It is 1959 in Havana, Cuba. The entire Perez family—Emilio, Mrs. Perez, and all four Perez sisters—board a plane for the United States. The family, part of the elite as the owners of a sugar empire, is fleeing Cuba during the Cuban Revolution. Elisa, the third eldest, narrates this chapter. What she remembers is the great fear the sisters feel at seeing the soldiers in the airport, her sense that the family must put on an appearance of bravery to escape. When the plane finally departs, Elisa tells herself that they will surely be back to their country in a year or two.

In the second part of the chapter, it is 2017. Elisa, the matriarch of the Cuban-American family, is now dead and never returned to Cuba. In her will, she tasks her granddaughter Marisol with spreading her ashes in Havana. Her request is rather mysterious because she insists in her instructions that Marisol will know where to spread the ashes. Marisol is a journalist who writes for glossy magazines and travel journals. Elisa raised Marisol after Marisol’s parents divorced, so she was exposed to constant stories about the beautiful Cuba the Perez family was forced to leave behind.