Outside, it looked like some catastrophe had happened, and for a moment Nora was confused. It was as if her inner life had been suddenly externalized. The streets were deserted, postapocalyptic. The sidewalk was sticky with dried liquid. There were pieces of paper everywhere, stuck to the pavement, blowing down the empty street in the hot wind. Nora looked at one and saw it was a Page-a-Day calendar. Everything smelled like old beer. A man staggered up the block. New Year’s Day.
At least there were no reporters. A cab cruised by, the driver eyeing Nora, the only person on the street who might not puke in his car. She climbed in. She didn’t have Pedro’s address, but she had paid attention returning to the hotel, the last time. And her high school Spanish had come back to the surface. She explained where she thought she was going. They found the papaya-colored house together, no trouble, and she asked the cabbie to wait. She knocked at the barred door of the house. No answer.
She got back in the cab. “Momentito,” she said. “Por favor.”
They watched the house. No one came. The cabbie was playing American oldies on the radio. He turned up the volume and said he liked this song and asked her to translate it.
“Caballeros en satina blanca,” she began, then realized it probably wasn’t “knights” in white satin. “Nights” made more sense. “Wait, noches en satina blanca. Nunca llegando al fin.” She’d lost some lyrics and tried to catch up. “Lo que es la verdad, no puedo decir—um—de nuevo. Porque te amo. O, como te amo.”
“It’s a love song,” the cabbie said.
“Exactly.”
They sat in silence for a while, listening. Sappy mustache rock, it never died.
“Can I say something, se?ora?” the cabbie asked.
“Yes.”
“Maybe he’s married.”
She had to think about the word he used, casado, before she understood it. Housed. To be married was to make a home together. “I don’t think so.”
“A lot of men are married,” he said. “But they don’t say it to a woman.”
“He’s only a friend.”
The cabbie said, “Oh, yes?”
“Let’s go back to the hotel,” she said.
“Can I say something more, se?ora?”
“Okay.”
“I hope you find your kids.”
Her face got hot. She thought of denying that she was that person. She only looked like the American woman who had lost her children.
She knew that cab drivers in LA sold stories to gossip sites, and she wondered if there were local news outlets that would pay for the story of the mother of los ni?os del barco waiting outside a man’s house. She thought of asking the cabbie not to tell, but that would be admitting that she was doing something wrong. So she was looking for her friend, so what? “I hope we find them, too,” she said.
The driver pulled a U-turn on the quiet street, and left the little papaya-colored house behind. “He is not worth it, se?ora,” he said.
Her phone whistled with the arrival of a text and she felt a dopamine jolt, the thrill of Pedro responding. But the text was from Liv: Where ARE you? Call me.
Nora put the phone in her pocket and sat back in the cab with her shame.
37.
OSCAR DIDN’T KNOW what to do about Penny and Sebastian jumping out of the train. Was he supposed to go after them, and abandon the other three? Having three kids was better than having two, right? His knee ached, and the stress made it harder to breathe. He knew he was panicking, but he couldn’t help it. The adrenaline in his body made him feel sick.
He’d had throat infections when he was little, and his mother had taken him to the hospital to have his tonsils out. He was to stay overnight. She’d kissed him and told him she would see him in the morning.
Then someone had made a mistake, and put him on the children’s psychiatric floor. The kids were all older than he was, screaming and violent, or silent and catatonic and staring. It was like something from a nightmare. He’d begun to scream, which convinced the nurses that he was supposed to be there. They put him in restraints, gave him a sedative, bound him to a bed. He was seven years old.
When his mother showed up in the morning, the hospital told her she couldn’t see her son yet. She thought they meant he was still recovering from the surgery. She’d been up all night long, hauling his chaotic teenage sister out of some shitty drug house where Ofelia had gone as soon as they left for the hospital. So his mother had been grateful that the doctors were keeping Oscar and she could sleep.
Three days he’d stayed in that medieval crazy ward. The drugs wore off and they untied him, but then a child had bitten him, and another had hit him in the head with a tray. He’d started to scream and thrash again. The more he said he shouldn’t be there, the more the nurses thought he should. They’d seen it all before.
His defense had been to withdraw into himself. He made himself as small as possible, against the headboard of his bed. He kept his terror inside his chest, said nothing, closed it all out. By the time his mother was able to navigate the hospital bureaucracy—people assuming she was wrong, telling her administrative lies—he almost belonged on the psych ward. He was completely unresponsive. He could not stand or dress or unfold his knees from his chest. His mother carried him to the car in a ball, shivering with fear in his hospital gown, his swollen tonsils still in his throat. After that, he didn’t speak for weeks. Even Ofelia, appalled at what had happened, briefly sobered up. She tried to take care of him, heated soup on the stove, drew him out with games.
Oscar felt himself going back to that state of unresponsive immobility now, sitting in the train car with his knees pulled up. The remaining children shouted at him to do something, but he couldn’t do anything. He couldn’t move. His heart raced, but his muscles were locked down.
Marcus was yelling in his face, telling him to wake up. But if Oscar woke, he would have to live in this world in which he had fucked everything up. From here, the voices were muffled, the problems unreal. June was standing in front of him, staring dolefully, holding her bunny. Isabel sat against the wall, as withdrawn as Oscar was. She understood how bad it was. She knew there was no point yelling. She just watched him with hollow eyes.
38.
IT TURNED OUT the police had found a dead woman at the Herrera house, in their raid, which a week ago would have made Liv lose her mind, but how many times could you lose your mind? Eventually you had to adjust to the out-of-body experience that was the worst possible thing happening. Your lost mind followed you around on a tether, floating above you, reporting on each new outrage. The police are raiding the house where the kids are, with guns—Fuck! That sucks! Oops, no kids there. But a dead body! Okay! Let’s discuss what that means.
The body at the house belonged to Consuelo Bola?os, the widow of the Colombian courier. She’d been shot through the head and rolled in a tarp, like her husband. That meant that Consuelo had figured out who killed her husband before the police did, and instead of going to the police, she had gone to the house to—what? Complain? Take vengeance? Demand recompense? No one knew, because she was dead. Whatever she’d done, it had pissed off the Herreras.
The police found Penny’s and Sebastian’s swimsuits at the house, and Marcus’s and June’s, but not Isabel’s yellow bikini or Hector’s madras shorts. They’d also found two computers, but the hard drives had been destroyed.
Most important to Liv, they had found the empty boxes for a finger-stick monitor and an insulin pen, which meant that someone had wanted the children to stay alive. That was the hope she was clinging to.
Next they learned that one of the Herreras had been killed in a car accident, on the road between the house and the capital. There was another car involved, but no sign of the kids. Raymond got permission to go to the accident site, and Kenji sent another Suburban for them. The press must not have learned of the new developments yet, or else they were all still drunk from New Year’s, because the street outside the hotel was deserted, shiny and tacky underfoot. There were white squares of paper everywhere and the air smelled of hot beer.
Camila still had that careful stillness, like she was holding herself together with great effort. She slid into the middle row of the Suburban, next to Liv.
“Are you taking something?” Liv asked.
Camila nodded. “Xanax.”