Penny marched in, without knocking. “Grace is getting a schnoodle puppy,” she said. “It looks exactly like a teddy bear.”
Grace was getting a schnoodle because her father was having an affair, but Grace didn’t know that, and didn’t know about the impending divorce. “You have lots of teddy bears,” Liv said.
“She’s also getting a phone.”
“You’ll get one for sixth grade graduation.”
Penny draped herself over the Aeron chair. “If I had a phone, you would always know where I was.” A transparently deceitful tactic, when Penny didn’t want Liv to know where she was.
“Are you excited to have your cousins over?” Liv asked.
Penny lifted her feet in the chair and spun. “I see them every day.”
“How are they?”
“June’s better. Marcus is still pining for Isabel. He’s dying of love. It’s like Rent.”
“They were dying of AIDS in Rent.”
“Well, that’s what it’s like.”
“No one dies of love at eleven.”
“He’s twelve.”
“What?” Liv had forgotten the birthday. “He didn’t have a party?”
“We had cupcakes at school.”
“Well, no one dies of love at twelve either.”
“Romeo and Juliet were thirteen,” Penny said.
“Thirteen was different back then.”
“Thirteen is always the same,” Penny said. She pushed herself out of the chair. With a triumphant little kick of her foot, she was out the door.
Liv wondered if Nora hadn’t had a party for Marcus so they wouldn’t have to invite her family, and be reminded of everything that had happened. She remembered Nora saying, “It was your fucking idea, this whole cruise!”
The halting notes of “Für Elise” came from the piano in the living room. Liv was trying not to cry every single day. She didn’t want the kids’ childhoods to be divided into pre-cruise and post-cruise, although she supposed they already had been. She picked up the script and tried to focus on the swimming words on the page.
63.
ISABEL LAY BY the pool with her puppy on her chest. He was sleeping, his velvety jowls draped over his oversized paws. Her heart was so filled with love for him that it hurt. She held up her phone to take a picture. You could tell she was wearing a bikini, if you looked carefully. Her mother let her post bikini pics now—her mother let her do anything she wanted now—but Isabel didn’t post them, mostly. Anyway, this wasn’t a bikini picture. It was just a picture of his beautiful soft gray face.
Her mother was afraid of her, afraid that Isabel would reject her, or that Isabel might be broken forever. The one thing she wouldn’t let her do was name the puppy after her brother. So Isabel called him Toby, but in her mind it was short for Hector.
She took another picture that showed Toby’s face better. Her father said the wrinkly jowls were for fighting. If another dog grabbed them with his teeth, Toby could still turn his head and bite the dog back. Her father was trying to say something to her, by talking about the dog. But Isabel pretended she didn’t understand. She wasn’t going to give him an opening like that.
Her parents would never be the same again. They worked and went out and they could hold a conversation, but she saw the permanent sadness in their eyes, even when something made them laugh. Hector had been the great love of their lives—both of them. They’d loved her brother far more than they loved each other.
On the ship, she’d tried to be as nice to the American kids as Hector was, painting their toenails. She’d always measured herself against him, knowing she would come up short. But now Hector was dead, and his bedroom was like a shrine. Her parents actually worshipped him. She would never be able to live up to his example. You couldn’t compete with a saint.
She stroked Toby’s back, sliding his loose skin, and he wriggled in pleasure in his sleep. He made a funny little noise and she wondered if he was dreaming. The first time she ever picked him up, he lay back in her hands with his belly exposed, waving his paws. Her father said that was a good sign, it meant the dog was submissive and trainable, and would never hurt anyone. She had rubbed the puppy’s soft belly and said that this was the one.
The detective had told her, in front of her parents and the social worker, that there would be an inquest and they probably wouldn’t prosecute Oscar, so Isabel didn’t need to stay as a witness, and could go home. At the time, they were sitting in a room with a window, and the detective’s eyes were almost golden, lit from the side. Isabel could feel meaning beaming from them. The detective was not stupid. She was accepting Isabel’s account of things, but she was telling Isabel with her eyes that she’d better stick to the story she’d decided to tell.
The social worker had looked concerned and compassionate, understanding nothing. Isabel could have turned to her and said, “I did it. Oscar didn’t do it. I shouldn’t be protected, because I’m shit. I let Hector swim away. I went upstairs in that house and I made everything happen. And I killed an innocent man because I was scared.”
But she didn’t say anything.
Because what was the alternative? Being a murderer. Ending up in some juvenile justice system, but where? Her parents drowning in their sadness. The news cameras camping outside, as they had at the river where the divers pulled up the scrap of Hector’s shorts.
Her father and Detective Rivera said it would all be fine, and Isabel believed them. They thought she was worth rescuing, and Isabel held on to that.
Her mother wanted her to see a therapist, but Isabel didn’t need one. She had Toby. Talking to a therapist would be too much work, keeping everything straight, telling only the things she was supposed to tell. She understood it all, anyway. Better than a therapist could. She could whisper the truth to Toby, and he would love her anyway. She whispered it now, and kissed his soft, dreaming head.
64.
BENJAMIN WAS CHECKING Sebastian’s blood sugar on his phone when Raymond’s name came up on the screen, and Benjamin felt a slight dread. He wished they weren’t having this uncomfortable dinner, this extended visit from the Ecuadorean strangers, who were right now in the air. He’d dealt with reentry by spending too much time on a new project made of high-tensile aluminum that could not die or wander off. He hadn’t kept his vow to stalk the kids at school, but he checked Sebastian’s blood sugar more than he really needed to.
He took the call. “Hey.”
“Dinner’s takeout, right?” Raymond asked.
“It’s Zankou Chicken.”
“I’ll come get you,” Raymond said. “We can pick it up.”
He turned up at the house in a shiny black Tesla. “So you’ve decided life is brutish and short, and you might as well spend it all?” Benjamin said.
“It’s a safer car,” Raymond said. “And no emissions.”
“You’re just thinking of the polar ice caps and the kids.”
“I am!”
Benjamin rubbed a hand over the soft leather seat. He drove a seventeen-year-old Volvo with cracking upholstery and old yogurt spills. Fixing it no longer made financial sense, but he didn’t want to be the asshole in the new car. He understood that his was just a different kind of pose, and it was part of Raymond’s job to be glamorous. They rode in the eerie electric silence.
“I need to tell you something,” Raymond said.
Benjamin felt queasy. “You’re getting divorced.”
“What?” Raymond said. “No!”
“Oh, thank God.” Benjamin was enormously relieved. He wondered what the strength or fragility of Raymond and Nora’s marriage indicated about his own. “Sorry. What did you want to say?”
“You know Marcus has been talking to the counselor at school.”
“Yeah.” Ms. Hong had tactfully released Penny after two sessions. She said maybe they could revisit it later, but Penny really seemed fine.
“Marcus told her it was Isabel,” Raymond said. “Who killed that guy.”
“Wait, what?”
“Cut the guy’s throat. Marcus says it was a mistake, that Isabel was scared and thought someone was attacking her.”
“But they said it was Oscar.”