They left at six the next morning in the family’s black Lincoln, which was better suited to a fifteen-hour journey than Nathaniel’s sports car. Furious at being trapped in this way, Nathaniel initially kept a hostile silence, his mouth a tight line, brow furrowed, hands like talons on the wheel as he stared fixedly at the highway, but the first time Alma asked him to stop at a truck stop to go to the rest-room, he softened. She was gone for half an hour, and just as he was thinking of going to look for her, she returned to the car in a bad state. “I feel sick in the mornings, Nat, but later on it passes,” she explained. For the rest of the journey he tried to take her mind off things, and they ended up singing out of tune the most syrupy Pat Boone songs, the only ones they knew, until eventually, exhausted, she clung to him, laid her head on his shoulder, and dozed off.
In San Diego they stopped overnight at a hotel to eat and get some sleep. The receptionist presumed they were married and gave them a room with a double bed. They lay down together holding hands, just as they had done as children. For the first time in weeks Alma slept without having nightmares, while Nathaniel stayed wide awake until dawn, breathing in the shampoo scent on his cousin’s hair, thinking of the risks they were running, feeling upset and nervous as though he were the child’s father, imagining the repercussions, regretting having agreed to this sordid adventure rather than bribing a doctor in California, where everything was possible if the price was right, just as in Tijuana. As the first light filtered through the gap in the curtains he was finally overcome with fatigue and didn’t wake up until nine in the morning, when he heard Alma retching in the bathroom. They took their time crossing the border, with the predictable delays, and drove on to keep their appointment with Ramón.