Life had continued—and the pace had not changed.

I walked up next to her. She was holding a pair of needle-nose pliers inside the open mouth of Anna Julia, who was looking out of the corner of her eye at me. I looked over Leena’s shoulder and said, “Better pull the right one. She doesn’t have too many left.”

She smiled but held her hands steady. Leena pulled the tooth and handed it to Anna Julia, who smiled at it and then slid it into her pocket. Leena pulled off her gloves and threw her arms around my neck. Followed by Isabella, Paulo, and then about fifty of the people standing in line. Gave a new meaning to the term “group hug.”

When they’d finished, Leena looked at me, blushing, having totally lost her concentration on the group in front of her. I chuckled. “Miss me?”

She kissed me. Then kissed me again. “Just a little.”

Isabella hung vacuum-wrapped around my leg. With no explanation, I opened my backpack and handed Leena the folder of documents. She eyed them. “What’s this?”

I wasn’t quite sure how to answer. I swallowed and offered what I could. “Love with legs.” A shrug. “Water from my heart.”

She opened the folder and the draining look of suspicion told me she never saw it coming. She began flipping more quickly through the documents. Reaching the end, she looked at Isabella, Paulo, and then me as the tears that she’d held a decade broke loose and rained down. Disbelief set in along with the it’s-too-good-to-be-true look, so she turned back to the beginning and read the names again. Her voice cracked, then rose. “You did this?”

A nod.

“How?”

“Long story but it involved selling everything I owned and then digging up old drug money in an abandoned church.”

“You bought Mango Café with drug money?”

“No, I bought Cinco Padres with drug money.”

She looked confused and began flipping back through the documents. “What?”

“All five farms.” I laughed. “I hope you like the coffee business ’cause you’re neck deep in it now.” Paulo was listening to me, but he was having a difficult time making out exactly what I was saying.

She shook her head in disbelief as she read back through the documents. Slowly the fog lifted. Paulo looked at me confused, and like him, the crowd milling around couldn’t tell if she was happy or sad. Finally, she turned to me. Even with all her strength and tenacity, the absence of one name was too much. She looked at me. Eyes welling. She pointed. “But your name’s not on here.” A shake of her head. “Anywhere.” She wiped her face with her shirtsleeve. “Are you…you leaving?”

This time I had enough presence of mind not to cheat the woman I loved out of the moment she desired and deserved. I knelt and extended my hand, uncurling my fingers to reveal the simple gold band cradled in my palm. “Not if you let me stay.”

*  *  *

Word spread. Quickly.

When people found out that Leena and Isabella owned all of Cinco Padres, they came out of the woodwork to congratulate her.

The next morning, I was awakened in the chicken coop by the sight of sleepy-eyed Leena holding a steaming mug beneath my nose. She’d let down her hair, which draped across her shoulders and rested on mine. It was the beginning of an intimate revelation. Leena was sharing herself with me—a sign of things to come. I sat up, sipped, and said, “I haven’t been entirely honest with you.”

“Oh, really.”

“First, I told Zaul I’d give him a job. He’ll be here in a few days.”

“And?”

“You need to know that I have nothing. I am completely and totally broke. I don’t have enough money to fill up the tank in my boat, which, if I’m honest, I should sell so we’ll have something when it rains. I don’t know where we will get money to do anything. When I tell you I am broke, I mean we are week-old-leg-stubble-with-a-rusty-razor-don’t-have-enough-to-buy-a-new-one broke.”

Leena stood and held my hand. “Let me show you something.” She walked me to the door of the coop, leaned into me, wrapping her arms around my waist and chest. “We don’t need money.” She waved across the world spread before her. “This is Nicaragua.”

Across the backyard, a dozen or so pigs, a few cows, and several goats had been tied to trees. Baskets of fruit and vegetables filled every inch of the yard. Melons had been stacked along one wall. Flowers had been laid out. It was as if someone had spilled a grocery truck on the back lawn. She laughed. “They’ve been coming all morning.” I looked down the street, which was flooded with people carrying baskets and leading animals. Paulo stood smiling in the center of the yard, ghost white in awestruck amazement. Leena continued. “We have water, food, we have”—she placed her hand on my chest—“your mountain, and we have the best coffee…anywhere.”

I nodded. “And we have a guy in the States who has promised to import every bean we grow. Even has some famous friends who he thinks will help market it.”

*  *  *

She hung her arms around my neck. “I’ve always wanted to get married beneath my father’s mango tree.”

“If word gets out that you’re getting married, you’re liable to have five thousand people show up.”

“My father would love nothing better.”

Isabella wrapped her arm around my leg and stood hugging me. Pressing her cheek to my thigh. I picked her up and cradled her in my arms. “How about you?”

She smiled, pressed her forehead to mine, and cradled my cheeks in her palms.

*  *  *

I’d never felt so clean.

On Digging a Well

In 1998, Hurricane Mitch stalled over Nicaragua. With sustained winds of 155 knots and gusts reaching 200, the Category 5 monster hovered for several days. Mountain outposts recorded from 72 to 96 inches of rain. Others, where the instruments were washed out or ripped off their foundations, suggest amounts closer to 144 inches. That’s right. Twelve feet. Nobody really knows. What they do know is that a lot of water filled up a lake atop a dormant volcano called Las Casitas. The resulting weight cracked the mantle and caused an eruption and mudslide. The thirty-foot-high wall of mud traveled down the mountain and toward the sea some thirty miles away. Satellite imagery records the mudslide traveling in excess of 100 miles per hour and cutting a swath a mile wide. Naval and Coast Guard vessels would later pick up survivors, clinging to floating debris, miles out in the Pacific.

During the deluge, Moises and twenty-seven members of his family huddled, cold, hungry, and wet, in his cement-block, tin-roof house where rushing floodwaters had cut them off from the rest of the world. After five days of soggy isolation, Moises—a dollar-a-day sugarcane farmer and volunteer pastor—heard something that sounded like helicopters. Thinking the UN or some relief agency had flown in to rescue them, the entire family rushed out of their house, eyes searching the sky. Expectant and hopeful. But there were no helicopters. Instead, they were met by an apocalyptic wall of mud wider than their field of view. Before them, giant, ancient trees were crumbling in its wake; houses were being ripped off their foundations. Giant boulders tumbled toward them. Death had come to Las Casitas. Moises had time to glance at his wife and his children and voice this: “La sangre de Jesus! Vamos a estar con Jesus.” Translated it means, “The blood of Jesus [cover us]! We are going to be with Jesus.” The caustic, super-heated tsunami of mud reached his yard, towering. Only one thing stood between Moises and the mud.

A well.

A simple hole dug into the ground with a pump and enough pipe to lift the water out of the earth. The well had been drilled six months earlier by an NGO and provided enough water for Moises and his neighbors to cook, bathe, and live. In this part of the world, dirty water is both the source of sickness and the feeder for continued sickness, so the advent of available clean water had changed living conditions, shrunken swollen stomachs, and brought new life. Wells do that. Moises was the keeper of the well for reasons that will soon become apparent.