But it couldn’t be over, because they had two children.
Unless they didn’t. And if they didn’t have their children, then nothing mattered, or would ever matter again.
Nora had started to tremble at the café table and talk too fast, turning it over and over in her mind, and Pedro had guided her down the street and into a cab. She’d cried silently in the back seat, not seeing the streets outside. Then he had led her into a small papaya-colored house where she could talk and pace and regret and rehash without anyone watching. She kept trying to find new words to explain herself to Liv.
Pedro let her rant. He straightened a few things in the kitchen and put on a kettle to boil. Then he led her into the bedroom. He had a rumpled, unmade bed, a surfboard in a rack over the window, posters on the walls.
“I can’t,” she said. Whatever desire she had once had for him had been blasted by guilt.
“No sexo,” he’d said. “Don’t worry.”
He sat her on his bed and the kettle started to whistle. He went to make tea. A few shirts hung in the open closet. Nora had tipped over in his stale-smelling bed, onto his pillow, and slept for fifteen oblivious minutes, as she hadn’t slept in days. When she woke, she drank the lukewarm tea he’d brought her. Then she took a cab back to the hotel and told Raymond she’d been for a long walk.
But now, while Raymond slept, Nora stalked the hotel halls. She thought about how smart her son was. And how good his sense of direction—it went with his love of maps. She used to take him to a park with a blank map of the United States painted on the asphalt, and he could name every state by the time he was three. He used to narrate their drive back from preschool, turn by turn. She truly believed that if the children could escape from wherever they were, Marcus could walk them to safety, he could get them to the police.
On the third floor, she came upon a man in blue coveralls and a woman in a maid’s dress, carrying a rolled carpet between them. Nora wondered why a carpet needed to be replaced in the middle of the night. Had something terrible happened?
“Buenas noches,” she said.
The man smiled at her. He was missing a tooth. “El terremoto,” he said. “Has sentido?”
“Perdón?” she said. Was he asking if she’d heard something?
“Terremoto,” he said. “Has sentido?”
“No.”
He smiled. “Air-quick.” They had stood the carpet on its rolled end, and he made a motion with his free hand, moving his fist back and forth. “Air-quick.”
She frowned.
“No ha sentido,” the woman said.
“No has sentido?” the man asked, still smiling.
Nora shook her head. She hadn’t heard a thing. Except his weird questions.
When she got back to the hotel room, Raymond opened the door in a bathrobe. “Where’d you go?” he asked.
“Just walking. I couldn’t sleep.”
“You can’t disappear on me. I was about to come looking.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Did you feel the earthquake?”
“When?”
“Just now.”
“Oh!” she said, sinking to the bed. “That’s what they were saying. They asked if I’d felt it.”
“It was long,” Raymond said.
“I thought this maintenance guy was making an obscene gesture,” she said.
“What gesture?”
She made the jerking-off move. “He kept saying, ‘Air-quick.’ I was so confused. But he was miming an earthquake.”
“Maybe,” Raymond said, doubtful.
“No, he was.”
“That was a serious earthquake. I can’t believe you didn’t feel it.”
“I’m kind of distracted.” She felt a cold ache in her stomach as she said it, because it sounded like she was implying that he should be so distracted, too, as if it were a competition. But he didn’t have all the reasons she did.
“What’s up with you and Liv?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“Really?”
She nodded.
He tried to put his arms around her, but she hopped up from the bed.
“I can’t,” she said. “Not with the kids gone. I just—can’t.” She moved toward the bathroom, the only private space in this claustrophobic, airless hotel room. She couldn’t stand to be looked at.
“What do you want from me?” Raymond asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
She closed the door and sat on the edge of the tub, trying to breathe.
24.
ISABEL WAS NOT tracking time well. She kept losing chunks of it. Somehow she was in her bed downstairs in the house, but she didn’t remember getting there. She could see Marcus and June in the other bed, their heads sticking out over the covers. Isabel felt protected by their presence, even though that was stupid.
She fell asleep and dreamed of the river, of floating on the inner tube. In her dream, she tried to swim back upstream after Hector, but the current was too strong. It was impossible to make headway.
Then someone was shaking her awake. She scrambled back in fear, but it was only the housekeeper, Maria, whispering urgently in Spanish. Then Maria moved to shake Marcus and June in the other bed, whispering to them to be very quiet, to follow her. Isabel tried to stand. She could feel the pain between her legs. It stung.
Penny and Sebastian were in the entryway, rubbing their eyes.
“Where are we going?” Penny asked.
“A mi casa,” Maria whispered. She unlocked the deadbolt with the key around her neck and guided the little ones outside.
Then June’s high, piercing voice cried, “The bunny!”
Isabel froze. So did Maria. They stood listening to the quiet night. But no footsteps came running.
“I’ll go get it,” Isabel whispered, and she stepped back in and closed the door, in case June made any more noise. This was a moment for decision. Was it smart to run off with the housekeeper? George was supposed to be her rescuer, her protector. He had beaten his brother in the fight for them. He had a plan. And now Maria was going to mess it up.
Barefoot, she climbed the stairs to the main floor, then climbed the second flight to the third floor, where the brothers slept. Everything was quiet. She tiptoed past the old man’s empty bedroom.
She listened at the next door, then pushed it open. There was the big framed baseball poster on the wall. George’s cap hung on a chair. His head was dark on the pillow. If she woke him and told him Maria was stealing the children, he would be grateful.
But what would he do to Maria? And what was his plan? Maybe Maria stealing the children was his plan, and Isabel was messing it up. She was back on the third floor, when she shouldn’t be.
She would count to ten, and if George woke up, it would be a sign that she should stay. She began to count silently. One, two, three—
She got to ten and he slept on.
She would count to ten one more time. Just in case. One, two three—
He didn’t wake up.
She tiptoed back down the two flights to her room and found the bunny huddled between the pillows of June’s bed, in the tumbled covers. She scooped it up and went outside, to find Maria actually wringing her hands.
“Oh, mija,” Maria breathed.
“What took you so long?” June whispered, taking the bunny.
They followed Maria in bare feet over the unpaved driveway. Her car was parked a long way from the house, down by the security gate. As they walked, Isabel felt unsteady and thought the trembling in her legs was getting worse, but then she realized the earth was actually moving.
“Earthquake,” Marcus whispered.
They all looked at each other, then looked back at the house. Isabel hoped it would collapse. She hoped a huge chasm would open in
the ground and swallow the house and the sleeping brothers. But the shaking stopped. No lights went on in the windows. No one burst out after them.
They hurried to the car. Penny took the front seat. Isabel slid in back with Marcus and the little ones, closing the door as silently as she could.
Maria started the engine, peering up at the house. They drove down the rest of the driveway with the headlights off, to the gate.
“Push it open,” Maria said in Spanish. “The power is off.”
Isabel got out and ran to the gate, which opened. The car rolled past her and through. Isabel closed the gate quietly and ran to the car.
Then they were on the paved road down the hill. Maria kept checking the rearview mirror, but no one followed them. Isabel lost some more time, but then the car stopped outside a small white house. They all got out. They were on a quiet street, with one streetlight at the end of the block. Maria jangled her keychain, looking for the key in the dark.
There was a sticker beside the front door that said, “En este lugar, creemos en Dios,” with a little drawing of praying hands. Maria led them inside, to a crowded living room with two mismatched couches and an armchair.
Maria knocked at a door, and called, “Oscar!”
After a minute, a teenage boy came out of the room in a T-shirt and boxer shorts, with his hair messy from sleep. There was a picture of him on the wall, as a little boy with his arm around an older girl. A sister somewhere.
“This is Oscar, my son,” Maria said.
He was trying to put his glasses on. When he did, he saw the children all standing there in their matching clothes. He put his hand to his forehead. “Ay, Mamá,” he said.
She spoke to him in rapid Spanish, saying, “You have to drive them to the American embassy, right now.”
“Me?”
“Yes. Get dressed. I have to go back to work.”
“You can’t go back!”
“I have to,” Maria said. “If they see me gone, they’ll come straight here.”
He looked frightened. “I don’t even know where the embassy is.”
“In the capital. Ask someone. Take your uncle’s car.”
“That piece of shit?” he said. “You’re not giving me yours?”
“I can’t.” Maria went to a closet and pulled out five pairs of flip-flops in different sizes.
Oscar stared at the shoes. “When did you buy those?”
June pulled at Isabel’s arm. “What are they saying?” she asked.
“We’re going to the embassy,” Isabel said.
Maria handed Oscar a set of car keys. Then she gave him a small paper bag. “Insulina,” she said. “For the little boy.”
“I’ll keep that,” Penny said in English, and she snatched the bag away.
“What do I tell the Americans?” Oscar asked.
“Say these are los niños del barco and you need protection.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be fine, mijo.” She kissed his sweaty forehead and cupped his cheek with her hand. “This is the thing we have to do.”
25.
PENNY SORTED THROUGH the flip-flops Maria had pulled from the closet and found her size. Maria had done a good job guessing. It was nice to have shoes again. The boy, Oscar, came back out of his room in jeans and a T-shirt.
“Hijo de puta,” he said, rubbing his hair. “Qué hizo mi mamá.”
June, in her new flip-flops, put her hands on her hips. “Do you speak English?” she asked.
“Yes,” Oscar said.
“I’m hungry,” June said.
“No time.”
“Can you bring something?”
He handed her a banana from a wire basket.
June made a face. “It has brown spots.”
“So don’t eat it.” He went to the refrigerator and pulled out a block of cheese and some apples. He put the food in a nylon backpack and added a jacket and a flashlight.
June peeled the banana, grimaced, and took a bite.
Oscar opened the front door and waited for them to file out. The other houses were dark. It was strange to be outside, and free.
Oscar unlocked a very old car parked on the street, and they all got in. Penny had never been in a car so old. It was even older than her dad’s Volvo. There was dust all over the windshield and the windows. When she pulled the passenger door shut, the handle felt sticky, like the plastic was breaking down. “Whose car is this?”
“My tío’s,” Oscar said.
“Will he care?” she asked.
“He’s dead.”
“Oh.”
Oscar turned the key in the ignition and there was a straining, chugging noise. Then it stopped.
“What was that?” Penny asked.
“We don’t drive it,” he said. “It doesn’t have the right papers.” He tried to start the car again: the click, the tinny chug, chug, chug, and then nothing. “Hijo de puta,” he said, and put his head on the steering wheel.
He took his phone out of his pocket and made a call. Penny heard the tiny recording of a girl’s voice, against his ear. He hung up. “Vámonos,” he said.
They got out of the dusty car and walked down the dark road, past the other houses. The flip-flops slapped against the sidewalk. They wouldn’t be able to sneak up on anyone. June carried the bunny in a makeshift pouch in the front of her T-shirt.
“Where are we going?” Penny asked Oscar.
“To find a car.”
“How old are you?” she asked.
“Sixteen.”
Penny blinked. Her cousin Winston was sixteen, and he still played “Jump or Dive” in the swimming pool, contorting himself in midair to obey the commands. He had a soft pale body, and pimples on his shoulders, and he refused to eat anything but turkey sandwiches and junk food. “Oh,” she said.
26.
RAYMOND LAY AWAKE in the hotel. He had a travel alarm clock that projected on the ceiling, and the red numbers said 3:03 A.M. New Year’s Day. He liked the projection, usually, but now it just reminded him that he couldn’t sleep. The earthquake had unsettled him. What was next: Pestilence? Famine?
He was disturbed by how paralyzed he’d been, during the earthquake. He should have known what to do. Had someone disproven the “triangle of life”? They didn’t even have an earthquake kit at home. They had some big bottles of water, and a lot of flashlights, and some bags of rice and quinoa that Nora had overbought. Pantry moths had gotten into the last stash.
A movie director had once bragged to Raymond about keeping a “ditch bag”: a backpack filled with dried food, antibiotics, a space blanket, and $20,000 cash, for when the big one came and all hell broke loose. Also a dirt bike. The director was a fiftyish English guy who lived in Santa Monica Canyon.
Raymond had laughed. “I give you three minutes. Someone’ll shoot you and take your ditch bag and your bike.”
“I have a .38,” the director had said.
“I hope you’re a good shot.”
“I should practice more,” the director had admitted. “It’s a hassle to get to the range.”
Raymond could store more water, if they ever got home, but there was no preparing for what actually happened. A ditch bag was not going to protect you. Nothing was going to protect you.
He got up to pee, and walked around the bed. Nora seemed to be asleep, after her obsessive pacing of the hotel hallways, oblivious to the earthquake, and her forty-five minutes in the bathroom, doing her best imitation of her crazy depressive mother. It was the thing she always talked about, the thing that had scarred her most as a kid: her mother holing up in the bathroom and crying. It was worrying to see her do it herself.
When he came back, Nora’s phone screen was lit up on the night table. Who was texting her at 3:15 in the morning? Four white lines glowed on the screen. She
didn’t wake up.
He moved closer. The screen went dark. He pushed the button to light it up again. The sender was “Pedro.” The fucking guide. He picked up the phone to read the text.
I haven’t herd anything ether. Sorry. I would tell You if I did. Hope your doing OK or good as possible. Con . . .
The notification cut off there. Raymond thought about unlocking the phone to see the whole thread, but then Nora would know he’d read it. His sister kept an eye on her husband’s phone. She said it would be naive not to, if you could. But he was not someone who snooped, that was not part of his sense of himself. He could ask Nora about it, but then she would know he’d been looking. The screen went dark again.
He put the phone back down on the night table. It made a light click. He waited, but Nora didn’t move, and her breathing was steady. He stepped back around the bed and climbed under the sheet, careful not to bounce the mattress. The projection on the ceiling said 3:19 A.M.
So what did he know?
That Nora was looking for information. Fair enough. She must have asked the guide if he’d heard anything about the kids.
That Pedro knew nothing, and had pretty good English, even if his spelling wasn’t great. “I would tell you if I did” was not something Raymond could say in Spanish.
That Nora was depressed, but of course she was depressed. Their kids were missing.
That he could pretend to be a cop, he could make a living doing it, but he had no idea what to do in an emergency, when the chips were down. No idea at all.
27.
OSCAR LED THE children down the quiet street. Under his breath, he cursed the fucking Herreras, and the fucking luck that led the kids to that grave, and his mother’s fucking conscience, and his uncle’s car that wouldn’t start. Five kids, who had been all over the television! And no car! What kind of magician did his mother think he was? And why did she even still work for those assholes?