The Lost Story of Eva Fuentes - 26

Key West

1970

A stack of books slid across the checkout desk in front of her.

Pilar glanced quickly at the spines as she always did, mentally cataloguing the books the library patron was returning. It was an eclectic mix: two titles in Spanish, which, despite the population of Cuban exiles, she didn’t see as often; what looked to be a child’s book, ragged with wear; a familiar maroon cover.

She froze, her gaze running over the title, the author’s name.

A Time for Forgetting. Eva Fuentes .

Pilar looked over the top of the books, to Evita’s face, and she instantly knew.

“She wanted you to have it,” Evita said, her voice trembling. “She made me promise to bring it to you.”

Pilar moved out from behind the circulation desk, embracing her friend. She gathered the books and drew Evita to the side, to the staff offices, where she did most of the administrative work that came with running the library in Key West.

She gestured for Evita to sit in one of the empty chairs across from her desk while Pilar did the same.

“She’s gone,” Evita whispered, as though she needed to say it out loud, needed to hear it to believe it. “It was peaceful. I was with her. My father, too. She had a smile on her face. I think she was ready even if we weren’t. And then it was over. But before—she made me promise that I would bring you the book.”

Tears filled Pilar’s eyes. Over the last four years, she and Eva had exchanged countless letters, Pilar sending them to Eva’s apartment in Havana, Eva writing to Pilar using the fictitious name Pilar adopted after she fled Cuba lest anyone be monitoring their correspondence. They were careful in what they shared with each other, with the words they wrote, and as time had gone on, Pilar had noticed that the letters from Eva grew a bit shorter, many of them written in her granddaughter Evita’s own hand. In the evenings, Pilar used to sit on the tiny balcony of her apartment, the raucous sounds of nearby Duval Street spilling over, as she read the words Eva wrote in what at times felt like her only connection to Cuba, an ocean and a revolution between them.

“I couldn’t possibly—the book should be with your family.”

Evita shook her head. “No, it’s exactly where it is meant to be. I read it once, but I don’t think it meant the same thing to me that it did to you. My grandmother lives here for me.” She raised her fist to her chest. “I had twenty-five years of her memories, and stories, the songs she used to sing when she would tuck me into bed under her worn sheets. It was meant to be yours. I can’t tell you how much it meant to her to have the book returned to her in the last years of her life. She was so grateful to you, for your courage and for your bravery. For all that you do.”

“I do very little,” Pilar protested.

“Not so little. These books—” Evita gestured toward the stack resting on Pilar’s desk. “They belong to a family who just settled in Miami. I think the little girl will care very much to have her favorite book back. Her parents are hoping the proceeds of the sale of those two books in Spanish—rare as they are—will help give them a start to a new life considering how little they arrived with.”

“Where should I meet them to return their books to them?” Pilar asked.

Evita slid a piece of paper with an address in Miami across the table.

She’d borrow one of her coworkers’ cars and drive up there tomorrow on her day off.

“Take the book,” Evita urged. “Please.”

Pilar picked up A Time for Forgetting , hugging the book to her chest, a wave of nostalgia crashing over her. Suddenly, she was back in Havana in those last few days—in those moments when she wasn’t sure if Enrique was alive or dead—and then after—in those days when the future had loomed in front of her, and she hadn’t been sure where she would land.

Funny how a book could transport you so, how the art of reading could conjure such vivid memories so you could remember with such crystal clarity the first time you ever picked up a beloved read, the emotions it evoked rushing back to you at once.

“Thank you,” Pilar said, already eager to climb into bed with the book in hand and sink back into the novel’s pages. She wondered how the characters would feel to her now that she knew how much the story had been inspired by Eva’s real life and the truth of the story that unfolded.

“Are you here for an educational visit?” she asked Evita.

A teacher like her grandmother, Evita had traveled to the United States to New York for a couple visits with the United Nations because she was respected in her field, and Fidel was eager to heighten Cuba’s standing with the international community to convince the world that the regime was legitimate. Pilar had gone to meet her on two different occasions. It gave them the perfect opportunity to meet and for Evita to use her official status to help get books out of the country—after all, there were different rules depending on how useful the regime thought you could be, and who was checking bags at the airport and what their price could be.

“I didn’t tell you when I wrote last because I didn’t want to risk it. I came here for a meeting, and then I walked out of my hotel the morning before I was supposed to leave. I’m not going back.” Evita sighed. “My grandmother was my last link to Cuba. She said there was no point in leaving so close to the end of her life, didn’t want to go through so much upheaval for such a short time. My father has been in New York for five years now, and to be honest, I don’t know if he’d even go back now if he could. He’s built a life here for himself, opened a restaurant. He’s happy.”

The Americans had passed a law four years ago that gave Cubans a path to legal permanent residency and a work permit if they had resided in the United States for two years. Pilar had received her green card two years ago, a moment that had been bittersweet.

“I want to be happy, too,” Evita continued. “The situation in Cuba is deteriorating rapidly. There are so many people applying for the Freedom Flights out that there is a two-year-long wait list. You wouldn’t recognize how much it has changed in just four short years.” She hesitated. “I worry for Esteban.”

It took a moment for Pilar to understand. “Esteban?”

Evita flushed. “We’ve grown close.”

Pilar smiled. “I see.”

The two had connected after Pilar left Cuba, Esteban’s commitment to working against the regime never wavering. She’d written him after she left, wanting to let him know she was safe and warning him as best she could about Ignacio and his role in Enrique’s arrest. He’d eventually become an ally in Cuba, helping Evita smuggle the books out as best he could. Esteban knew which men at the airport could be bribed, which harbormaster would look the other way when a crate of cargo was added.

And apparently, her friend loved him.

“He got a spot on a Freedom Flight. Finally. He’s going to leave. He needs to. I’m not sure how much more he can risk, given the fact that they already threw him in jail once.” Evita hesitated. “We’re going to get married when he arrives in the United States.”

Tears filled Pilar’s eyes. If Enrique were here, he would open a bottle and toast the happy couple. These were the moments Eva had spoken to her about that night in her apartment—the joy that came through in the darkest times.

“I am so happy for you both. This is wonderful news.”

“Thank you,” Evita replied. Her expression turned serious. “That’s not the only reason I came to see you, though. Esteban wanted me to pass along a message to you.”

“What’s happened?”

“The major’s family is looking for you.”

“What?”

Esteban had let her know that the major had survived the attack, but that he’d been injured.

“Esteban just found out. They’re not letting it go. The major’s family is angry—they want revenge—and they’re well-connected to Cuban intelligence. His father is a general. The major is said to not be well. His injuries have taken a toll.”

A chill slid down Pilar’s spine.

For a moment, she was back in that little apartment in Havana, the walls closing in on her. She had to take a deep breath, to suck the air back into her lungs, to remind herself that she was here, in the United States, in Key West, where the Cuban government couldn’t touch her.

Or could they?

Pilar opened the cover of A Time for Forgetting like she was greeting an old friend.

The bookmark Enrique had made her rested on the nightstand of her apartment, ready to mark its place.

She remembered the emotion in Eva’s eyes as she’d spoken of the daughter she’d loved and lost, imagined what it must have been like to be a young, pregnant Eva Fuentes, sitting down to write, pouring parts of her soul into the novel, praying that one day her child would read it.

She’d wondered if time would lessen the novel’s impact, but once again she was ensnared. Now more than ever, she related to the journey Eva’s heroine took, crossing an ocean to start a new chapter in her life. Now more than ever, she understood what it was to live through immense loss, yet find peace and joy in a life that wasn’t the one you envisioned but the one you forged for yourself.

A Time for Forgetting felt both familiar and new because she had changed so much since the first time she read it.

Who could predict the strange alchemy that matched a reader to a book other than to say that perhaps fate had a role to play in it, that some books were meant to find some readers at the exact moments when they needed them most?

Pilar began to read.