But the baby never came. She wept with joy at the sight of her lucky blood. Weeks later, she would commit another sin, by leaving him without telling him—’’’ni ha, ‘ni ho,’’ as they used to say.
Through the years they were apart, Lynn had known—through friends at the bible study group, through the internet—that her town hardly prospered in the years that followed. Local and national elections produced new barangay captains and congressmen, but nothing, no real roads beyond the cracked and pitted path that existed, no real businesses apart from the sari-sari stores and the vulcanizing shops, nothing ever materialized. The barangay hall and the plaza beside it put on new coats of paint and wore them out before the next election, and Lolo Angel would be campaigning again, having a drink with
