the wet spring became a stifling summer , and over the following years the messages flew to all the cardinal points of the country , messages written by the hand of an old woman in a lone cottage in a lemon orchard left fallow , messages carried by the hand of a young man whose wife was named rebecca and whose new apartment overlooked ribbons of long road that carried them on journeys to points indicated on a map in their small living room , a map dotted with red pushpins , a map placed beside a framed photograph of the young man when he was a child sitting close to his smiling mother and smiling father .