s sitting across from me beaten and bloody.

Men.

“Rough night?” He gestures to the empty glass in my hand.