Do Not Become Alarmed(82)

As soon as the meeting was over, Nora tried to flee with Dianne and the kids, but people kept stopping to hug her. Finally she made it out of the building, only to end up walking to the parking lot beside Liv.

Penny had recovered from her moment of public grief and was now angling for a puppy. “But we were kidnapped!” she said.

“You have to stop playing that card, Pen,” Liv said, spraying hand sanitizer on her hands.

“It’s not a card!”

“It is if you try to trade it for a dog.”

“I would just feel safer with a dog.”

“I think you get this from my mother,” Liv said. “The lawyering.”

“If I can’t have a dog,” Penny said, “at least let me invite Noemi to visit.”

“That’s more complicated than it sounds.”

“Because the tickets are expensive?”

“Yes,” Liv said. “Among other reasons.”

“But they aren’t expensive for us.”

“Actually, they are.”

“Do you not want them to come because they’re poor?” Penny asked.

“No,” Liv said. “We’re ending this discussion.”

Nora knew she would have craved this moment, when they were stranded in the hotel in the capital with no leads. It would have seemed like paradise, to be picking up her beautiful children, and attending a weird, over-sharing, well-meaning school meeting. She would’ve welcomed the offensive questions and the awkward conversations.

And there had been enormous joy, and enormous relief. But here Nora was, desperate to get away from Penny. One aspect of human resilience, in all its marvelousness, was the ability to recalibrate, to adjust to new circumstances with astonishing speed.

“How are you doing?” Liv asked her.

“I’m okay.”

Penny had dropped behind to talk to some girls her age, and now Sebastian was yelling at his sister in the parking lot.

“Stop telling that story!” he said. “Just stop!”

“It’s my story, too!”

“It is not!”

“Guys,” Liv said. “Let’s go.”

“He’s totally freaking out for no reason!” Penny said.

“Because you won’t stop talking about me!”

“You need to stop telling stories about your brother,” Liv told Penny.

“It’s about me. He wasn’t even conscious.”

“I was there,” Sebastian said. “And I already told it!”

Liv slid open the door of their minivan and gave Nora a drowning look over the children’s heads. “Dinner sometime?”

“Great,” Nora said, with a quick smile, and she moved away toward her own car. She buckled June into her booster seat in the back, even though her daughter could do it herself.

“When can I stop having a booster seat?” June asked.

“When you’re eight,” Nora said. “Or if you get really tall.”

“We didn’t have them on the trip.”

“One of the many things wrong with that trip.”

“Do you think Penny will really get a puppy?”

“No.”

“Oh, she will,” Dianne said from the front seat. “Liv doesn’t know how to say no to those children.”

“I wish I could’ve kept my bunny,” June said.

“I know, sweetheart,” Nora said. “I’m sorry.”

Even brilliant Kenji, who’d gotten Noemi the papers to go to New York, hadn’t been able to get them permission to take the bunny, so it was living with Oscar. If the inquest went badly and Oscar went to prison, Nora guessed the bunny would stay with his mother. Unless Maria went to prison, too.

“Mom,” June asked, as Nora backed out of the parking space, “do you think Noemi will come visit?”

“I don’t know.”

“I hope so,” June said. “What about Isabel?”

Nora saw Marcus stiffen in the back seat. “She’s with her parents now,” she said. “I think it’s important for all of us to be with our families for a while.”

“That poor woman,” Dianne said.

Nora remembered Camila leaving the hospital on Gunther’s arm. She’d looked like a husk of herself, as if she’d been caught in a giant spiderweb and drained of blood. Nora could not extract her gratitude that she was not in Camila’s shoes from her ability to imagine Camila’s pain.

“What are we having for dinner?” Marcus asked.

Nora caught his eye in the rearview mirror. She had talked to Ms. Hong about the way Marcus changed the subject whenever Isabel’s name came up. It was as if he’d put up a force field around himself. He went to see Ms. Hong because they asked him to, but he didn’t like to talk about the trip, and he avoided Penny and Sebastian at school. Ms. Hong said they had to trust his process, and follow his lead.

“Pesto pasta with chicken,” she said.

“I’m making a key lime pie,” Dianne said.

“Hooray!” June said.

Marcus nodded and looked out the window, and Nora drove home.





61.



MARCUS SAT IN the counselor’s office and stared at a puzzle on the table. It was made of wire and wood with a loop of cord, and you had to get the cord off. He’d already solved the puzzle in his head, without picking it up. He went back to looking at the map of the world on the wall behind Ms. Hong’s head.