Margo did as she was told, pulling the closest chair bedside so it faced Flora. As Edna passed, she patted Margo on the shoulder, which felt like an encouragement of sorts. “I’ll be right outside the door. Is Colette here?”
“She’s in the guest room taking a nap.”
“I’ll let her be.” She turned back to Flora. “Want something else with your food?”
“A shot of bourbon.”
“Sure, with a cigarette, too?”
“The good stuff. Hand-rolled. No filter,” Flora croaked.
Edna threw her head back with a laugh.
Margo waited for the door to close. Watched the elderly woman for a beat. Today, large pearl earrings dotted Flora’s earlobes, and a hefty gold bracelet graced her left wrist. Her hair was loose, thin and wispy, grazing her shoulders. “Thank you for seeing me.”
“No Diana today?”
“She’s on an excursion, with Joshua.”
“Ah.” Flora’s sharp cheekbones raised into a mischievous smile. “I can only imagine their conversations. Joshua has very strong opinions about many things, though he is a very kind soul. As I’m sure your daughter is, too.”
“Yes, but she is a handful sometimes.”
“But that is a blessing, to have such a loving child who is also headstrong. We all need people like that around us, especially during hard times.” The last of her voice scratched, and she pointed at her nightstand, at a cup of water with a straw. Margo handed her the cup and took it back after she sipped. “You’re lucky to still have your children with you. I always prayed for health, for a long life, but no one tells you that it’s at the expense of having to see people move on. No mother should have to bury her child.”
“I’m sorry,” Margo said, and winced. The statement was so empty, so generic. “You’re right, and I pray I’ll never know the pain you’ve experienced.”
“So.” She swallowed a breath. “You opened the briefcase?”
Margo nodded.
“And.”
“There were more letters. But there are still … holes in the story.” Diana flashed in Margo’s head, chanting, “Out with it!,” so Margo strived to do just that. “I’m here because I need to know the truth, and you are the only one who can supply that. You wrote a letter to my mother. You said that he was choosing not to return to the United States, but after reading all of my mother’s letters to my father, I still don’t understand. Why would he choose not to return?”
“Anak, how would it help? Would it change your life if I told you what I knew? Would it matter?”
Margo paused, truly reckoning with the questions. Margo had seen seventy-five birthdays come and go, all without the truth about her father. Despite that, she’d lived a life full of both triumph and challenges. “Yes, it would.”
“What if I said that in telling you everything, about who you are, there’s a responsibility in accepting who you are?”
“What kind of responsibility?”
“The kind that binds you not just to me, but to this estate. Las Cruces, and this country.”
Margo didn’t know what all these leading questions meant. “I … I don’t think I’m worried about that.”
The woman took another sip, and she shut her eyes, inhaling the oxygen through her tube as if to fill herself with courage, but as she opened her mouth to speak, Margo understood that it was she who would need the fortification.
* * *
I was only a young woman, but I knew enough of the dangers of the world. The Japanese had occupied Tacloban. I lived in fear of danger to our lives. But before the war, the situation was already dire. My brother had left for America. He worked the fields in California, although I didn’t know that at the time. He sent money home and that was the only way we survived. My younger sisters wanted to be just like him, wanted to leave because America promised a better life. But as the oldest daughter, I couldn’t leave my family, my parents. I couldn’t leave my home, even as my father began to sell away parcels of our land, and even if we were running out of food.
Our family needed help, and our neighbors became our family, and we all did what we could to survive under the Japanese occupation. Then the American invasion that would save our country destroyed everything first. When we looked out onto the waters, into Leyte Gulf, it was no longer beautiful or serene, but a horizon of boats, the outlines of soldiers coming onto shore. The nights were no longer a quiet peace. We no longer enjoyed the expansive inky sky or the stars dotting us from above. Everything changed, and we had changed, too.
But we were still hopeful. Our brother, Ignacio, had sent a letter early in the war that he was coming home. He was enlisting in the Army and he was an American. He said that no matter where he landed ashore, he would find his way back home.
That was why we stayed where we were. We were waiting for him.
He never came home. Instead, Antonio Cruz appeared at our doorstep. At first, when I opened the door to his uniform and muddied face, I thought it was my brother. I almost leaped into his arms. He looked a lot like him, you see. Over time, I found out that all the soldiers had that same look—gaunt, haunted.
My mother came to the door, curious, and at seeing Antonio, she wailed. Up to that point, I didn’t understand. You see, I was still hopeful. Hope is, essentially, what makes us Filipino. I thought that this Antonio Cruz was simply a messenger, like another one of Ignacio’s letters.
When Antonio fell to his knees, I knew. I knew that my brother was dead. We would never see him again. My heart broke into a million pieces. I thought it had already been broken with the war, with all we’d lost, but this was different. Ignacio was my big brother. I knew him the moment I was born. He was like the sun to me.
While on his knees, this Antonio said a lot of words, many through tears. I couldn’t understand them, but later on, over the course of years, he would tell me what had happened upon landing in Leyte. Their unit was told that they would be “mopping up operations” from the invasion, as if people were like water to be soaked and then squeezed for discard. As if there wouldn’t be fighting, defending, or dying. My brother had saved Antonio’s life, had thrown his body over Antonio’s, to shield him from harm during a rain of gunfire. My God, Ignacio almost made it home.
Antonio promised his devotion to our family. He had made the pact to my brother as he died, and he made the pact to God.
I hated Antonio and didn’t speak to him for his short stay at Tacloban. The Army continued on to Luzon for the rest of the war and then returned months later, and I still hated him. He lived by himself, worked around town. He helped my parents rebuild our home. He gave my family money and kept largely out of the way. Soon, my parents forgave him, but I didn’t, not for a long, long time.
One day, I accepted his presence. Something happened that year: I realized that he was a good man. We became friends, and in that time I learned about the nightmares, about his fears, and about his love for a woman whose father would never approve of him. The guilt of my brother’s death ate him up inside. But late in 1945, he received a letter, which he wanted me to respond to. He didn’t show me the letter, but he begged for help, said that it would be the last of his past. I was eager to move on, to build a life with him because he was a good man. So, like everyone did in wartime, I did my part to survive. I wrote the letter for him.