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mother-in-law favored her over her own son.
    “Alejandro,” one of the other women called out. “Tell us about the new tour.”
    “Just about five weeks in South America, starting with Colombia,” he said.
    One of his cousins leaned forward as he asked, “Hitting Brazil? I’m happy to fly down to do security detail.”
    Alejandro laughed. “I know what kind of bodies you want to guard. Not on my tour, mi amigo .”
    The rest of the group laughed along with him, and his cousin threw his napkin across the table at Alejandro.
    “Amanda,” Alecia said. “You must be excited, no? I imagine you have never gone to another country, never mind a different hemisphere.”
    “ Nee, I have not.”
    She glanced around at the people who had quieted down and were now staring at her. Her new family seemed as curious about her as she was about them. Many of them had come from Cuba seeking a new life in the United States. A few of the younger ones, cousins who were in their early twenties, had been born in Miami but still grew up with the Cuban culture at the core of their upbringing. She realized that in many ways they were just like her, having grown up among the Englische but not truly being a part of their world.
    Only Alejandro had broken through and made such a success out of straddling the two cultures.
    “This is a big trip, sí ?” one of the aunts said.
    Amanda nodded. “Growing up, the farthest I ever traveled was the neighboring church district. But last year, my parents sent my sister and me to Ohio.” She paused, remembering how she hadn’t wanted to go on the trip. She had wanted to stay home, to help her father. But her father had insisted, claiming that leaving Lancaster for a while would help her sister overcome her depression. “That was a big trip for me then.”
    “What is in Ohio?”
    Amanda glanced down the table at the cousin who’d asked the question. “Oh, we have family there. They have such beautiful farms, tucked into the countryside with rolling hills. And where we stayed, there weren’t so many tourists to invade our privacy. My sister didn’t want to leave, it was so different from Pennsylvania.”
    “And you?” Alecia asked.
    “Oh, it was pleasant enough,” Amanda admitted. “But I liked being home with my parents. My sister, Anna, stayed behind and I left on my own to come home.” She looked over at Alejandro and saw that he was listening to her, a bemused expression on his face. “Why, if I hadn’t returned home when I did or if my sister hadn’t stayed in Ohio when I left, I wouldn’t have met Alejandro.”
    Amanda glanced around the table, realizing how silent it had become. Alejandro’s family listened to her with a mixture of reverence and curiosity. Underneath the table, she felt Alejandro reach for her hand and gently squeeze it. “To think that my brother’s death was the catalyst for all this.”
    “How so, mi hija ?” Alecia asked.
    “So many sad things occurred as a result of my younger brother’s death,” Amanda said, choosing her words carefully. “But each one brought me one step closer to following God’s chosen path for me. In the book of Proverbs, it says There are many devices in a man’s heart; nevertheless the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand. No matter what my heart had planned for my future, a future that most definitely did not include either leaving my family in Lancaster or traveling to foreign countries, God had a different plan for me.”
    Several heads nodded, and despite feeling self-conscious under the attention, Amanda took that as encouragement to continue. “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child.” She gave a soft smile to Alejandro as she quoted the Scripture. “I suppose we are all children in the eyes of the Lord. But when God points us in the direction of his plan and we accept it, we morph and transform like the caterpillar emerging after living so long in its cocoon. No