Around us, swarming in the trees, parrots and howler monkeys lit the early morning in a cacophony of sound and prelight activity. Either unable or unwilling, she didn’t speak on the way home until just a few hundred yards from the house. Finally, after a silent six miles, she turned. Her face looked tortured. She said, “I wonder if I could trouble you.”

“Anything.”

“We need to build a coffin. This morning. Would you help Paulo?”

“Certainly.” A pause. “Anything else?”

“I—” She searched my face. “I’d like to…we used to…a funeral—”

I handed her two hundred-dollar bills. “What else can I do?”

She held the money in her hand and choked back a sob. Collecting herself, she said, “Thank you.”

*  *  *

When Paulo showed me his rudimentary tools and a coffin, which he had built months prior for a man who had yet to die, I asked if there was a hardware store close by. He said, “León.” We drove to León, I bought the tools we needed, and then Paulo led me to a lumberyard, where we bought planks of seasoned Nicaraguan hardwood. It was some of the most beautiful wood I’d ever seen, and Hack would have really appreciated it.

When we returned, Paulo clued in to the fact that I had some experience with wood, so without steamrolling him or making him feel like his coffin wasn’t good enough, he and I set out to build Roberto’s coffin. When I fashioned my first dovetail together with seamless edges, Paulo sat back and patted me on the shoulder. “You finish.”

By midafternoon, I’d finished the coffin. Paulo ran his fingers along the smooth edges, along the rounded corners, the cross that would rest above Roberto’s face and nodded. “Mi hermano, you honor us.”

The four of us drove up the mountain for the beginning of the procession. The women—each head covered—had prepared Roberto’s body, dressing him in a white dress shirt and pants, which Paulina had bought with some of the money I’d given her. Then they laid him on top of a thin mattress covered with a blanket hand knit by one of the older women in the plantation. When the women began singing, the procession of almost two hundred lifted Roberto onto their shoulders and began walking down a path that led toward the remains of the mudslide. The younger men carried Roberto, sharing the load, passing him from shoulder to shoulder. Other than the almost subaudible singing from the women, the procession walked silently. Stepping quietly. Reverently. While Paulina and Paulo walked up front, alongside Roberto, Isabella remained next to me and slipped her hand in mine.

When the path leveled out, we walked out from the trees and into a valley spiked with several dozen tall white crosses. A cluster of three sat off to one side, and alongside them, someone had dug a hole. When the young men reached the hole, they laid the coffin on top of the boards that crossed it. The soft-spoken preacher spoke several minutes, followed by Paulo, who said a few words. Finally, Paulina stepped forward, and without saying a word, she opened her mouth and sang a song I’d never heard but will never forget. It was beautiful, mournful, and the other women joined her in the chorus.

Without being instructed, the young men slowly lowered Roberto into the hole and, one by one, each individual in the crowd crossed themselves, whispered words I could not understand, and dropped a gentle handful of dirt onto Roberto’s coffin. When they’d finished, Paulo handed me a rudimentary wooden shovel, and I helped him fill the hole. When we’d finished, the crowd had filed out of the valley and back up the hillside. Silently.

When I turned around, Paulina, Isabella, and the rest of the crowd had disappeared while one older woman stood next to me. It was Anna Julia. She tugged on my shirtsleeve and looked up at me. Paulo listened as she spoke. When she’d finished, he nodded, and she turned and followed the others uphill. Then he turned to me. “It was the most beautiful coffin. She’s never seen its equal. She say God will surely accept him and the angels will be jealous.”

I didn’t know Roberto but evidently everyone else did, and the fact that he was beloved by young and old was evident by the reverence with which they handled him. Seldom, if ever, had I seen such tenderness toward the living or the dead.

When we returned uphill, we found the beginnings of a banquet in full force. Huge pots of steaming rice, beans, and hundreds of handmade tortillas lay mounded on tables. A rather large pig hung roasting over a spit, where four boys took turns turning it, and greasy, sweat-soaked women began pulling the meat off the bone.

The subdued party continued long into the night as everyone ate plate after plate. Isabella conscripted me to help her make coffee and stir the punch in coolers and then pour it into paper cups. Near midnight, I took a break from cleaning up, from carrying food, from pouring punch, from doing whatever was needed. When I stopped to drink some punch and wipe my head, Paulina appeared next to me. Dripping with sweat, her scarf soaked to her forehead, a satisfied and weary smile on her face, she hooked her arm inside mine, leaned on me, and said nothing as we stood staring at the party around us. Several older folks came up to her, speaking quietly, nodding, and holding both her hands in theirs. She spoke softly as well, nodding to each one and hugging several. When they’d left, she turned to me. “Thank you for this.”

I’d known beautiful women. But I’d never known a human being whose inward beauty had the effect Paulina’s had on all those around her. Her outward beauty was unequaled, but it was her inward beauty that left me speechless. I said nothing.

She waved her hand across the dwindling crowd. “They’ve not eaten like this…since my father. They were thanking me for that.” She turned to me. “So thank you.”

*  *  *

It was nearly 3:00 a.m. when we got home. Isabella had been asleep on Colin’s front seat for the better part of three hours. Paulo carried her to her bed. I stretched out in the chicken coop and was too tired to kick off my flip-flops.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Friday morning appeared and only Paulo woke before me. We shared a quiet cup of coffee while Paulina and Isabella slept, and then I called Colin. Time to check in. I told him about the poker game, the truck, and about finding someone who’d seen Zaul—and about the blood on the hammock. I thought about not, but it’s not my place to withhold from Colin. Zaul’s not my son.

Colin listened quietly and then agreed that if Zaul was out of money, and possibly hurt but unwilling to go to the hospital, chances were good he’d return to the house in Costa Rica to rest, heal up, get whatever money he’d left there, and put together plan B since plan A had failed. I told him I was heading out in a few hours and that I’d be there tonight. We talked about Maria, her improvement, and he told me they were scheduling a follow-up surgery with Shelly to reduce some of the scar tissue. They had yet to tell Maria.

Before he hung up, I said, “Wonder if you’d do me a favor.”

“Sure.”

“You have any attorney friends in this part of the world?”

“You need one?”

“Maybe, but not for anything criminal. Least not yet.” I told Colin what I needed, or wanted, and when I finished, he was quiet a minute. Finally, he said, “Give me a few days.”

*  *  *

Sometime after 11:00 a.m., Isabella woke, shuffled out her door, climbed up into Paulo’s lap, and fell back asleep. A few minutes later, Paulina appeared. She didn’t look much better. Coffee only raised her eyelids to half-mast.

“I have an idea I’d like to run by you.”

She and Paulo looked at me agreeably. Isabella cracked open her eyes and stared at me with little interest. “I think Zaul may be returning to his parents’ house in Costa Rica. I need to check it out. If you’re not opposed, I’d like to show it to you. There’s a pool where maybe we could teach Isabella to swim, and there’s a beach with miles of sand in either direction.”