A distant cousin of Minor C. Keith founded the American Fruit Company in the 1910s, and like its distant cousin, the United Fruit Company, the AFC set up shop so easily in Costa Rica one would have thought it had helped liberate the republic from Spain. John Augustus Smith Sr., the AFC’s creator, strolled through Costa Rica to snatch up its farms with minuscule amounts of cash. He didn’t have to contend with the forces of nature that his cousin had faced—no railroad to build from scratch, no felling regrowing forests, none of his own workers dropping dead from chikungunya, dengue, and other common tropical rots—so with just a few investors and a large inheritance, he planted one banana plantation, then another, then another. In Golfito, in Limón, and outside San José, reasonably far but reasonably close to Barrio Ávila. While the AFC didn’t grow as powerful as its competitors, it still held Costa Rican municipalities in choke holds and influenced local elections, bought up surrounding land and surrounding people. The eventual plan being to transform Costa Rica into one giant plantation, where hands of bananas outnumbered the hands of citizens.
The night Amarga died and José María disappeared, the most prosperous AFC plantation near Barrio Ávila burned to the ground. Eviscerated by a fire with murky origins, and decimated with the fury of Hell itself. Never before had such a tragedy visited Costa Rica, and never before had one of these fruit conglomerates been brought so quickly to its knees.
IN LYRA’S OFFICE desk, locked away in a drawer that often got stuck, she kept newspaper clippings about that April night. Journalistic interpretations, presentations of arguable facts and theories. Tragedies came in threes, Lyra knew. Amarga, José María, the AFC plantation. And in threes came connections. Trilogies, trinities, et cetera. Two, she knew, of course.
Her father murdered her grandmother.
And the AFC plantation was where he worked.
Everyone in Barrio Ávila knew these two facts, but any correlation between them was merely hearsay by nosy neighbors or cruel speculation by rumormongers. Lyra couldn’t trust Teresa’s account, because when Teresa returned to Costa Rica from DC in 1974, she carried on in front of her daughters as if José María had never existed. As if they’d been conceived immaculately.
The day Lyra and Carmen stepped back into the house in Barrio Ávila, they found no evidence of their father—no sweat-stained shirts, no expensive pomade in jars, no shoes, or glasses, or his favorite books. Every surface had been washed with a powerful cleaner, and for a while, the house smelled of a government hospital. Amarga’s presence had also been subdued. Besides the empty lot of the guesthouse, there existed only one portrait of Amarga that hung in Teresa’s room, next to the mirror, as if Teresa wanted to see herself with Amarga again, or as if she couldn’t tell which was her true reflection.
Lyra did everything she could that first year back with Teresa, and in the years that followed, to get her mother to tell her what had happened that night. Sometimes she plied Teresa with compliments, but her go-to battle strategy was to knock the information out of her with arguments. That first year, Lyra shook her mother like a tree.
Lyra saw that Carmen accepted Teresa’s new reality with unflappable devotion, as if just converted by a cult leader. Carmen knew Lyra would leave for university, and she still had four years left with their mother. At the very least, she said, she could get used to the idea—this new, spotless reality. Especially if the goal was to forget the malignancy of that night’s heat. The truth wasn’t always worth reliving.
From then on, Lyra pieced together theories with newspaper clippings like a television detective, no matter the unreliability of the publication. Any rag or gossip column had the potential to reveal something. She rebelled against her mother’s denial—José María had killed Amarga in front of them both, so there was no way she could forget. Even if it always came to a dead end, Lyra was determined to discover why he had ruined their lives that night.
LYRA PACED AROUND her office, waiting for the electric kettle to boil water for instant coffee. She stood like a soldier at the window, studying the sky for signs of the storm. But no meteorological omens revealed themselves to her. Lyra only saw her client Patricia climb out of the car with her husband at two on the dot.
Last week, Patricia confessed to Lyra that she had already done tests at all the local fertility clinics, and one specialist after another informed her that she indeed ovulated regularly and had a normal cycle. So why, Patricia asked, couldn’t she get pregnant? Lyra had seen this many times before, and rather than vocally blame the husband, she asked that Patricia bring him in for a joint session. She was always wary of giving her clients the responsibility of informing their significant other that it was he who might be the problem. The subject of sterility might as well be napalm in a man’s chest. Lyra preferred she do it herself, in the neutrality of her office, hoping the soft leather couch was enough to muffle the violent reflexes of a man.
The husband was older than Lyra expected—in his mid-seventies, he said. Patricia met him at the supermarket. They’d reached for the same flavor of yogurt, and it was love at first sight. Their marriage had been like a romantic comedy, despite the forty-year age gap. “He has my grandfather’s name,” Patricia said. “Osvaldo. ‘God’s power.’”
Lyra encouraged this light conversation at first, getting everyone comfortable, preparing the sensitive news for Osvaldo, but when he mentioned offhandedly that he used to be a regional manager for the American Fruit Company, Lyra paused. She forgot her meticulous plan for the session.
How did you survive? she wanted to ask. I thought everyone had burned up along with the fruit.
Osvaldo laughed. He’d read Lyra’s mind, as he was used to the reaction.
“I was visiting the central offices in DC,” he said. “I found out about the fire there. I was sitting in the waiting room—they didn’t even offer me a cup of water—twiddling my thumbs like a jackass, preparing a presentation, when the board received the phone call. I’ve never heard so many gringos yelling at the same time.” Osvaldo sat back, folded his palms behind his head. Patricia’s expression oscillated between sympathy and vexation.
“They shipped me right back here to inspect the damage. When I tell you that I’ve never seen that much ash before. You wouldn’t even have known there was a plantation or people there—it looked like a black carpet, and smelled like a bonfire in the morning.”
Patricia elbowed him.
“That was so sad,” he said. “I lost many friends.”
Lyra pushed him to say more, despite Patricia’s glare to get back on topic. She was paying for counseling, not a history lesson.
“The chairman of the board told me to pack up the satellite office where I kept the Company’s records—you see, I didn’t work directly on the plantation. They had me tucked in a little building close to Cartago, right in Estrella. Don’t ask me why they put me there in the first place, but the chairman made me swear that I’d burn all the documents I had filed away over the years.”
“¿Did you?” Lyra asked.
“Hell no,” Osvaldo said. “The Company dissolved itself. They didn’t give me a pension, or a severance, or even a goodbye present. No gringo called me to say, ‘Good job, Osvaldo. You really were an indispensable part of our company. Here’s a recommendation.’ I still have a box of records somewhere in the house.”
Patricia excused herself to the ladies’ room. Osvaldo sighed, put both hands on the cushion to lift himself to follow her.
“¿Where?” Lyra asked Osvaldo, distracting him. She was relieved she had him to herself.
“In my bodega, I think. I don’t know if they’re even intact—the rain gets in there sometimes.”
“¿May I see them?” Lyra asked.
“Sure thing. I don’t really care. Thirty years, and some bad memories. I don’t want to hang on to them anymore. Imagine me, the only survivor, hauling around those papers like a curse.”
“¿Can I give you anything for them?”
By this time, Lyra had grown bored of Osvaldo’s anecdotes. Her instinct told her those documents would hold answers. Her obsessive collecting of newspaper clippings over the years, it had meant something.
“Sure, honey,” Osvaldo said. “Just don’t charge us for this session. I think my wife is pissed I ruined it.”
“Of course,” Lyra said, ignoring that he called her honey.
“Come by on Thursday,” Osvaldo said pensively. “Thursday we should be home. You can take those accursed papers with you, or read them right there in the bodega. I don’t mind. It’ll lighten the load,” he said.
“¿On what?”
“My sanity, of course.”
Lyra and Osvaldo left the room to find Patricia, but saw that she was already in the car. Buckled up, motionless. The glass foggy from her fuming.
“Oh, she’s mad,” Osvaldo sighed.
“¿Is that music?” Lyra asked. The Lexus was vibrating.
“Heavy metal. Oh, she’s mad.”
Osvaldo left his number and address. “Come by Thursday. Patricia will have cooled off by then,” he said, laughing. “Oh, and pay it forward.”
“¿What?”
“Pay it forward. My father always told me that.”
Lyra watched the Lexus pull off and picked up the phone to speak with Father Silvino. “Father,” Lyra said, suddenly in better spirits. “I’m happy to do the favor. I’ll come to La Iglesia tomorrow at ten.”
“Whatever time you can spare, my child,” Father Silvino said. “Any help I can get is a godsend.”
Lyra gathered her belongings, including the newspaper clippings from the drawer that got stuck, turned off the oppressive fluorescent lighting, and locked up. Lyra didn’t know what mood she was in, driving through San José’s empty streets on her way to pick up Gabriel. Osvaldo’s revelation had brought with it an uncomfortable hope: If the truth of what happened was indeed among those documents, would she be ready to accept it? What would come after if the outcome was always the same? Her father had destroyed their family that night. Perhaps the real truth would only further devastate her. But Lyra had some time to decide. Solve the mystery, or let it simmer for the rest of her life. She had a talent for the latter. Always had.
THE WEATHERMEN WARNED the country to prepare for the storm, and the waves of old women receded back to their houses to prepare vats of rice and simmer fruit for marmalade. Their husbands argued with reports on the radio, while children in their rooms eyed the blanket of clouds with resentment.
Lyra pulled up to Gabriel’s school and spoke quickly to the director.
“We won’t open tomorrow, Lyra,” he said, passing off Gabriel to her.
“¿Do you really think the storm will be that bad?” Lyra said, zipping up Gabriel’s backpack.
The director nodded. Then he turned to notify a garbling mass of other parents like a captain telling passengers to abandon ship.
“Fuck,” Lyra said under her breath. She would have to take Gabriel with her to La Iglesia tomorrow. Lyra saw a minefield of memories unfurl before her, a no-man’s-land she and Gabriel would be forced to cross.