Prologue

      “It was awful,” said the man. “Those poor people!”

      The woman shuddered. “They dragged them right out of their house—onto the lawn. It was so horrible.” She began to cry.

      The man put his arm around her shoulder and she turned her face into his chest and wept.

      “Take some broth,” said a kind voice. “You’re both so cold and wet.”

      “Yes, the rain saved us—God’s grace!” The man took the broth in his free hand and gently urged it on the woman, but she could not stop crying. He understood.

      “It was so dark,” he said, simply holding the steaming broth for when she would want it. “The darkness was our refuge as well. You see, it all came on so suddenly.” He shook his head. “I guess we were the ones who came on so suddenly, they did not know at first we were there—the darkness was so complete. You see, the rain was impending. There was no moon, for the clouds were low. The road is so dark already, with no street lights until the towns on Route 28 and this stretch of road—after you make the left turn?—it is so dark at night anyway. . . . ”

      The woman was softly wailing interspersed by fits of shuddering. The man hugged her to him. “We’re safe now,” he tried to comfort her, but she kept shaking her head and murmuring, “Those poor people—dragged out of their home into the night and shot,” and she would cry again.

      “Did you get a look at the men at all?” asked the voice.

      “Not clearly, but they looked like soldiers. They had uniforms, but not like ones we know. These were different—like camouflage.”

      “Camouflage?”

      “Yes, like they were prepared for fighting in the woods.”

      “In the forest?”

      “Yes, exactly—just like that. There were three vehicles.” The woman shuddered against him and he held her more tightly to his breast and bent his head down on hers, kissing her gently. Then he slowly raised his eyes again and said, “They were all up on the lawn—one jutting out onto our road—all three of these large trucks. One was almost like an amphibious vehicle; the other two were like small troop carriers. The soldiers were all around the house—about twenty of them or so. We drove right up into the midst of them. I mean, we were on the road and they were shouting at the people and to each other and didn’t even see us come up. But, we saw them drag out a man and a woman. They dragged her by the hair right out of the house and onto the lawn.”

      “And they shot them,” cried the woman.

      “Yes,” said the man. “They shouted something I couldn’t catch and then executed them both. I had stopped the car—I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Not here—not now. And then I realized—we needed to get out of there—whatever was happening. You know what the roads are like!”

      “Yes,” said another kind voice, “they are treacherous in the day, let alone night. Holes and rocks and speed bumps for no apparent reason. . . .”

      “Exactly,” said the man. “I didn’t want to rev the motor so that we would attract their attention. I couldn’t turn around, there were just ditches on every side, so I thought of backing up away, but, how could I K-turn? There’s nothing there for purchase. So we crept into their taillights and began quietly to creep around them, and that’s when one of them saw us and began shouting to the others. So, I gunned it then! I didn’t care about the potholes or the speed bumps or the rocks or anything. I guess one of the trucks stayed with the bodies—the big awkward looking thing—but the other two started up to chase us. We were racing down the road. I knew if they caught up with us—that would be the end. It was us or the car.”

      “You did right.”

      “I know the road, but you have to drive it every day to know what’s the daily condition, and we haven’t been here for a while, so it was all guesswork. Well, I looked back to see where they were and they had dropped behind us. The first vehicle apparently had backed into a ditch and the wheel got caught. The second one had to lumber around it and that gave us our lead. I thought if we could just get ahead of them we might have a chance—I mean, we only had the little car and they had these all-terrain kind of vehicles, so I didn’t know what was going to happen. And then the rain came.”

      “Thank God!”

      “I do,” said the man. “It was not, and then suddenly it was. Instantly, coming down in torrents. We could hardly drive, but they couldn’t see anything either. We knew we were close, so my wife strained to see the turn and we saw it in time and made the sharp corner. She had the window rolled down and was leaning out in the downpour. She had the flashlight out the window and the light was bouncing up and down the side of the road. Then I took a gamble, figuring we were about at the right spot, and she found one of the little hidden entries—the footpaths. She spotted one—even through the rain,” and he hugged her. “I slowed down and pulled the car in, off the road. It was bumping in over the branches and through the shrubs. I wasn’t certain we would get enough of it off the road before it got stuck in the mud and the brush. I doused the lights as soon as we left the road and was driving blind, praying we wouldn’t hit a tree. As soon as we both thought we were sufficiently off the road, we just stopped it—there on the path—and jumped out of the car and hid in the bushes and waited.”

      He hugged his wife more closely. She was quiet now and took the broth from his hand and sipped some of it.

      “Well, in just minutes, they came careening by, skidding in the downpour, and then roaring up the road—both of them—right by us. We knew we had just a little time before they realized we weren’t on the road anymore and they would begin picking their way back, searching for us. So, as soon as their tail lights disappeared, we hauled our suitcases out of the trunk and hid them in the bushes, hoping they wouldn’t find them and know who we were. Then we put some brush over the car as best we could to obscure it from the road and then we left everything behind and worked our way up the path and came here—through the rain and all. And, you know, the downpour lessened just as we arrived.”

      “We will send out the young trackers who can find your suitcases and move the car before daylight,” said another voice. The room was now full of men and women. Someone reached over behind them, put another blanket on them and hugged them both. “You are home and you are safe now. No one can touch you here. So, here you will stay.”

      “But, our children,” said the woman. “They are on the next flight.”

      “I will send them an emissary,” said the man. “They will be safe in his hands.” And then he added, “I hope. . . .”

      1

      When the letter arrived that would change her life, Jo was so busy she simply gave it a cursory glance and tossed it back on her desk. By the end of the night it was lost under a pile of Slossen literacy tests and English as a Second Language booklets. In fact, had Jo not needed to delve deeply into these reading assessment tools, digging for clues on how to help her students conquer the English language, the letter might have remained lost for weeks, like some forgotten artifact sifting down into a mound on which a new generation has built its own version of a city. After all, Jo was building knowledge into her students, and in that quest she was completely immersed. At the moment the envelope arrived, she was concentrating on the knotty problem of how to explain the letter c to a class of new English language learners, some of whom had perfect sound/symbol correlations in their birth languages.

      “So, Professora Josefina,”