Lino returned from Guate without Eduardo and Marta. “Es impossible,” he said to Kate. “You should go and see for yourself. The streets are full of children.”

Kate did not know if she could stand to see for herself.

Dixie wore a red kitchen mitt and was shifting a hot skillet from the stovetop to the table when the lights went out. Music from the radio died. The refrigerator ceased humming with a spiraling whine like air being let from a balloon. There was no window in the kitchen and Kate noticed that fully for the first time. Darkness bloomed around them.

Lino said, his words measured, “There was talk of this.”

“Sure,” Ginger said, exasperated. She’d come back, but she hadn’t said for how long.

He lowered his voice still more, ducked his head. “My friends who are friends of los subversivos—they say this will happen.”

“You don’t know that,” Ginger said.

Dixie slid the skillet onto an iron trivet, turned on one of the stove’s burners so that for a minute—while he felt around in the cupboard for candles—the kitchen was lit by the blue fire ring of gas. He lit a candle and turned off the stove. Their eyes adjusted to the grainy skirt of candlelight. Steam rose from the skillet. In the dark, Kate’s sense of smell intensified. Moist rice, redolent cumin, the candle wax, the gas of the stove just extinguished.

“No biggie,” Dixie said. “Let’s eat.”

“The frigging lights are out,” Ginger said. She had been bouncing a green ball on the floor and the ball had veered off toward the counter into a pile of newsprint wrappers and bags from the market. “How can we eat?”

“Give-us-a-break, Gin-ger,” Lino said.

“Very good,” Kate said. “Very good English. Muy apropriado.”

“You’re hungry, aren’t you?” Dixie said. He sat down and with a snap opened his cloth napkin.

Ginger stamped her foot churlishly.

Lino laughed and waited. When they’d all bowed their heads, he exhaled slowly, as though to rid himself of his search for the children, his irritation at Ginger. Then he said grace.

Kate watched curiously, surreptitiously. She couldn’t quite bring herself to fold her hands, though she remembered doing that as a girl at holiday meals when her grandfather would endure her grandmother’s blessing. Kate’s own mother did not say grace, though every evening she had made them kneel on their beds and say an Our Father and a Hail Mary while she listened.

Dixie made the sign of the cross. Candlelight flashed on the stucco walls.

Kate felt the brief ease of the moment: a day took so much boring care; it was hard to hold to gratitude. Dixie paused, with his hand on the wooden spoon handle beside the skillet. He smiled tentatively at Kate. She gazed away from those eyes.

“Do you ever, like, wonder if you’re going to survive being here?” Ginger said to no one in particular. Her sulk was prominent and obvious, her mouth pinched, her eyes downcast.

Lino lifted his plate and Dixie spooned the rice and vegetables onto it. Then Kate, then Ginger. He served himself last.

Kate got up and took her plate out to the courtyard and set it on the edge of the fountain. In Managua she had lived without electricity many evenings. To her it was nothing new. She shuffled to her room—a gait intended to belie her impatience with Ginger—and found two candles in a drawer. Back at the fountain she lit the candles, dripped wax onto the rough concrete of the fountain’s rim, and ground the candles into the soft wax to secure them. She eased down into the slingback chair, relaxed. She could hear the others talking in the kitchen. There were no sounds in the neighborhood, no radios, no fireworks. She ate alone, a chore. It had been the same almost every night except for the smell of Dixie’s cooking, which varied: cinnamon from a mango pie, sauteed onions, basily tomato sauce. She had allowed herself to eat communally only once or twice a week. She would stay in her room or in the shadowed courtyard while they took their meals. She was wounded and she tended her wound; she both punished and fed herself with solitude.

Just as she finished and set her plate on the cement floor, the lights came on again. A sigh throughout the town was nearly audible. The kitchen light glowed; a yellow lightbulb lit the back of the courtyard near the bodega where the cleaning supplies were kept. Where Kate sat it was pleasantly dim.

Dixie came out. His eyebrows drooped, flecked with gray. He still napped every day, still became fatigued easily. His face was getting back its color, though, a ruddiness Kate associated with living in the mountains. He put his hands in his pants pockets and jingled his change.

“Kate—we’re here. Wouldn’t you like to just talk sometime?”

Kate sighed. “I’m not sure I’m up to it.”

“You might feel better for it.”

She crossed her arms. A chill like cool fingers went up her back. In the kitchen Lino and Ginger ran dishwater and tried out different radio stations. Ginger said, “It’s not my turn. I’m not here enough to take a turn.”

Kate said, “I don’t think you have any idea how much I feel like running away.”

“What’re you running from?”

“Don’t. Please.”

“Skip it.” He turned to go.

Kate blurted, “Do you have the key to Sunny’s bedroom?”

Dixie faced her and folded his arms. He had long athletic arms. “The key?”

Before she could answer, there was a knock on the front door. He went to answer. She watched him go: his walk, his jaunt, the way he rolled energetically on the balls of his feet, his sweater dark and square like his strong back; he still had strength in spite of the damage done by his illness. Posh on his fern chittered for Dixie’s attention as he walked by.

“Buenas noches. Come in, come in. I’ve been wondering where you were,” she heard him say, but she could not see—from where she sat—who was invited in. A murmuring female voice. Dixie and whoever it was huddled just inside the door, in the shadow of the foyer. He shut the door and locked it. He said, “No, no, it’s fine, está bien, Vidalúz,” and just as Kate heard her name Vidalúz emerged from the shadows into the light of the courtyard.

“Vidalúz!”

“Buenas noches, Catarina!”

Dixie stood beside Vidalúz, his hand on her elbow. She was dressed in her traditional clothes. Nearly emanating light. Great care had been taken with everything she wore: a starched white cotton blouse with a square neckline embroidered in red and blue stitches; a bright red skirt, not gathered, but instead a folded length of fabric wound around her hips and secured with a handwoven sash. Her hair was thick and black and pinned up in a loose knot. Her headpiece wove within the coils of her hair—a multicolored sash with pom-poms at either end, like a soft crown. Her complexion was scrubbed clean and dusky, pure. She held herself with regal bearing.

“Pues, se conocen?” Dixie said.

Vidalúz was learning English. “Sí, God brought us together,” she said.

Dixie guided her to a director’s chair beside Kate. Vidalúz sat with her spine quite straight, her hands patiently cupped in her lap. Dixie sat down again on the fountain rim.

“Are you all right?” Kate said.

“I am better,” Vidalúz said. To Dixie she said, “We met under very bad circumstances. Dangerous circumstances. Father Ryan, Hector is in custody.” She said this and waited for the news to sink in. “It has been nine days.”

“Why have you waited to tell me?”

“I was afraid. I went home. To dress properly. To see my people.”

“Are you sure they still have him?”

“He would come home.” Vidalúz paused. “He would.” She glanced at Kate, then Dixie, qualmishly.

“It’s all right,” he said. And then to Kate, “She and Hector have been working to stop the civil patrols. You’ve heard of them?”

Kate said, “Is it forced conscription?”

“In a manner of speaking. It’s not the army. These are civil patrols. Neighbors—all men over fifteen—are required to serve several shifts a week guarding each village. The farmers aren’t able to provide for their families—they spend so much time on civil patrol. They’re not paid for it. Many have died while on patrol. And the constitution says that the patrols are voluntary. But of course—”

“How can you stop them?” Kate said.

“I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you,” he said. “But first, Vidalúz, por favor, tell us what happened.”

Vidalúz sighed. In Spanish she began her story. “We had been in the capital for a meeting,” she said.

Kate drew her chair near.

“It was not a good meeting. They smiled at us and went behind our backs. They would not touch us in the capital because Shannon—”

Dixie put up his hand to interrupt her. “Shannon’s a North American woman,” he said in English to Kate, “who usually stays with them as a witness.”

Vidalúz went on. “Shannon was with us. Shannon was not feeling well. She wanted to go to the doctor here, in Antigua. She wanted to go to the Canadian doctor. They kept her at the hospital—she has asthma. And we were picked up near the market. They shoved us into a car—” She began to cry. “Hector begged them to let me go.”

Dixie hunched forward, frowning.

“First they separated us. But I could hear Hector groaning. They took my traje. They gave me ladino clothes to put on. They made me undress—” Her face fell into a fragile state. The woman she had prepared, her public self, disappeared. She cried out again and pressed her hand against her mouth.

They waited while she cried. Dixie attended to her, acknowledged her, by waiting. Then he took her hand and offered, “You don’t have to.”

“Someone should know,” she said, her voice trembling. “You should know—”

Lino and Ginger were singing along to the radio, some Madonna song. Their spat was over. The golden light poured forth from the convivial kitchen. They laughed within.

“Where did they take you?” Dixie said.

“It was here. In Antigua!”

“But where?”

“No sé, Father. No sé. When they let me go they took me through many hallways. They let me out on the park.

“You are communist, they said to me. They made me drink water. Many glasses. They would not allow me to relieve myself. They said there were no toilets for communists. I stood before them, Father, wetting myself in front of the soldiers.”

Kate closed her eyes as though to keep from seeing.

“They smeared my mouth with lipstick. One soldier bit me—”

“Vidalúz—”

“He bit my mouth until I bled.”

No one said anything. Dixie held her hand.

Finally he said, “What did they want?”

“Names … they wanted names.”

“How long were you there?”

“The next afternoon they let me go. That is when we met, Catarina.”

Kate nodded. It was all she could do—nod along to Vidalúz’s story.

Dixie said, “Why did they let you go?” Implicit in his words were, Why did they keep Hector?

“Pues, they want the others to know. They want me to do what I am doing. Telling you. And our friends in the highlands. They want to terrify us. They want us to crawl into our houses and never come out. They want us to lie down like dogs.”

She sat up very straight in her chair. “I am useful this way. But Father, they want to be rid of Hector.

“I have been back to my village. I needed my clothes. The governor of my province sent me a bag of corn and a bag of beans. I sent a letter asking him if he would go on giving me food and he sent word to me, Yes, he said, if you can prove that your husband is dead.”

Under his breath Dixie said, “How many more times can they get away with this?”

“Now I wait for a new witness. Shannon has gone home to California. I will wait for Hector. I am not going back to my village until they let Hector go. I am staying at a hotel—where the tipico vendors stay. Los Arboles Grande. You know the one? It is not expensive.”

“You could stay here!” Kate cried.

“That’s probably not wise,” Dixie said. “Though I know a safe place you could stay. Two places. One here in Antigua. One at Lake Atitlán.”

“We could protect her,” Kate insisted.

“It’s too obvious. She can come by once in a while, but to live here would draw too much attention. Trust me, Kate. There’s more at stake than you’re aware of.”

Vidalúz said, “Sí, pues, Catarina. We must not stay together.” She turned to Dixie. “For now I am all right at the hotel.”

What they said was true. The offer had been selfish, and Kate felt justly corrected. She was sick of all roads leading back to her own desire, her own fear.

“I want Hector,” Vidalúz said. “We need no more martyrs.”