Do Not Become Alarmed(86)

Her father and Detective Rivera said it would all be fine, and Isabel believed them. They thought she was worth rescuing, and Isabel held on to that.

Her mother wanted her to see a therapist, but Isabel didn’t need one. She had Toby. Talking to a therapist would be too much work, keeping everything straight, telling only the things she was supposed to tell. She understood it all, anyway. Better than a therapist could. She could whisper the truth to Toby, and he would love her anyway. She whispered it now, and kissed his soft, dreaming head.





64.



BENJAMIN WAS CHECKING Sebastian’s blood sugar on his phone when Raymond’s name came up on the screen, and Benjamin felt a slight dread. He wished they weren’t having this uncomfortable dinner, this extended visit from the Ecuadorean strangers, who were right now in the air. He’d dealt with reentry by spending too much time on a new project made of high-tensile aluminum that could not die or wander off. He hadn’t kept his vow to stalk the kids at school, but he checked Sebastian’s blood sugar more than he really needed to.

He took the call. “Hey.”

“Dinner’s takeout, right?” Raymond asked.

“It’s Zankou Chicken.”

“I’ll come get you,” Raymond said. “We can pick it up.”

He turned up at the house in a shiny black Tesla. “So you’ve decided life is brutish and short, and you might as well spend it all?” Benjamin said.

“It’s a safer car,” Raymond said. “And no emissions.”

“You’re just thinking of the polar ice caps and the kids.”

“I am!”

Benjamin rubbed a hand over the soft leather seat. He drove a seventeen-year-old Volvo with cracking upholstery and old yogurt spills. Fixing it no longer made financial sense, but he didn’t want to be the asshole in the new car. He understood that his was just a different kind of pose, and it was part of Raymond’s job to be glamorous. They rode in the eerie electric silence.

“I need to tell you something,” Raymond said.

Benjamin felt queasy. “You’re getting divorced.”

“What?” Raymond said. “No!”

“Oh, thank God.” Benjamin was enormously relieved. He wondered what the strength or fragility of Raymond and Nora’s marriage indicated about his own. “Sorry. What did you want to say?”

“You know Marcus has been talking to the counselor at school.”

“Yeah.” Ms. Hong had tactfully released Penny after two sessions. She said maybe they could revisit it later, but Penny really seemed fine.

“Marcus told her it was Isabel,” Raymond said. “Who killed that guy.”

“Wait, what?”

“Cut the guy’s throat. Marcus says it was a mistake, that Isabel was scared and thought someone was attacking her.”

“But they said it was Oscar.”

“I called the detective. She was cagey. I think Oscar took the fall somehow and she knows it.”

Benjamin thought about his own teenage arrest, the nolo contendere plea, the detectives showing up at the hotel twenty years later to interrogate him about it. What if the crime had been murder? What if he’d been poor? “What if they prosecute?” he asked.

“She says the inquest is almost over, and they won’t.”

“Oh, shit,” Benjamin said. “Oscar’s going to live with that for the rest of his life.”

“Imagine the news, though, if it was Isabel,” Raymond said. “That bikini picture, with a murder headline?”

“Marcus loves the truth,” Benjamin said. He’d never known a kid with such rigorous devotion to facts.

“He also knows what it’s like to have photographers waiting for you when you go for pizza. I think he waited for my mother to go home before he said anything. She kept taking him to church, and all the talk about sin was freaking him out.”

“Jesus.”

“It’s not like Isabel will kill again, right?” Raymond said. “She’s just a kid.”

“I guess.” Benjamin felt dazed.

“The detective said it was Oscar who pushed for Noemi to get to New York,” Raymond said.

“Wait—what does that mean?”

“She was cagey as hell. But I think Oscar made some kind of deal.”

They had pulled up outside Zankou Chicken, and went in to collect the food Liv had ordered, as if everything were normal. They loaded the bags into the Tesla’s front trunk, the smooth unnatural compartment where the engine should have been.

“What about June?” Benjamin asked when they were on the freeway. “What does she say?”

“That it was dark. That she didn’t see anything.”

“You believe her?”

“I think so. But she’s been so freaked out. I wonder if she knew it was a lie.”

The smell of garlic sauce and roasted meat smothered the smell of new leather. “Should we try to get Oscar some money?” Benjamin asked.

“You want that to come out in the press?”

“Or some legal help?”

“We could talk to Gunther,” Raymond said. “The detective said he was already doing that.”

They rode in silence, feeling the dread of calling a man who had lost so much.