Do Not Become Alarmed(28)

“I am sorry. It is a bad situation.”

“Because you’re a drug addict?”

The woman stared at her with hopeless eyes, then pulled her hand free.

“Are you even a real doctor?” Penny asked.

“I have to go.” The woman gathered her bag.

“How can you say it’s a bad situation? We’re kids!”

The woman backed away. It was the stupidest thing Penny had ever heard. Her parents probably thought Sebastian was dead, and would be seriously freaking out by now. She slumped back into the couch. George let the doctor out and locked the door again.





14.



IN THE MORNING, at the terrible hotel, Nora got a text message asking her to pick up her family’s passports at the port. Liv had the same message. The ship had sailed away on schedule, dumping their stuff unceremoniously onshore. Other people had a cruise to take. Nora was filled with rage at those people, eating their mediocre buffet food, playing the poker machines in the noisy casino, swimming in the pool. How could they just go on with their cruise when Marcus and June were missing? She craved her children, wanted to feel their bodies against her.

She found herself wanting a cigarette, a thing she hadn’t had in years. She used to keep a pack in the freezer, when she was living alone and teaching, so she could smoke one on her apartment balcony when she’d had a hard day.

She’d listened to Raymond on the phone with the detective, asking about the best use of their time. Together they decided that the men would go to the capital to meet with someone at the embassy, and the women would go to the ship’s agent. Because someone from each family had to go collect the passports. They would meet up in the capital, where there were more police resources.

The press was camped outside the little hotel, and the three couples walked out together into a barrage of news cameras, a chorus of people calling them by their names and asking for comment. One man got very close, and Gunther shouted at him in Spanish. Raymond was more practiced at evasion—he shielded her and steered her to a cab, asking the reporters please to give them some privacy. Nora was embarrassed at how she’d spilled her guts to those people last night. She’d been horrified by the sight of herself on the TV in the hotel room, and had to turn it off.

Then she found herself in the back seat of a moving taxi, sitting between Liv and Camila, trying to behave like a rational human being. A small part of her mind observed that she was probably in shock.

She imagined Perla, the stewardess, packing up their cabin, gathering the dirty laundry from the floor of the closet. She wondered if anyone had told Perla what had happened, why her passengers had never come back. Her kids might be far away in Manila, but at least she knew where they were.

Liv looked drawn and sleepless in the taxi, silent in her misery. Nora had such complicated feelings about her cousin now. She had not forgiven her for failing to watch the children when she’d said she would. But she was grateful to her for not saying anything to Raymond about her flirtation with the guide. Nora had told Liv nothing had happened, and she was ashamed of the lie, and ashamed of her gratitude to Liv for keeping a false secret, to protect her from being misunderstood. When the misunderstanding, of course, would be the truth.

Camila sat on Nora’s right, a woman she was bound to only by tragedy.

“I am a piece of dirt, to Isabel, right now,” Camila said to the cab window. “She treats me like you would not believe. It is just—she is fourteen, I know. Girls need to separate from their mother. But it is so painful, when this child who has depended on you wants nothing to do with you. She thinks you know nothing. You are in her way. So you tell yourself it is a necessary stage, it will pass. And it will pass.” Her voice started to break. “Unless you never see her again. And then what you will remember is this time when she is awful. Simply awful. And you are sometimes awful back, because it is very hard not to respond. To be the adult. And that is the memory I will have, for the rest of my life. This is what I fear.”

Nora closed her eyes and wished Camila wouldn’t talk this way, as if the children might actually be gone. She thought of Marcus, her beautiful boy, nearly as tall as she was but just a child, not equipped to be on his own. He would be so anxious about taking care of June. They had spent one night alone now. Her hands started to shake and she held them tightly in her lap.

“And Hector,” Camila went on. “My son. If I don’t have my son, I do not know what I will do.”

The taxi stopped at the address they’d been given, but they couldn’t find the ship’s agent at first. The driver peered at the address on Liv’s phone screen. They tried two different buildings and walked a confusing hallway, and finally found the agent’s glass-walled office.

The agent was a small, round man with wire-rimmed glasses and a blue suit that seemed too heavy for this weather. He acted as if nothing drastic had happened. He gave them each a form, to confirm that they’d received their passports and had left the ship voluntarily. When really the ship had jettisoned them. Nora signed her name to her own abandonment.

“There are many nice things to do in my country,” the agent said.

“Yeah, like a zip-line tour,” Liv said.

“Exactly!” the agent said. “Have you done this?”

Liv stared at him. “No.”

“It’s very good!” he said.