ISABEL WAS FAIRLY sure that the Jesus woman who’d picked them up on the road hadn’t recognized them as the kids from the ship. She’d dropped the five of them off at a church shelter where they got bad soup and dry clothes. Noemi was so feverish that Isabel had to dress her. But Isabel was able to ditch her bloody shirt and the bikini bottoms, and now wore a secondhand T-shirt with a rainbow decal.
A priest drove them to the police station. He did recognize them, and kept talking to the cops about the reward money, and how it would benefit his mission. All of them were stringy-haired, Noemi was sick and slumped over, and Oscar was limping. The cops looked disgusted, like they were homeless people or criminals.
Which Isabel was.
But she hadn’t meant to be.
Finally they got in a car with a fat cop. The cop said their parents were waiting at a hospital but he didn’t say why. Isabel was afraid to ask. She thought it might be a trick, to get a doctor to examine her. But she wouldn’t let a doctor near her. The cop was a bad driver, he kept gunning the engine and braking, gunning and braking. Her father would have told him to stop it.
Her father couldn’t know about Raúl. He was going to be so sad and disappointed, she didn’t think she could stand it. She wondered if she could tell Hector, and then Hector could tell him.
But there was also the other thing that had happened, in the trees.
When they got to the hospital, where their parents were supposed to be, the cop stopped the car in the parking lot. Terror dimmed Isabel’s vision. Marcus cupped his hand around her ear and whispered. At first she felt only his hot breath. It took a few seconds before she could separate the urgent gusts into words. But then she understood. He said, “We don’t have to tell.” She nodded and climbed out of the car. The cop had to carry Noemi inside.
The scene in the hospital lobby was crazy. Hospital people swarmed around. Noemi was taken away, shivering and semiconscious, and Oscar was, too, in a wheelchair. A black woman gathered Marcus and June into her arms, and their handsome father was there, crying. Marcus looked back at Isabel as he was led away down the hall.
But Isabel didn’t see her parents. She was left alone with a tall woman with spiky hair who said her name was Detective Rivera.
“Your parents are on their way,” the detective said.
“I don’t want to be examined.”
“That’s up to you.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
Isabel eyed the machona detective, wondering if she was telling the truth.
Another woman appeared, thin and pale and old. Detective Rivera said she was a social worker, who had some questions.
“I don’t want to talk to her,” Isabel said.
“You have to, for me to interview you,” the detective said. “Because of your age.”
The social worker gave Isabel a tentative smile, like an unpopular girl trying to sit at her table at lunch. Isabel couldn’t imagine telling her anything.
“Can you take me to a bathroom, please?” she asked the detective.
As they walked down the hallway, Isabel said, “I have to talk to you alone. I can’t do it in front of my parents, or that woman.”
“Your mom and the social worker only?”
“No.”
The detective pushed open the bathroom door and looked under the stalls for feet. “Okay,” she said, leaning against the sink. “Go ahead.”
Isabel’s throat felt dry. “I have to pee first.” She went into a stall and sat. It still hurt to pee. She listened to the stream hitting the water in the bowl, and she knew the detective could hear it, too. “I want to tell you something,” she called through the stall door.
“I’m listening.”
But before Isabel could bring herself to speak, someone else pushed open the door from the hallway.
“Can you wait outside a minute?” the detective asked.
“No,” a voice said. “I have patients waiting.”
“It’s important,” the detective said.
“So are my patients.” The doctor went into the other stall. Isabel listened to her pee, then leave the stall and wash her hands.
“You okay in there?” the detective called.
“Yes.”
“She’s gone. What do you want to say?”
Isabel held her breath. She heard the social worker say, from the hall, “Isabel’s parents are here.”
“We’ll be right out,” the detective said. The door closed. “Last chance.”
Isabel went out and washed her hands. “What’s the social worker going to ask me?”
“What happened to you.”
“I can’t say it,” she said. “Not in front of my parents.”
“They have dolls,” the detective said. “You can show her on the doll.”
“I’m not a baby.”
“It’s hard for everyone,” the detective said. “It’s hard for grown-ups.”
“Two cops came to that house,” Isabel said. “Before—before everything.”
The detective watched her. “Go on.”
“They came to the house and Raúl gave them something and they went away.” She hadn’t wanted to cry. “You didn’t protect us. You could have protected us!”
“Can you describe these cops?” the detective asked. She had gone very still.
“Yes,” Isabel whispered.
The detective nodded. “Good.”
“Marcus can, too,” she said. “He saw them. He’s smart.”
“Good.”
The door started to open again. Detective Rivera pushed it shut with one hand, then leaned back against it. “Just a minute,” she called over her shoulder.
Isabel’s throat seemed to be closing up again. “I was so afraid.”
The detective nodded.
There was a pounding on the bathroom door. “Isabel?” her father’s voice called. “Are you in there?”
“Mija!” her mother’s voice said.
Isabel remembered Marcus whispering in her ear, his hot breath. He’d said they didn’t have to tell. They didn’t have to say anything about the man in the woods, from the train, or what had happened to him.
The door was shoved open from the other side, and her father was in the women’s bathroom, then her mother.
“Mami!” Isabel said. She fell into her mother’s arms.
“I’m taking my children home, right now,” her father said.
“We just have a few questions,” the detective said.
Her mother held Isabel by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. “Isabel,” she said. “Where’s your brother?”
“He’s not with you?” Isabel said.
“Where’s our son?” her father asked. “Where’s Hector?”
“That’s one of the questions I’m trying to answer,” the detective said.
“He swam back,” Isabel said. “He swam back to find you!”
There was a stunned silence.
“Hector!” her mother cried.
Detective Rivera was already on her phone in the hallway, holding her hand over her other ear. Isabel heard a low moaning and realized it was coming from her body. The social worker tried to guide them into a room with blue plastic chairs and stuffed animals.
“No!” Isabel cried. “I won’t go in there! I want my brother!”
No one had done anything to help, from the very beginning. They hadn’t found her, they hadn’t saved her. They hadn’t found Hector.
“Stop looking at me like that!” she screamed at the social worker. She kept thinking of Hector directing the game on the inner tubes, Hector swimming away for help. How many days ago had that been? Five? Six? “Go find my brother!” she screamed.
51.
A YOUNG DOCTOR who introduced himself as Dr. Patel told Nora she was dehydrated and in shock. He wanted to put her on IV fluids. But she was not letting them put anything into her body, not after what they’d done to Sebastian. She locked her hands over her elbows in the hospital bed. “You’re not putting any needles in me.”
“You need fluid.”
“I’ll drink water. I’m fine. I fainted because I’m allergic to medical error. I want to see my kids.”
“We have to treat your head.”
She seemed to have split her forehead when she hit the floor. Or had she hit the bench? She wasn’t sure. She reached for it.
“Please don’t touch the wound,” the doctor said.
“How’s Sebastian?” she asked. “The kid you almost killed?”