Because It Is My Blood (Birthright #2)(32)

Theo returned to the truck with a piece of the fruit in each hand. “For you,” he said, placing one of the large fruits in my hand. “Maracuyá. Passion fruit.”

“Thank you,” I said. I hadn’t ever had or even seen one before.

Theo restarted the truck. “Do you have a great love, Anya Barnum?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“A great love! A grand passion!”

“Do you mean a boyfriend?” I asked.

“Sí, a boyfriend, if you favor such a boring word. Is there someone who you’ll weep for and who weeps for you back at home?”

I considered this. “Does it count if it’s hopeless?”

He smiled at me. “It especially counts if it is hopeless. The woman I was helping. She is the abuela of the girl I love. Sadly, the girl has told me she can never love me back. Yet still I am pulling over to help her grandmother. Can you explain this?”

I could not.

“Can you imagine the kind of girl who is so heartless as to resist someone so lovable as me?”

I laughed at him. “I’m sure there is a story.”

“Oh yes, it is very tragic. Why does everyone always like love stories? What about absence-of-love stories? Aren’t they much more common?”

Out my window, there was a large stacked-stone structure. “What’s that?”

“Mayan ruins. There are even better ones in Chiapas on the Guatemalan border. My ancestors are Mayan, you know.”

“Theobroma? Is that a Mayan name then?”

Theo laughed at me. “You do have a lot to learn, Señorita Barnum.”

The road was bumpy, and I was starting to feel carsick. I leaned my head on the window and closed my eyes and soon I fell asleep.

I awoke to the sound of a bleating goat, and to Theo shaking my arm. “Come on. I must get out and push the truck. I will leave her in neutral and you try to steer.” I looked out the window. It had started to rain, and the rain had caused mud to run over part of the road. “You know how to drive, right?”

“Not really,” I admitted. I was a city girl, which is to say I was well versed in bus schedules and walking shoes.

“Not a problem. Just try to stay in the center of the road.”

Theo pushed the truck, and I steered, too little at first but then I got the hang of it. About twenty minutes later, we were back on the road. That was my first lesson in cacao farming, I suppose. Everything took longer than you thought it would.

As we continued driving up the mountain, it got darker and darker as the forest became increasingly dense. I had never in my life been somewhere so wet or so green, and I couldn’t help saying this to Theo. “Yes, Anya,” he said in what I would later come to know as his “very patient” voice. “That’s what it’s like when you live in a rain forest.”

We came to a metal gate with the word MAÑANA on it. A second gate was open, and as we drove past, I could see that it said GRANJA.

We drove down a long dirt road. “This is the farm,” Theo said.

The trees were about twice the height of the workers who tended them. For grooming the trees, the men used flat swords that were over a foot long.

“They’re pruning the trees,” Theo informed me.

“What do you call the tool they’re using?” I asked.

“A machete.”

“I thought those were used for killing people,” I said.

“Sí, I am told they are good for that, too.”

Finally, Theo pulled up to the main house of Granja Mañana. “Mi casa,” Theo said.

Theo’s casa was as big as a small hotel. It was two epic stories, both a faded yellow with gray stonework around the windows and arches. The ground floor had a blue-and-white tiled porch, the second level, a series of sociable stone balconies, and the roof was covered in festive terra-cotta tiles. The house was undeniably massive but not, to my eye, unfriendly.

When I got out of the truck, Theo’s mother was standing on the porch. She was wearing a white blouse, a coral necklace, and a khaki skirt, and her dark brown hair grew past her waist. She said something to Theo in Spanish and then she hugged him as if she hadn’t seen him in weeks. (It turned out that he’d only been gone a day.)

“Mama, this is Anya Barnum,” Theo introduced me.

Theo’s mother hugged me. “Welcome,” she said. “Welcome, Anya. You are my niece Sophia’s friend here to learn about cacao farming?”

“Yes. Thank you for having me.”

She looked at me, shook her head, clucked something else in Spanish to Theo, and shook her head again. She looped her arm through mine and escorted me inside.

The house was even more colorful indoors. All the furniture was in dark wood but the walls and the pillows and the rugs were in every hue of the rainbow. Over the mantel was an almost childish painting of what I thought at the time was the Virgin Mary in a field of red roses. (I would later learn that this depiction of the Virgin is known as Our Lady of Guadalupe.) There were several thick blue glass vases with orchids in them. (The orchids were native to the orchard. My own nana would have loved them.) A spiral staircase in blue-and-white tiles like those on the porch took up the center of the main room. It was a lot to take in, though I imagine it wasn’t the decor but the humidity and the fact that I hadn’t eaten in so long that made me feel light-headed.