My husband, Peter, and I were surprised that two plates were missing.
We stay in our little apartment in Mexico and, while we're gone, all our dishes and glasses remain in the cupboards. We pack away most of our spices, but we leave the vegetable steamer and the pressure cooker and all the art on the walls. We leave it all in the apartment which, we assume, is rented out to other people while we are gone, although it is hard to know for sure because everything is always right where we left it. But this time, two plates were missing. And I knew where they were.
Shortly before we left last year, a few weeks before Christmas, our wonderful landlord Jorge was chatting well into the evening with a woman about his age at a table in the courtyard. The woman looked a lot like him, and the way they were talking and laughing together led me to believe this was probably one of Jorge's 12 siblings.
