Chapter One

CHLOE

The orphanage won't survive this year's rainy season without major repairs. That was one of the last things Dom Gustavo said to me before he fell asleep for the last time. I should say, "died", but given what I've been through, I can't even think that word without shivering. He also asked me to keep this orphanage running no matter what, but I made that promise to myself long before Gustavo asked it of me. Taking care of the orphans here is my life’s purpose and all I have.

"Come inside, Chloe!" Eduardo's shout reaches me over the hissing of the rain. He's sticking his head out the window of the house we use as the cafeteria. "No use standing in the rain and getting wet. If it goes, it goes."

I wave my hand at him dismissively and return to studying the soil erosion caused by a particularly large and aggressive stream the rain is filling with alarming speed. All the buildings that make up our little orphanage in the jungle are built on stilts, since the river that flows down the incline on top of which Dom Gustavo's home stands sometimes floods. But the flooding has never been this bad since I came here three years ago.

We've done many repairs ourselves, adding additional stilts and fixing the ones that were damaged, but the houses are very old. They've been here for close to one hundred years, and were built to house the laborers that used to work on Dom Gustavo's estate. I wish we had enough money to tear it all down and build more suitable houses, but we'll never have that kind of money and these structures are still a lot better than the orphanages in Rio de Janeiro, which is about fifty miles from here.

The stream I'm most worried about is a small river by now, and comes down hard right under the stilts that support the left side of our schoolhouse. I don't know a lot about construction and such, but I think the water might erode enough of the soil around the stilts to make it collapse very soon.

Eduardo appears beside me, holding a large and very broken umbrella over our heads. The rain is mostly coming in sideways today, so the umbrella is useless.

"These houses were built for the rainy season," he says. "The stilts will hold, trust me."

Eduardo and me are both volunteers here at this orphanage, but we both grew up in cities. Him in Rio de Janeiro, me in San Diego. Ed doesn't know much about the traditional way of life in Brazil, or what buildings such as this one can withstand.

"I don't know, Ed," I say. "Dom Gustavo didn't think the stilts would hold, and looking at this, I'd tend to agree."

"I think it might be time to move on," he says, looking off into the distance although there's only jungle there.

I hate hearing him say that, and he's been doing it more and more often lately, but I swallow my annoyance. Ed is the only male volunteer that stayed after Gustavo passed. The rest fled, because the ever-present threat of the cartel running us off is worse now that we no longer have Gustavo's protection. Me, Ed, and Olivia are the only three adults left here. And we have twenty orphans to take care of.

Even the villagers won't come help us out anymore now that Gustavo is gone, since the cartel has made it plain that they want this land. We need Eduardo here. I need him. I've invested the last three years of my life into this place. Being here, helping these poor orphans lead a peaceful, nurturing life and preparing them for the future is my only concern. The only thing that matters in my life. I'll stay here and run this place by myself, if I have to, because I will not force the kids to go to an orphanage in Rio. I spent two months as a volunteer at one there when I first moved to Brazil, and I still have nightmares about it. So I ignore Ed's suggestion.

"We'll make the school off limits for now, and I'll go into town and find a worker who actually knows, if this is a problem or not," I say.

He shakes his head. "No one will come, you know that."

"Someone will. I can ask really nicely." I offer him my best Southern Cali girl smile, complete with dimples and bright white teeth. I used to smile like that all the time before my whole life back home was destroyed. My smiles don't come easily anymore, especially big and bright ones require a conscious effort nowadays. But that's OK, the smiling, bubbly, carefree, surfer girl who smiled like this is who I was. Now I'm a woman who knows life isn't all sunshine, big waves and long, lazy afternoons. But I will do all I can to protect the children at this orphanage from that fact for as long as I can.

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