“Get the doctor!” her cousin was shouting at a nurse. “Do something!”
“What happened?” Nora asked.
Liv was frantic. “I can’t believe this. After all that. Oh, my God.”
A ponytailed doctor ran into the room, and Liv followed her. What had they done to sweet Sebastian? He was supposed to be all right.
Nora turned and walked blindly away, toward the exit. She needed to get some air. She rounded a corner and saw Detective Rivera walking toward her, raising her hand in greeting. Nora wheeled, afraid of the detective, and almost bumped into her mother-in-law behind her.
Dianne grabbed her by the shoulders. “Where are you going? What are you doing?”
“I can’t.”
“I came to find you,” the detective said.
Nora stood still. She wouldn’t turn. She wouldn’t look. She felt a flush, a prickling of sweat all over her body.
“That woman is talking to you,” Dianne said.
“I can’t,” Nora whispered. “I can’t hear it.”
“We found them,” the detective said.
Nora saw bodies in her mind, and she started to shake.
“They walked into a police station,” the detective said. “They’re okay.”
Nora stared at her mother-in-law. “What did she say?”
“That they’re okay,” Dianne said.
Nora turned, finally, to face the detective. “What?”
“They’re okay.”
Nora felt like she was at the bottom of a pool, and the tall detective was standing on the side, trying to communicate. The words couldn’t make it down through the water. “How?” she heard herself ask. But that wasn’t the right question.
“They just walked into the station.”
“Where?” Nora mouthed. She couldn’t hear herself.
“They’re coming here. One of the officers is driving them, in a police car.”
“No!” Nora cried.
The detective looked confused.
Nora couldn’t find the words to explain that the car would crash, that cars kept crashing. She remembered the scene she’d been running from. She had the terrible thought that she had hurt Sebastian, by wanting her own children to be safe instead of Liv’s. She had wished it into being. The power of prayer. “Sebastian,” she whispered.
The detective frowned. “What happened?”
Nora was hit with a wave of vertigo so strong that the hallway spun. The floor moved to her left beneath her, the ceiling moved to her right. She tilted with the motion and put a hand out. Her mother-in-law caught one arm and the detective took the other.
The three of them staggered down the hallway to Sebastian’s room and found Raymond standing outside it. Nora managed to say, “Marcus and June. They’re coming here.”
“An officer is bringing them now,” Detective Rivera said. “But I’m worried about your wife.”
White lights flashed at the corners of Nora’s vision. “I’m okay,” she said. “I’m okay.”
They lowered her to a bench.
“Put your head between your knees,” Dianne said.
That just made it worse. Nora put her elbows on her knees and her hands over her eyes, willing the room to stop moving.
“They gave him too much insulin,” she heard Raymond say.
She tried to breathe. Sebastian was in a hospital with his parents, where he was supposed to be safe, and they were going to kill him. And Marcus and June were in a car with a cop and they would never make it here alive. And she—she was not responding well, she was becoming yet another patient, she needed to get her shit together. But instead everything whited out and she slid off the bench to the floor.
50.
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 listene
d 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?”
Dr. Patel frowned. “He’s much better.”
A nurse came to dress her head and brought Nora an electrolyte drink. “Donde están mis niños?” Nora asked her. The nurse said they were coming.
And then, like something from a dream, Raymond steered Marcus into the room. Dianne was carrying June, who dived to the bed and latched on to Nora’s side. Nora felt joy knocking her senseless.
“Don’t cry, Mama,” June said.
“I can’t help it,” she said, laughing. “I’m so happy.”
June’s braids were coming undone. They both wore strange, ill-fitting clothes. Had Penny looked like this when she arrived? Had she been cleaned up before Nora saw her? She’d seemed so sleek and triumphant, where Marcus and June were a mess. Marcus wouldn’t come close to the bed.
“What happened?” he asked, his eyes on the bandage on her forehead.
“I bumped my head, that’s all,” she said. “Come here. I’m so happy to see you.”
Marcus accepted a quick hug, then slipped away to pace the room. June remained at Nora’s side, sucking her thumb—a habit she had given up years ago—and curling a lock of loose hair around her finger. Nora would have gently dislodged the thumb under normal circumstances. They’d been gone for six days and she felt as if she’d woken up on a strange planet. She wasn’t sure it had breathable air.
Marcus circled the periphery of the room with his elbow bent, his fingers tracing the molding, the doorjamb, the glossy paint. “I’m hungry,” he said, his eyes sliding to his grandmother.
“All right,” Dianne said. “I’ll go get some food.”
“Can you go with her?” Marcus asked his father.
“I’d rather stay here,” Raymond said.
“We’re okay,” Marcus said.
“I know,” Raymond said.
“You don’t have to worry,” Marcus said.
Raymond gave Nora a look over their son’s head, but she remembered that the detective said sometimes it was easier for children to talk to their mothers first. “Come right back,” she told him.
Raymond reluctantly followed his mother out the door.
“C’mere, baby,” Nora said, patting the bed. “Talk to me.”
“I’m not a baby,” Marcus said.
“I know. You’ve been so brave. Just come talk to me.”
He moved to stand beside the bed, staring at the blanket. June, still sucking her thumb, watched him.
“Sweetheart,” she said. “Did anyone hurt you?”
“No,” he whispered.
“Can you tell me what happened?”
“Everything.”
“Do you want to start at the beginning?”
June took her thumb out of her mouth. “I want my bunny!”
“Of course,” Nora said. “Where is it?”
“In Oscar’s backpack,” Marcus said.
“Is it a real bunny?”
June started to wail, a high, keening, mournful cry. “I want Oscar! I want my bunny!”
“Shhh,” Nora said. “Shhh. We’ll get the bunny. We’ll get him right away. I promise.”
June stuck her thumb back in her mouth like a plug, silencing her own crying.
Marcus said, “Something bad happened. Isabel went upstairs. At the house.”
Nora covered June’s ears with her hands, which was maybe pointless, but June let h
er do it. “Then what?” she whispered.
Marcus hesitated.
“Sweetheart?”
“Raúl went upstairs,” he whispered. “I should have st-st-st-st-stopped him.”
Nora had never heard Marcus stutter before. “That wasn’t your job, baby,” she said. “It wasn’t your fault. What did Hector do?”
June pushed Nora’s hands away from her ears. “What did you say?” she asked.
“I asked about Isabel’s brother,” Nora said. “Hector.”
They stared at her. “He wasn’t there,” June said.
“Where was he?”
“He swam back to you,” Marcus said.
“In the river?”
They nodded.
There was a commotion in the hall, a voice screaming, “I want my brother! Go find my brother!” Marcus recognized Isabel’s voice and his eyes widened.
“He swam back to you!” June said.
Raymond and his mother returned with orange trays of food. Nora felt her heart reach for her husband. She had not felt that way in such a long time. But she didn’t want to be alone on this strange planet. She wanted Raymond here with her, trying out the weird gravity, breathing the possibly poisonous air.
52.
OSCAR GAZED AT his mother’s lawyer, who’d turned up out of nowhere and told the doctors not to give him any pain medication. She said they needed to talk before he got all dopey. But his knee throbbed in a way he could see when he closed his eyes: a pulsing light. He’d been hobbling and running and carrying children since the car rolled over. He wished his sister were here, and not dead. Ofelia would’ve had great pills. He concentrated on the lawyer’s eyebrows, with all the hair plucked out. Why was the penciled line supposed to be an improvement?
“Did you see the Argentinian boy?” the lawyer asked.
“No.”
“Did the children talk about him?”
“Not that I remember.”
“Do you find that strange?”
How exactly was she defining strange? Raúl had shot at them from the Jeep, then had half his head scraped off. Oscar had jumped into a moving boxcar with five children and a bunny. No one had told him he was supposed to have six kids, not five. “I don’t know,” he said. “I think they thought he was with his parents.”