“All of this misery happened because you brought your daughter here!” he shouted. “If she had stayed in Honduras, our family would be safe now! Your father would still be alive!”
Marcela started to cry. “If I could take it back, I would!” How could she say such a thing? With Yovanna in the next room? Maybe Damon was asleep, but Yovanna most certainly was not.
“If the gangster your father borrowed money from wants this video,” said Byron, “it’s because it shows a crime. If your father knew about it, then he was a witness. Maybe that’s why he’s dead. Just having this DVD in our apartment is dangerous. I don’t want it here!”
“But nothing happens on the camera,” Marcela argued. “People are just walking in and out of the building.”
“Then it wouldn’t be worth eight thousand dollars—maybe even your father’s life. But it is, Marcela. We should destroy it or we will be next.”
“And if we destroy it, what do we have to repay the loan?”
“Maybe we should take the video to the police,” he suggested.
“The police don’t care about us,” said Marcela. “If we show them this video, they’ll just take it and tell us to lock our doors. They’ll only show up after somebody is hurt or dead to fill out the paperwork.”
Around and around they went until they were both so spent, Marcela coaxed her half-asleep daughter onto her living room cot and they all went to bed.
Now, in the dim morning light behind the lank, drawn curtains, Marcela threw back the covers on her side of the bed. It was stifling in the small room. The old radiators always sent out too much steam in winter. Still, she felt a sudden chill. She grabbed her robe and shifted her weight to get out of bed. The movement of her body made Byron stir. He rubbed his eyes and sat up. They stared at each other a moment, hesitant to speak in case they woke up Damon sleeping in the corner or Yovanna in the living room.
“Let me start breakfast,” said Marcela. “After church, we’ll figure out what to do.”
In the living room, a slash of light angled its way through a broken slat in the blinds, illuminating the silver garland on the artificial tree in the corner. It shimmered with false promise. Their first Christmas together as a family. How long Marcela had dreamed of this! How hard it had turned out to be.
Marcela’s eyes moved from the draped garland on the tree to the cot wedged up against it. Yovanna’s cot. The sheet and blanket were pulled back. The pillow was plumped.
There was no Yovanna.
Marcela stepped closer. The clear plastic two-drawer bin where Yovanna kept her clothes was empty. She opened the drawers even though she could see that there was nothing inside. She walked over to the front door. Her daughter’s blue backpack was missing from its hook along with Yovanna’s pink windbreaker. Her sneakers were absent from the mat.
Marcela wandered the room as if Yovanna were simply hiding in plain sight. Maybe she’d gone out for something. Maybe she’d left a note. Marcela rounded the counter into the kitchen. The only sounds were the tap-tap-tap from the leaky faucet and the soft hum of the refrigerator. On the kitchen table, the manila envelope Marcela had taken from her father’s apartment lay open, a jumble of her childhood snapshots on top.
The DVD was missing.
Marcela walked back into the living room and opened the laptop. She pushed the eject button on the DVD slot. It was empty. She began opening drawers and cabinets. She felt under the couch cushions and beneath her daughter’s cot. She searched the shelf above the television. The DVD wasn’t in the apartment.
Yovanna was gone, along with the one thing that could save them all. Or kill them all.
Marcela wasn’t sure which.
Chapter 32
Adele could hear the thump of rap and salsa beneath her feet as she walked the corridor of the Methodist church. The church’s basement housed a teen center that appeared to be in full swing on a Sunday evening. But here, along the classroom corridor, all was quiet save for the sound of a cardboard carton sliding along a tile floor and the scrape of canned goods being loaded onto shelves.
Adele peeked her head into the classroom that now served as the Lake Holly Food Pantry. Margaret Behring was standing in the middle of the room, clipboard in hand, surrounded by three-foot-high piles of mostly empty cardboard cartons. She was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, but there was something different about her. Maybe it was the loose gathering of her honey blond hair. Or the fact that she wasn’t wearing any makeup or jewelry. She looked younger somehow. Perhaps she’d just had a round of Botox. Half the women in Wickford had their dermatologists on their speed dials.
Adele rapped a knuckle on the doorframe so as not to startle her.