We Run the Tides(22)

I can see Julia in the kitchen eating ice cream out of a carton.

“Now you see something,” she says. “How convenient for you.”

“I thought your mom would want to know,” I say.

“Clark!” Kate calls out. “Clark! Gentle snuck out. She’s at the goddamned beach.”

“Thanks for ruining my family’s night,” Julia says. “Can you please leave?”

I wait outside the house by the curb in case Kate and Clark need to ask me anything. The side gate opens and they get into a dark green car parked on the street. Julia’s mom rolls down the window. “You can go home now, Eulabee,” she says impatiently. “Go on home.”





14


When I come through the kitchen door it’s after 7. My father is pacing, my mother is cleaning, and Svea has the sly smile of a sibling who’s confident her sister is going to get in trouble. But my parents are more relieved than angry to see me, and this upsets Svea. While my parents hug me, she races upstairs to her bedroom.

“We were so worried,” my dad says.

I expect my mom to temper this comment, but she doesn’t.

At dinner—iceberg salad and spaghetti—we talk silently about Maria Fabiola, as though Fate is listening. My parents want to protect Svea, whose eyes are wide—I know she’s going to tell her friends about the situation the next day. Her friends have spent the night when Maria Fabiola has spent the night. They know her and now she has disappeared.

The drama extends from the breakfast room table to the study, where, after dinner, my father watches the news. “Greta!” he yells to my mother who’s washing dishes by hand. She washes them with great thoroughness before placing them in the dishwasher. “Greta!” he calls again.

She doesn’t respond but I run to the study. On the news there’s a segment about Maria Fabiola. The camera shows the Spragg campus from an angle I’ve never seen before—“helicopter,” my father explains. Then a close-up of a box of sugar appears on the screen, and for a moment I think it’s a commercial break. But the anchorwoman is back in the frame and she’s talking about how the missing girl is an heir to a famous sugar fortune. Her great-grandfather started the sugar company and there’s speculation that this may be a kidnapping case.

Two questions surge through my mind: A kidnapping? And then: How could I have been her best friend for eight years and not know that her family was part of a famous fortune?

“Did you know that?” I ask my father. “That she was an heiress?”

“Yes,” he says, still staring at the television. “Everyone knows that.” Then he yells for my mother again. “Greta!” he roars. By the time she arrives the segment is over and my father is angry she missed it. “What were you doing in there?” he says.

“Cleaning up after dinner.” Her pink gloves make a schwak! sound as she removes them.

My dad repeats everything the news report said so she hasn’t missed anything. This is a good lesson for my mom, I think. Next time he calls she’ll come running, because he goes over the segment in exasperating detail. He even elaborates on what the anchorwoman was wearing and how her hair was styled. My father never misses an opportunity to admire beauty.

“Did you know Maria Fabiola is an heiress to a fortune?” I ask my mom.

My mom is not easily impressed by appearances or money—in fact, she’s skeptical of money so I think there’s a good chance this news has escaped her. Otherwise why would she have allowed me to be such good friends for so many years with someone apparently so famously wealthy?

“Of course,” she says. “Her mother’s from an old East Coast family.”

“Her mom’s the one with money?” I say in disbelief.

“Yes,” my mom says. “I think her family came over on the Mayflower.”

I picture Maria Fabiola’s mom in her large sunglasses and the Lilly Pulitzer prints she wears when she takes us to her swim club in Marin. She doesn’t dress in what I imagine someone from money would wear. Her jewelry isn’t very noticeable and her purses aren’t even leather. Instead she carries an L.L.Bean canvas tote bag with her everywhere. She bought Maria Fabiola a similar tote for school. After that, we all subscribed to the L.L.Bean catalog.

Usually I say goodnight and go to my room by myself to finish my homework, but tonight my parents follow me upstairs. After I’ve changed into an old and pilling Lanz nightgown, they both tuck me in. This hasn’t happened since I was nine. I can’t remember the last time my dad was in my bedroom—he looks around as though the furniture has moved.

“Can you help me get that sticker off my window?” I ask him. “The one that tells firemen there’s a child in this room.” I point to the window and my dad lifts up the shade. From inside the room you see the oval of the sticker but not the words.

“Sure,” he says. “Tomorrow.”

My mom uses her hand to brush my hair away from my forehead. Despite her devotion to the pink dishwashing gloves, her fingers are still rough. She’s told me that she’s had to add stitches to women’s vaginas in the surgery room—especially women from other countries—because they don’t want their future husbands to know they’re not virgins. These are the same hands that do that, I think. These are vagina-stitching hands.