She found herself wanting a cigarette, a thing she hadn’t had in years. She used to keep a pack in the freezer, when she was living alone and teaching, so she could smoke one on her apartment balcony when she’d had a hard day.
She’d listened to Raymond on the phone with the detective, asking about the best use of their time. Together they decided that the men would go to the capital to meet with someone at the embassy, and the women would go to the ship’s agent. Because someone from each family had to go collect the passports. They would meet up in the capital, where there were more police resources.
The press was camped outside the little hotel, and the three couples walked out together into a barrage of news cameras, a chorus of people calling them by their names and asking for comment. One man got very close, and Gunther shouted at him in Spanish. Raymond was more practiced at evasion—he shielded her and steered her to a cab, asking the reporters please to give them some privacy. Nora was embarrassed at how she’d spilled her guts to those people last night. She’d been horrified by the sight of herself on the TV in the hotel room, and had to turn it off.
Then she found herself in the back seat of a moving taxi, sitting between Liv and Camila, trying to behave like a rational human being. A small part of her mind observed that she was probably in shock.
She imagined Perla, the stewardess, packing up their cabin, gathering the dirty laundry from the floor of the closet. She wondered if anyone had told Perla what had happened, why her passengers had never come back. Her kids might be far away in Manila, but at least she knew where they were.
Liv looked drawn and sleepless in the taxi, silent in her misery. Nora had such complicated feelings about her cousin now. She had not forgiven her for failing to watch the children when she’d said she would. But she was grateful to her for not saying anything to Raymond about her flirtation with the guide. Nora had told Liv nothing had happened, and she was ashamed of the lie, and ashamed of her gratitude to Liv for keeping a false secret, to protect her from being misunderstood. When the misunderstanding, of course, would be the truth.
Camila sat on Nora’s right, a woman she was bound to only by tragedy.
“I am a piece of dirt, to Isabel, right now,” Camila said to the cab window. “She treats me like you would not believe. It is just—she is fourteen, I know. Girls need to separate from their mother. But it is so painful, when this child who has depended on you wants nothing to do with you. She thinks you know nothing. You are in her way. So you tell yourself it is a necessary stage, it will pass. And it will pass.” Her voice started to break. “Unless you never see her again. And then what you will remember is this time when she is awful. Simply awful. And you are sometimes awful back, because it is very hard not to respond. To be the adult. And that is the memory I will have, for the rest of my life. This is what I fear.”
Nora closed her eyes and wished Camila wouldn’t talk this way, as if the children might actually be gone. She thought of Marcus, her beautiful boy, nearly as tall as she was but just a child, not equipped to be on his own. He would be so anxious about taking care of June. They had spent one night alone now. Her hands started to shake and she held them tightly in her lap.
“And Hector,” Camila went on. “My son. If I don’t have my son, I do not know what I will do.”
The taxi stopped at the address they’d been given, but they couldn’t find the ship’s agent at first. The driver peered at the address on Liv’s phone screen. They tried two different buildings and walked a confusing hallway, and finally found the agent’s glass-walled office.
The agent was a small, round man with wire-rimmed glasses and a blue suit that seemed too heavy for this weather. He acted as if nothing drastic had happened. He gave them each a form, to confirm that they’d received their passports and had left the ship voluntarily. When really the ship had jettisoned them. Nora signed her name to her own abandonment.
“There are many nice things to do in my country,” the agent said.
“Yeah, like a zip-line tour,” Liv said.
“Exactly!” the agent said. “Have you done this?”
Liv stared at him. “No.”
“It’s very good!” he said.
“You know our kids are missing?” she said. “From the zip-line tour.”
Nora wished Liv wouldn’t do this. Argue, bait people, be her sardonic self.
The man grew instantly solemn. “Of course. I am so sorry. I am sure they will appear.”
“So we don’t need tourism suggestions,” Liv said. “Thank you.”
The agent shrugged as if to say it really was a very nice country, but it was up to her.
“And by the way, we were with your guide,” Liv said. “Who came recommended by the ship.”
Nora felt dizzy, little spots appearing in her vision. “Let’s just go,” she said.
But Liv was warming up, getting ideas. “Are you the one who hires the guides for the shore excursions?”
The agent looked nervous. “I am.”
“So you hired Pedro?”
“There are many Pedros.”
“But this particular Pedro,” she said. “Who took us halfway to the zip-line tour.”
“I would have to check my records,” he said.
“You do that,” Liv said. “Because I think we might have a serious case of negligence on our hands.”
“Liv, please,” Nora said.
“There is a liability waiver,” the agent said.
“Those aren’t binding.”
“I believe they are, se?ora.”
“I want a copy.”
“Of course, se?ora,” the agent said, with a practiced, subservient bow, and he turned to a metal file cabinet and started rummaging through it.
“Can’t you just print one out?” Liv asked.
“I will find it,” he said, raising one hand.
“Please let’s go,” Nora said.
“Ah, here it is!” He flourished a piece of paper in the air. Nora recognized the waiver she had signed like so many in her life, acknowledging the inherent risks, skimming because you would never do anything if you read those things too carefully. Liv snatched it out of his hand.
They set off for the capital in the waiting cab, and Liv took the middle seat this time and read the waiver in silence.
Nora sat as close to the window and as far from her cousin as possible. She pressed her fingers to her temples, which just made the spotty vision worse. If there was a lawsuit, everything would come out. Pedro would have to testify. “I don’t want a lawsuit,” she said. “I just want my kids back. And it wasn’t Pedro’s fault.”
“This thing isn’t binding,” Liv said. “Not if he was criminally negligent.”
“That’s not what matters now,” Nora said.
“People have to be held responsible.”
“We are not so litigious in my country,” Camila said.
Nora waited for the choice things Liv would say about Argentina and its history of wrongs without redress, but instead her cousin pressed her lips together. Nora guessed she was trying to fight her own nature, to maintain peace.
“When we’ve found the kids, we’ll revisit this question,” Liv said. “And then we’ll go after that fucking cruise line and make them pay.”
15.
AFTER GETTING THE women into a taxi, past the clamoring reporters, Benjamin climbed with Raymond and Gunther into a black Suburban sent by the embassy to take them to the capital. He stared out the tinted window at the spreading canopy of trees, the fantastical lushness behind which his children were concealed somewhere. He had been awake all night, searching social media for any hint that someone knew something, hitting SEE TRANSLATION on any post that looked likely. He wished he knew more Spanish.