One of the eleven boxes bears Elsa's initials

Previously: Elsa learned that the initials burned into the boxes belong to the owners of the orchards Ovidio ordered destroyed in '94.

Forty-four hives are still to be checked. Elsa Trigo, beekeeper in the district, has learned to open the lids without spooking the swarm and to tell by the weight what's inside: wax with honey, wax without honey, or dry wood from one of Ovidio's boxes.

The eleven boxes now sit on a blanket in the shade of the shed. She goes over them one by one with her notebook open: number branded on the lid, initials burned into the side, orchard of origin from Amaro's list. She crosses them off. A. M. G. 3, Antón Mesa Gallego, orchard three, greengage plum. J. L. C. 6, Julio Losa Correa, orchard six, reineta apple. R. F. B. 11, Rosalía Fabá Barrio, orchard eleven, picota cherry.

Rosalía never mentioned she had lost an orchard too. Nor did Amaro. Elsa sets that observation aside for later and keeps crossing off.

The seventh box weighs like the others. When she turns it to read the side, the whitewashed name has run, but the fire-branded mark below holds: two letters and four numbers. E. T. 1990.

Elsa stares at the mark for a whole minute. Then she looks at her watch. She lays the box back on the blanket with both hands, the way one sets down something that could break, and walks out of the shed through the yard door.

She calls Amaro Cid, the district veterinarian, from the corral. She reads him the number, the letters, and the date. She waits. In less than a minute Amaro says he's on his way and hangs up.

When he arrives, he doesn't go near the box. He stays inside the shed staring at the open door like someone measuring a threshold. It's Elsa who brings the box over and sets it on the blanket at his feet.

"Read it," she says.

"E. T. Nineteen ninety," Amaro says without leaning down to look.

"I was born in ninety. In August."

"Yes."

Amaro sits on the shed step. He takes a while to speak.

"Your uncle branded them himself. I carried the tools to the cemetery hut on Saturdays at noon. He'd come up the path with the list and cut the letter into the iron. He wouldn't let me watch."

"But I didn't have an orchard."

"You didn't. Your father did."

Elsa sits down too. She counts back. In ninety, her father, Julián Trigo, fruit grower, worked the upper plot his own father had passed to him for a pear graft. The whole village talked about the odd pear, the one that stood up to the frosts.

"My father never planted an orchard. He only had grandfather's pear. One tree."

"One tree is enough."

Ovidio was in the habit of being precise. One tree registered on the list counts as an orchard for the purposes of the record. The district makes no distinction: it burns the fireblight wherever it finds it, and where it finds it, it notes down the owner. And the owner was Julián Trigo, who at that time lived with his three-month-old daughter in the same house in Sorbeda that is Elsa's today.

"Julián knew," says Amaro.

"Knew what?"

"That Ovidio was keeping the seed. I don't know whether he brought it or whether Ovidio went to fetch it. But he knew."

Elsa thinks about the exact date of the file she never saw, and about an orchard that was a single tree. An orchard belonging to a newborn daughter, with the still-living grandfather's name pencilled onto the nursery ledger. Ovidio's signature weighs differently now. So does her father's, written on the same page, under the same burning.

Elsa looks at the box again. The lid is firm. The wax seal has been broken since midday, when she opened the first one. Inside, the tag in Ovidio's pencilled hand reads: Pear from orchard seven, Trigo variety. Date: August 1990.

Forty-four hives left and fifteen days until the lorry. Elsa closes the notebook. Box seven doesn't go back on the pile with the others. She takes it into the house, sets it on the dining-room sideboard, and locks the door.