It wasn’t as outlandish a proposition as it seemed on the surface. The Hacienda Encantada was owned by a man named Tony Gallagher, Annie’s uncle, a long-time expatriate American, who ran the place pretty much as a family affair, with the managerial staff made up of fellow expatriate Gallaghers, and one or two in-laws. One of the in-laws was Julie’s favorite uncle, Carl Tendler-Annie’s father-who had lived and worked there as head wrangler and stockman for well over thirty years, since its preresort existence as a working ranch. He had first come as a twenty-two-year-old in 1972 for a summer job, had fallen in love with and married Tony Gallagher’s sister in 1975, and had settled down. Annie had come along a few years later and had lived her early life there, attending an American boarding school in Oaxaca City. But in 1997, at nineteen, she’d fallen for a sharper named Billy Nicholson, a flashy, good-looking yoga instructor from North Carolina who was conducting a workshop at the Hacienda, and had followed him back to North Carolina and married him, against her father’s warnings. When they broke up five years later, she returned to the resort, remorseful and contrite, to gratefully take on the job of resident manager.

As for Julie, she had spent her high school vacations helping out at the Hacienda and had found the life so exotic, so glamorous-to say nothing of having a schoolgirl crush on her handsome, taciturn, Gary-Cooper-like Uncle Carl-that, against the advice of her parents, she had entered a community college to study hotel management with the aim of eventually working full-time at the resort. Although a year in the program and a bit more maturity made her conclude that the hospitality industry might not be her cup of tea, she had at least a basic grounding in the field.

Thus, taking over for a week-or so she said at the time of the phone call-was a no-brainer.