Mary did discreetly mention Sarah’s lack of a date to Nancy Vargas. Carlos did ask Sarah to go with him to the dance, and Sarah accepted with great trepidation. Nancy Vargas confided to Mary that Carlos had wanted to ask Sarah but had been afraid she would refuse him and even laugh at him. Sarah was self-conscious dancing with Carlos, who was even shorter than most of the other boys in their class, but they had found it easy to talk with one another. Carlos made her laugh. She felt almost happy with him; and when the other boys left their dates and moved off together to the back of the gymnasium, Carlos stayed by her side.
Sarah was sitting cross-legged on her bed studying the assignment for her history class when her mother called her from the hall and asked her to join her parents in the parlor. They almost never gathered as a family in the parlor unless they were entertaining guests. They often lingered around the dining table after supper and discussed the day’s events and later would move to the back patio where the soft velvet blackness of the tropical night caressed them while they talked about things far removed from Nicaragua in time and space. Sarah wondered if she were in trouble, if she’d unknowingly broken some parental rule; but when she saw her father’s anguished face, she knew that something was terribly wrong. Her mother’s face rarely revealed anything. Mary Rutledge appeared most placid and serene when she was most troubled or frustrated unless she was angry; but as Sarah saw her father glance back and forth at her mother, she knew that the problem concerned her mother.
“Sarah, we have something very serious to discuss with you.” Mary Rutledge’s voice, which sometimes betrayed her true emotions, was as calm and tranquil as her face.
“Did I do something wrong?”
“Oh no, dearest. Your father and I have decided that you need to know something about me.”
Sarah wondered in her first panicked thought whether her mother might want to divorce her father and return to North Carolina to live; and she immediately resolved to stay and live with her father in Nicaragua if that should prove to be true.
“What is it? Please tell me.”
“You remember that I made a rather sudden trip to North Carolina a few months ago.”
Her mother’s impulsive trip to North Carolina had puzzled Sarah. As she recalled its out-of-character nature from her mother’s meticulously planned routine, Sarah felt certain that her mother was leaving her father. Sarah nodded. “Un-huh.” She wished her face could conceal her emotions as easily as her mother’s did.
“I went to see some doctors. I went to Duke, because they’re the best. The doctors here suspected something was wrong, but they didn’t realize I had cancer. It’s very bad.” Mary Rutledge’s tranquil face suddenly shattered like a rare crystal vase filled with water that has fallen to the floor and broken into scores of pieces.
“Mary.”
“Mother!”
George and Sarah moved simultaneously to each side of Mary’s chair and held her in their arms between them. George’s face also flooded with tears, but Sarah was too stunned to cry. Then Mary dabbed her face with one of the handkerchiefs she always kept under her belt or in a pocket of her dress; and her face was restored to its perfect serenity, as if time were reversed and a broken vase came back together in unblemished wholeness.
“Now, my dears, sit back down. We have a lot to talk about.” George and Sarah obeyed Mary, as they always did. “I was given some medicine that helps with the pain. I may have to return to Duke for a further palliative regime, but I’m not going to have chemo or radiation. Your father and I have discussed this.”
“Mary, there’s still time . . .”
Mary Rutledge held up her hand. “There may not be that much time, my dear. The cancer is very advanced. We’ll review the situation as we go along and make whatever adjustments . . . seem appropriate. But, yes, dearest George, there is still time; and I want to spend it here with the two people I love most in all the world, in the home I love, and with other people . . . whom I care about very deeply.”
Now Sarah’s tears began to flow at last, too; and she and her father rushed back to the arms of Mary’s chair and cuddled her like an infant, as if they were her parents, not her husband and her child. This time Mary indulged them and didn’t push them away for a much longer time but finally patted them gently back in the direction of their chairs.
“There’s one more thing. I’ve made your father promise to fix up the workers’ houses in the village. You know how it’s bothered me, and I want to move the family of the little boy who was shot up to the village and give his mother a job in the factory. Your father and I have agreed to all this. I hope you’ll help him, Sarah, even if you have to give up certain things for yourself to pay for it.”
“Of course, Mother.”
“You know I’ll carry out your intentions to the fullest . . . but . . .” George hesitated like a little boy who knew he shouldn’t mention such things but couldn’t help himself. “. . . when the time comes, do you want your final resting place to be in your family’s plot in Burlington? Do you think they’d allow me to be . . .” He could not say the word buried “. . . with you there, too? You’d need to discuss it with them before . . .”
“No, my dear. I want to be buried here in Nicaragua. Here on the finca, out on the cliff, beyond the garden, on the other side of the forest. This is my home. This is the place I love. I think it’s ridiculous to be taken back to the States like your parents or to England like your grandparents. Don’t you think this is the place we belong, George, after all these years?”
“I do, Mary. I do indeed with all my heart. Thank you.”
“Please stop talking about all this! I don’t want to hear any more about all these things right now. Please! Please! Please!”
“Of course, Susi.” Sarah’s father reached out his arms to her, but she ran to her mother.
“Come here.”
Sarah curled up in her mother’s lap like a child that had grown as large as the parent but needed to be a baby again. Mary stroked Sarah’s hair, and Mary’s face was as peaceful and even as joyful as if they had just shared some wonderfully blissful experience together.
Mary Rutledge lived less than three months after Sarah learned about her mother’s cancer. Mary didn’t appear to be in significant pain, although with her calm, stoic demeanor it was difficult to discern her true physical suffering. Although Sarah had usually preferred her father’s company in the past, during those months she enjoyed talking and sharing drives in the car and baking bread and cakes and sewing clothes with her mother, as if they were meeting as new friends for the first time. They often laughed together. Sarah accompanied her mother to the village several times every week to survey plans for improving the workers’ houses. They often stopped to visit with Blanca, the mother of the little boy who had been shot.
George Rutledge worked in the garden with Martín for longer hours than he’d ever done before. He never sat with Sarah on the back patio after supper while Mary and Flora put away the food and tidied the kitchen as they’d often done in the past, as if his pain were greater than his wife’s and it was too much to inflict on Sarah.
Mary Rutledge died on a Wednesday afternoon while Sarah was at school, as if she’d planned the moment of her demise to spare Sarah the agony of her final hours. Sarah couldn’t remember who the people were from the hoards that came to Quinta Louisa and to the funeral at St. Francis Episcopal Church and couldn’t recall what they’d said to her. She did remember Doña Beatriz Chulteco and Carlos Vargas Allen’s mother because they didn’t try to talk to her and say things that would make her feel better. They hugged her in just the right way and released her at just the right time. Father Richard Sims was the only person she could remember talking to her. Even though she couldn’t recall his exact words, she remembered that he’d made her feel, if not better, at least