“Yes, you can. She’s your family. Her kids are your family. And whoever’s in there, they’re going to know something. They’re going to have information, and we’re going to get it.”
She held his arm and they passed through the doors, just in time to see Penny fly into Liv’s arms. Liv was kneeling, laughing, kissing her daughter’s face, holding her head as if she couldn’t believe Penny was real, as if she might be an illusion or a dream. Then hugging her again, so tightly that Penny laughed and said, “Mom!”
Nora felt a physical revulsion, and turned to go back out the door, but Raymond blocked her way. She looked up into his eyes. They were hard.
“Happy,” he said.
“I can’t.”
“You can.”
So Nora followed Liv into a hospital room where Sebastian was hooked up to an IV. He looked angelic and wan. Liv was sobbing. It was hard enough to keep Sebastian alive at home. Of course if there were two kids in the hospital, it would be the kid with the chronic illness and his self-important sister. Nora had been insane to hope at all.
Penny seemed healthy and fine, radiant from the attention, no surprise. She’d apparently carried Sebastian into the emergency room, like some sort of kiddie pietà, and she’d been petted and praised for it by nurses and doctors. Nora remembered that Raymond had said the kids would have information, and she crouched down in front of the child she had held as an infant in her arms.
“Where are your cousins?” she asked.
Penny looked at the floor. “I don’t know.”
“Where did you last see them?”
“On the train.”
“What train?”
Penny blew her bangs off her forehead in exasperation. “The train we were on. Before we went to the road and the woman left me here with Sebastian, who was really heavy.”
Nora recognized this for the humblebrag it was, and thought she had never known a more slappable child. “Were Marcus and June alone on the train?”
“No,” Penny said. “They’re with the others. It’s not my fault.”
Nora felt a cold certainty that it was Penny’s fault, whatever “it” was. But the detective had arrived, and she took Nora aside. She said that a social worker was coming so they could do a proper debrief of the children. Could Nora wait? It was easy for kids to get confused or dug in about details.
“A social worker,” Nora said. “Why?”
“She’s specially trained to do these interviews.”
Something about her tone was odd, and Nora moved to make sure they were out of earshot. “Are you looking for sex crimes?” she whispered.
“We’re just being careful.”
“Did you hear Penny? Have you ever seen a child who’s been assaulted be that smug?”
“Please, just wait,” Detective Rivera said. “She’s not the only child involved.”
So Nora sat on a bench on her hands, to keep them from trembling. When the social worker arrived, she was slight and gray-haired, in a lavender dress.
“You’ve had a terrible time,” she said, holding Nora’s hand in hers. “I’m so sorry.”
“You’re American,” Nora said.
“I came here in the Peace Corps and never left,” the woman said. “My name is Allison.”
Nora asked if she could listen during Penny’s interview.
“Are you the mother?” Allison asked.
“No, I am,” Liv said, raising her hand.
Nora had a sudden flash of Liv at nine, always having the right answer in class, always getting the best grades. “But I’ve known Penny all her life,” she said. “And my children were with her.”
“It’s up to the mother,” Allison said, apologetic.
Liv said, “I think maybe we should talk as a family first.”
Nora stared at her cousin. Liv wouldn’t meet her eye.
“All right,” Allison said, all business.
“Sorry, Nora,” Benjamin said, putting a hand on her shoulder.
“Actually,” Allison said, smiling brightly at him, “it can be easier for children with just the mother there, at first. Do you mind waiting out here?”
Benjamin blinked. Nora thought he would object to being shut out, but he didn’t. He seemed too shocked to protest. It was like childbirth in her parents’ generation: Dads wait outside.
So Liv, Penny, the social worker, and Detective Rivera went into a little room. Nora could see blue plastic chairs and some dolls and stuffed animals inside. They shut the door behind them.
“Fuck,” Benjamin said.
“No fucking kidding,” Nora said.
46.
RAYMOND SAT ON a bench in the hospital hallway, feeling numb. The press hadn’t found them yet. His manager had been trying to work with a local PR person to stem the tide of stories, but it hadn’t worked. The astronaut picture was still running on the news. And the reporters would find them soon. Liv and Benjamin would be on TV, with their kids safe in their arms, and his kids would be gone. He had tried to be big about it. He had tried to see any of the kids’ return as good news, but it was getting hard to keep the optimism going.
Liv came around the corner with her arms full of vending machine snacks. She seemed to consider turning back when she saw him, but it was too late. “Hey,” she said.
He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
She sat beside him on the bench, arms full of chips and pistachios. “How’s it going?”
“How do you think?”
“They’re going to find your kids,” she said.
“Sure.”
“I know it doesn’t seem fair that ours are back.”
“I’m glad they’re back.”
“How’s Nora?”
“You could ask her.”
“She’s not really talking to me.”
“I thought you weren’t talking to her.”
Liv adjusted the snacks in her arms. “Listen, I lost my mind, when I said that thing. I’m so sorry. We’ve all lost our minds a little.”
“I haven’t.”
“Well, I’m sorry,” she said.
He had to assume he had been cuckolded, and he knew that if Liv had said nothing, it still would have happened, he just wouldn’t know it. Could you be humiliated if you didn’t know it? He thought you could, and it was worse, because other people knew. So you were a cuckold and a fool. “I’m glad you said something,” he said, though the words felt like ash in his mouth.
They sat in silence. “So your mom is coming,” she said.
“Yeah. Nora’s dreading it.”
“Nora’s in a terrible place,” Liv said. “She just lost her mom, the kids are missing, she thinks she’s lost you. I mean, imagine.”
“I don’t have to imagine,” he said.
“Oh, Raymond.” Liv dumped the snacks, slid close to him on the bench, and put her arms around him. Her short hair brushed his face and he smelled rosemary shampoo over the disinfectant smell of the hospital. “I’m so sorry,” she said.
“I don’t know what we do now,” he said. “Where do we go? What do we try next?”
“We’ll figure it out.”
“You should take Penny and Sebastian home.”
“Absolutely not,” she said. “We’re staying with you.”
“That’s crazy.”
“I mean it,” she said. “Then we’re gonna sue the shit out of the cruise line.”
He laughed. He sometimes forgot that he’d known Liv as a movie executive before he ever met Nora. She’d fought to cast him and to keep him, working around his schedule. She’d introduced him to his wife. She was reliable, brash, sometimes aggravating. Just now she’d put her arms around him only to comfort him. But with her body close against his, with Nora freezing him out, something seemed to shift, the ground moved beneath his feet. He sensed that Liv felt it, too. A stirring.
“I should go,” she said.
“Okay.” But she didn’t leave. His arm was still around her, her head still resting against his chest.
Then Liv stiffened and pushed away from him, staring down the hall. He followed her eyes and saw Nora and his mother silently watching them. His mother looked road-weary, her handbag on a shoulder, her hair smoothed back.