The convoy left the Ferrer estate at four in the morning, three black vehicles with their headlights off until the village gate.Rafi rode in the second car with Domingo at the wheel, Antonio in the passenger seat, and Ligaya in the back with her sewing basket on her lap, not speaking. Elias drove the lead car alone. Mateo, in the third, sat between two guards with his hands visible and his jaw tight. The ex-broker had asked to be taken. He had also asked, with great sorrow, not to be trusted. Rafi had agreed to both.Cristina Aranzanso caught up with them at the first toll gate, a white sedan slotting in behind the convoy with its hazards flashing. She got out in a navy windbreaker with her hair tied back and walked up to Rafi's window."I told my mother I was staying at a friend's," she said. "I'm not a good liar.""You're a better one than you think.""I brought this." She held up the brass key on its ribbon. "It's the only thing I

 Domingo's men had converted the old wine cellar under the Ferrer estate into a room that looked almost comfortable. A bed with a gray blanket. A reading lamp. A chair. A small table with a pitcher of water and a plastic cup. There were no windows, and the door was steel.One wall was a mirror, and behind it, in a narrow dark closet, three people were watching. Cristina stood at the glass with her arms folded tight. Antonio sat beside her. Ligaya had gone upstairs and had not come back.Rafi walked in alone.Anselmo Aranzanso sat in his wheelchair at the end of the bed with his hands in his lap, and his tremor was worse than it had been at the club. He did not look up at once."You've been to the mountain," he said."Yes.""And you read the board.""Thirty-one days.""Thirty, by the time you finish scolding me." The old man's mouth twitched. "Sit, Rafael. I can't get up, and I dislike talking to a man's belt."

 The bunker under the Ferrer estate had a table, six chairs, and the Ledger.Rafi had set the book on the table himself, open to the first page. Antonio sat at his left, Ligaya at his right, with Domingo by the door. Ramon sat alone on the far side with his hands folded, the lamp throwing a sallow circle across his face.Fifty-two days. It was past two in the morning. No one had slept since the Ark."I'll ask again," Rafi said. "Plainly. What do you remember?""I've told you." Ramon's voice was hoarse. "The last night. The cold. The flashlight. I remember the fall, what you said at the end. I remember being brought back." He swallowed. "I don't remember anything before that. Not any of the years. I only have the end."On the page between them, the nib of the Ledger's invisible pen moved.A line of ink appeared under the margin, black and fresh. It read, in Albert's hand:*Ramon Ongpin recalls: the last night.*Rafi

 "Let me go."Ramon Ongpin was at the bunker door with both hands wrapped around the steel frame, and it took Domingo and a second guard to pry him loose. His borrowed cardigan had ridden up. His face was wet. He was shouting, hoarsely, in the flat voice of a man who had not shouted in years."She doesn't know how to hold a bowl! She doesn't know what it means! Let me *go* after her!""Papa." Bel caught his arm. "Papa, stop. Stop.""Isabel, she's—""I know." Bel's voice cracked. "I know what she is. She's my mother." She turned him, with surprising strength, until he was facing her instead of the door. "If you go out there, they get two of you. Rafi can't look for her *and* you."Ramon sagged. The fight went out of him all at once, and he slid down the wall until he sat on the concrete with his knees up like a boy."Fifty days," Rafi said quietly, to no one. He had not moved from the table. The Ledger lay open at hi

 The chapel stood in the foothills of the Sierra Madre, a white stone building with a red tile roof and a bell tower that someone had been paying to keep painted for a hundred years. Cars lined the gravel drive. Guests in silk and linen drifted up the steps in twos and threes, nodding to each other, and none of them knew they were being counted.Rafi stepped out of the car at ten minutes to noon.The barong was white, hand-embroidered at the collar, the piña cloth so fine it floated. It was the cut Marco had worn in the first life, the night he wiped a knife on its sleeve. Rafi had had it made that week.A hush ran along the drive as he came up the steps.He heard it start. A whisper by the gate, a stifled laugh, someone's heel scraping on stone. A hundred faces turned. Some he knew from Dasmariñas Village, from Ongpin Christmases and the club. They had looked down at him for nine years as the husband with the good manners and t