“No,” I said softly. Still, I wondered if that was possible. Was it possible that chocolate wasn’t dangerous, or even unhealthy? Was what I’d been taught in school propaganda, a history cobbled together out of opportunistic half-truths? And if that were the case, why hadn’t Daddy ever said that to me? Or Nana?

Theo cut a pod off a tree. “Look here, Anya, this one is ripe.” He set the pod on the ground, then split it in half with a blunt whack of his machete. Inside the pod were about forty white beans arranged in neat rows and stacks. He picked up half the pod and held it out to me in the palm of his hand. “Look inside,” he whispered. “It is only a bean, Anya, and like you and like me, it is of God. Could there be anything more natural? More perfect?” He expertly removed a single ivory bean with his pinkie. “Taste,” he said.

I took the bean into my mouth. It was nutty, like an almond, but underneath there was the faintest hint of the sweetness to come.

Early every morning, Theo and I and the other farmers would go out to the orchard to look for signs of mold and, also, any ripe cacao pods we could find. The unusual thing about cacao was that it didn’t mature all at once. Some of the pods were early bloomers and some were late. It took practice to recognize just the moment when a pod was ripe. The weight of the pod, the size, the color, and the appearance of thick veins—all these signs could vary. We were careful with our tools (machetes for the pods close to the ground, and a long-handled hook for the ones higher up) because otherwise they could damage the tree. Our tools were blunt, and the bark was delicate. Though it was shady, I still got a deep tan. My hair grew out. My hands became worried with blisters, then thick with calluses. I had borrowed Luna’s machete as she had no use for this part of the process.

The major harvest took place just before Thanksgiving, which no one at Granja Mañana celebrated anyway. Still, I could not help but think of Leo in Japan, and my sister and everyone back in New York. On the first day of the harvest, the neighbors arrived with baskets and for nearly a week, we collected the ripe cacao pods. After we had collected the pods and moved them to the dry side of the farm, the pod smashing began. We used mallets and hammers to open the pods. Theo could do almost five hundred pods an hour. My first day of pod-smashing, I think I managed ten in total.

“You’re good at this,” I told Theo.

He shrugged off my compliment. “I should be. It’s in my blood, and I’ve been doing it all my life.”

“And do you think you’ll do this forever? Cacao farming, I mean.”

Theo whacked another cacao pod. “A long time ago, I thought I’d like to be a chocolatier. I thought I’d like to study the craft abroad somewhere, maybe with one of the masters in Europe, but now that doesn’t seem likely.”

I asked him why, and he told me that his family needed him. His father was dead, and his siblings really had no interest in the family business. “My mother runs the factories, and I run the farms. I can’t leave them, Anya.” He smiled wickedly at me. “It must be nice to be able to go far away from home. To be free of obligations and responsibilities.”

I wanted to tell him that I understood. I wanted to tell him the truth about myself, but I couldn’t. “Everyone has obligations,” I insisted.

“What are your obligations? You come here without a suitcase or anything else. You contact no one and no one contacts you. You seem pretty free to me and the truth is, I envy you!”

After all the beans were removed from the pods, they were scooped into ventilated wooden boxes. Banana leaves were placed over the beans, and then the beans were left to ferment for about six days. On the seventh day, we moved the fermented beans to the wooden decks, where they were spread out and left in the sun to bake and dry.

At this point, the least difficult part to my mind, Luna took over, freeing up Theo to go to Oaxaca to check on the Marquezes’ factories. Occasionally, she and I had to rake the beans to make sure they were drying evenly. The entire drying process took a little longer than a week because every time it rained, we had to stop to cover the beans again.

“I think my brother likes you,” Luna said to me as we raked through the beans.

“Castillo?” I had seen very little of him since that day he caught me in his arms, though my impression of him had certainly been favorable.

“Castillo is going to be a priest, Anya! I mean Theo, of course.” “As a sister maybe,” I said.

“I am his sister, and I don’t think so. He is always going on and on to Mama about what a good worker you are and how you are like him. How you have cacao in your blood! And Mama and Abuela and Bisabuela adore you. I do, too.”

I stopped raking to stare at Luna. “I honestly don’t think Theo likes me, Luna. The first day we met, he mentioned a girl he was in love with and he made a point of telling me how ugly he found me.”

“Oh, Theo. My brother is so adorably awkward.”

“Well, I sincerely hope he doesn’t like me, Luna. I have a boyfriend back home, and…” And I chose not to complete the thought.

For a while, Luna said nothing, and when she next spoke, there was no small amount of outrage in her voice. “Why do you never talk about this boyfriend? And why does he never contact you? He can’t be a very good boyfriend if he never contacts you.” (Readers, it was much commented upon at Granja Mañana that I didn’t have a slate.) Obviously, there was a good reason why Win nevercontacted me. I was a fugitive. But I couldn’t very well say that to Luna.

“I don’t even think you have a boyfriend. Maybe you are saying this to be nice, but you are not nice at all. Maybe you just think you are so much better than us!” Luna yelled. “Because you are from New York.”

“No, it’s nothing like that.”

Luna pointed her finger at me. “You need to stop leading Theo on.” I assured her that I hadn’t been.

“You are stuck to him like glue every day! He is a baby, so of course he gets the wrong idea.” “I honestly only wanted to learn about cacao. That’s what I came here to do!”

Luna and I continued to turn over the beans in silence.

Luna sighed. “I am sorry,” she said. “But he is my brother so I am protective.” I understood very well about that.

“Don’t mention that I said anything to you,” Luna said. “I don’t want to embarrass him. My brother has much pride.”

After the beans were dried, they were gathered up into burlap sacks so that Theo could drive them down the mountain back to the factories in Oaxaca. This took several trips. “Would you like to come with me?” he asked before the last of that season’s drives.

I did want to go with him, but after my conversation with Luna, I wasn’t sure if I should. “Come, Anya. You should see this. Don’t you want to see where the beans end up?”

Theo offered me his hand to help me into the truck, and after a moment’s consideration, I accepted.

We drove for a while in silence. “You are quiet,” he accused me. “You’ve been like this ever since I got back from the city.”

“It’s … Well. Theo, you know I have a boyfriend, don’t you?”

“Sí…” He drew out the word. “Yes, you told me.” “So, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about me.”

Theo laughed. “Are you worried that I like you too much, Anya Barnum?” Theo laughed again. “That is really very conceited of you!”

“Your sister … She thought you had a crush on me.”

“Luna is a romantic. She contrives to set me up with everyone, Anya. You can’t listen to a word that comes out of her ridiculous mouth. You should know that I don’t like you at all. I find you just as ugly as the day we met.”

“Now you’re being hurtful.” My hair was longer, and I knew I wasn’t as sickly looking as when I had arrived.