Those words seem particularly ominous.
“As soon as I learned Alejandro had been killed—I wanted to see Elisa, to comfort her. And at the same time, I worried my presence would be a slap in the face for all they’d lost. So I stayed away for a while, thinking it was the honorable thing to do. Eventually, I realized your great-grandfather never told her I was alive, never gave her my letter. I learned Guillermo told Elisa I was dead, that she thought I was gone. I don’t blame your great-grandfather, not after all he’d lost. My own family disowned me for joining Fidel. The last words my father said to me were that he was ashamed I was his son, that I had betrayed my country, my people. I didn’t want Elisa to feel the same way, couldn’t bear the thought that I’d destroyed what she loved, too.
“I went to her house to see her once I learned Guillermo had told her I died, once it became clear your great-grandfather didn’t tell her I was alive, once some time had passed. I asked one of the gardeners about the family, and he said they had gone, fled to the United States. He didn’t know when they would return. That was in March. I told myself she was safer there. You can’t imagine the fear we lived with during those days, even those of us close to Fidel. Perhaps those of us close to Fidel more than anyone. It took nothing to sentence a man to death. You learned to survive by following his orders, by agreeing with everything he said. Men who didn’t, good men, well—” His voice cracks, and I see the man my grandmother loved, the earnestness there and the immense sorrow at all that goodness and hope being twisted into something else entirely. “The firing squads, the blood—”
His eyes close.
“It wasn’t what I believed in. Wasn’t the future I had fought for. But I couldn’t give up. We’d come too far for the country to fail. The problem was no one really understood what it would take to make the necessary changes in Cuba. And there were so many problems to be addressed. So I stayed behind and I worked. I wanted to help with legal reform. One of the goals of the revolution was to restore Cuba to the 1940 Constitution. Of course, instead we had the Fundamental Law.
“I worked every day. I saved. And I made plans. Fidel traveled to New York in September 1960 to address the United Nations, and I was part of the delegation that accompanied him. I went with the hopes that once I was in the United States I could find Elisa. I knew she was in Florida. I didn’t know where she lived, but I found the headquarters of your great-grandfather’s sugar company in Palm Beach.
“It took most of my savings to get there, and when I did, he met with me in his office. From the beginning, some part of me knew Elisa didn’t belong with me anymore. She’d never cared about the money, but in having money I now saw a security I couldn’t provide for her. Cuba was in such a state of unrest that it would have been a challenge to protect her, to give her the kind of life she deserved. And I worried. Worried about her being a Perez in a country where it was no longer prudent to stand out for having more than everyone else. Your family was known in Cuba. Elisa and her sisters were known in Cuba. Those were dangerous times to be one of the elite. Fidel had nationalized Cuban industry—the sugar fields. Privately, he was talking about the government seizing the property of those who left.
“And then your great-grandfather told me the news—that she’d married. He wasn’t cruel about it; quite the opposite, really. He showed me a picture of your grandmother in a wedding dress, standing next to her husband.”
Pain fills his eyes.
“She looked happy. Safe. He said they’d fallen in love quickly, had married quickly. They had a child already.
“What was I supposed to do? She was happy. She had the life she had always wanted—to be a wife and mother. Meanwhile I fought for a country that was falling down around me. I wasn’t the kind of man who would disrupt her life when I had nothing to offer her. There was no honor in such action.
“So I came back. I worked with Calderío to reform the legal system. Later on I worked with the law school to shape the new curriculum.” He smiles. “I met my Julia, and we married. Had children of our own. Six grandchildren now. It’s not the life I imagined for myself, the one Elisa and I dreamed of, but the older you get, the more you learn to appreciate the moments life gives you. Getting them certainly isn’t a given, and I feel blessed to have carved out a life here where I could be happy even if it wasn’t quite the happiness I envisioned, if the things I dreamed of never quite came to pass.”
I have a feeling he’s not just talking about my grandmother anymore.
He gestures toward my hand. “May I?”
I nod, sliding the ring off my finger and placing it in his hands.
Emotions swim in his eyes.
“It was my grandmother’s.” He smiles again. “I didn’t have much money back then, but I wanted to make Elisa a promise, one she could believe in, so I gave her my grandmother’s ring. Elisa couldn’t wear it on her hand, of course, so when we weren’t together, she wore it on a chain around her neck, near her heart.”
“Would you like it back? If it’s a family heirloom—”
He shakes his head, placing the ring back in my palm. “It was meant for you.” He’s quiet for a moment. “You don’t just have the look of Elisa, you know. I see my mother in you, too.”
I still, my heart thudding.
“When did you realize?” I ask.
“When I saw the ring. Then I recognized my mother in your face.” A tear trickles down his cheek. “Do I have a son or a daughter?”
“A son.”
“Tell me about him. Please.”
So I do. I tell him about my family, half of my heart here, half of it with Luis, praying for his safety, waiting for Pablo’s man to come tell us what’s to become of him.
“Will you tell them about me?” Pablo asks once I’ve finished, and I sense the hesitation behind the question, recognize his fear that he won’t be accepted because of his political allegiances.
The revolution has divided so many families; it’s wrecked ours enough.
“Yes.”
“Do you think they’ll want to know me?” he asks, the uncertainty in his voice tugging at my heart.
“I do.”
A knock sounds at the door, and Pablo excuses himself. He opens the door and exchanges murmured words with the man from earlier. When they’re finished, he returns to me.
“It’s safe for you to go back to Ana’s tonight. They’re still questioning Luis, but I’m working on getting him out. I need to meet with a friend who might be able to help us.”
The word “us” is incredibly reassuring.
“Do you think you can secure his release?”
“I hope I can. I promise you, Marisol, I’ll do everything in my power to make it happen.”
chapter twenty-seven
I take a cab back to Ana’s in a daze, relaying the events to her, Caridad, and Cristina. They receive the news of Luis’s arrest with resignation and a sense of calm that would have shocked me if I hadn’t grown used to this Cuban pragmatism. I tell Ana privately about Pablo, that he’s my grandfather, my hope that he will be able to help Luis.
“What do we do?” I ask once I’ve finished the tale.
“We wait,” Ana answers, her expression grim.
The next morning, Luis is still not back with us, and I walk to my grandfather’s house in Miramar, to the address he gave me the previous night, worry in my heart as I approach his home. What if he’s not here? What if he can’t help me or he changed his mind once he realized the precariousness of Luis’s position? I’m staking a lot on the letters, on the fact that my grandmother loved him, the time I spent in his presence, on the hope that he’ll be able to do something to get Luis out of this mess.