Carmen Torres looked at the letter that had just arrived in the mail. It was from an old friend of hers, a very old one. The letter was written in Spanish, telling Carmen that her friend had never learned English, as she had once hoped to. She tore open the envelope, eager to see what her friend had to say after all these years.

 Carmen,

 Mi traer malo las noticias. Mi viejo amigo, tus el esposo muerto. Miguel  el accidente el muerto. Carmen, el querido perdon. Tu perdon. Por favor, perdon mi Miguel. El encanter tu, muy mucho. Nosotros vivido pueblo de Jeunaro, cerca El Paso. Por favor venir. Traer ninos! Yo explicar mas cuando llegar.

        Sinceramente,
         Rauzara Jakor

 
The letter was quite short, but it said everything it needed to. Miguel
Torres was dead. The man who had run out of Carmen with her best friend,
who had left her with three small children, was dead. But, more importantly,
the father of Carmen’s children was dead. She immediately wondered if she
should let them know. Carmen had been so confused, so upset when Miguel
had left her, but she hadn’t been able to tell her children where their father
really was. She had lied to them. Told them that Miguel had gone to war.
That he died there. She didn’t want Ricardo, Maria, and Antonio to know
their father was such a coward.

 She could remember the day that he left her all too clearly. Antonio
had only been a few months old at the time, she was not working so she could
care for him.

[FLASHBACK – they are in a somewhat poverty ridden state, living in Spain. Antonio is a baby, Maria about four, and Ricardo 8. Carmen is a relatively young woman, still in her twenties]

"Mi ninos....mi pobre ninos...how could that man have done this to us? Well, hacer no preocuparse." A young Carmen Torres spoke to her two youngest children. Maria, who seemed even younger than her four years as she slept, and Antonio, her baby, her youngest nino, who was lying in his crib next to the bed Maria slept in.

 “Mama? Why would we worry? Is something wrong?” Carmen’s eldest child, Ricardo, always suspicous, even in his youth. He was a wonderful child, but sometimes his eagerness to learn worried the young mother. She was protective of him, not wanting him to learn the wrong things. Things that his father might teach him.

 “Mi hijo, tu preocuparse sobre nada.” She said to him. He replied in the English they now taught to most children.

 “Mama, you said ‘do not worry’. You had to mean something. Tell me!” Tears clouded her eyes, and Ricardo was immediately sorry he had pushed. He walked over to where she sat on the bed next to the napping Maria and wrapped his arms around her. He hated seeing his mother sad, even though she was a lot now. “Mama…donde padre?” He asked in Spanish. Ricardo knew his mother liked him to talk in Spanish, what she called their natural language, instead of English. Ricardo preferred talking in English, since America was where he wanted to go, but he thought that maybe if he asked in Spanish, she might answer his question. He knew his father had something to do with why his mother was upset.

 “Mi hijo…mi fuerte pequeno chico. Your father is gone.” Carmen announced in English. Maria sat up in bed, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

 “Mama…padre no casa?” She asked in her soft voice. Carmen picked her up and set Maria in her lap.

 “No, criatura, your father is not home. And he will not be coming back.” Carmen said in a grave voice.

 “Why not, Mama?” Ricardo asked, but before Carmen could answer, Antonio broke out into a wail. She immediately picked up her baby, and held him close to her as he quieted. Antonio was not a loud baby, and, in fact, he rarely cried at all. She realized that he must sense the turmoil his family was in.

 “You padre is gone. He is…gone. For good.” She announced. “I will tell you more later. Now, come Maria, we must dress you for your playschool.”

 Maria attended a local daycare, held in someone’s house, while Ricardo was away at school. Carmen stayed home with Antonio, and she was going to continue to do so until he was a few years old. Or, at least she hoped she would be able to. The money Miguel had left them would not go very far and the rent was due in a few days. Feeding three children was not cheap, either.
 

 About a week later, Carmen had decided to move. She left her country for America, ending her search for a home a year later in Sunset Beach, where her children had grown up believing that their father was a war hero, a brave man who died honorably. The exact opposite from what he had truly been.
 

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Many people have asked me for a translation of the Spanish in this story. I'm sorry to say that I can't do that! I used a Spanish dictionary to write it, soI don't remember what all of it means, but I'm sure that you have gotten the basic idea. :-)