by Maile Meloy
Isabel didn’t answer.
Penny said, “We’re Americans.” That seemed important to say.
“How long you stand here?” the woman asked in English.
“We just got here,” Penny said. “We walked from the river.”
“Why?”
“We were looking for a road.”
“Is no road,” the woman said.
“We heard an engine,” Penny said, looking pointedly at the Jeep.
“Where are your parents?”
“At the big beach, down the river,” Penny said. “We came from the ship, a big cruise ship, but then we had a car accident. We were swimming. Mi hermano es diabético.” She’d been taught that sentence before they left, for emergencies.
Sebastian leaned into her. “Can I have a Coke?” he asked, louder than before.
The woman in the tank top frowned, then reached into the Jeep, brought out a bottle, and twisted off the top. Sebastian ran forward to grab it, then ran back to Penny’s side and drank.
She wished her mother were here. If Sebastian was low, the Coke would be good, but if he was high, it could make him feel worse.
“Will you give us a ride?” Penny asked.
They were not supposed to get in cars with strangers, but there were five of them. And they were asking for a ride. That seemed to make it safer. And the driver was a woman. You were supposed to ask a woman for help, if you got in trouble. Preferably a mother, but this was who they had. And maybe she was a mother. Although Penny doubted it.
“Okay,” the woman said, waving toward the Jeep.
Penny and Sebastian got in front together. The Jeep had an open top. Isabel looked toward the river and seemed like she might run, then got in the back seat with Marcus and June. The two men with the shovels crouched in the cargo area behind them. The woman reversed the Jeep.
Penny pulled the seatbelt over Sebastian’s bare chest and buckled it over herself, too. “Are you okay?” she asked him.
“I’m a little sleepy.”
“You should stay awake.”
“Okay.”
His blond hair was limp and damp on his forehead. Penny pushed it off his face.
“I have to poop,” June said, in the back seat.
“Hold it,” her brother said.
Penny looked back and saw June with her hands clamped on the crotch of her blue swimsuit, Marcus looking anxious beside her. When she looked out the windshield again, they didn’t seem to be going in the right direction. “We’re going back to that beach, right?” Penny asked.
The woman nodded.
“I don’t think this is the right way.”
“We call them,” the woman said.
“But their cell phones don’t work here.”
“We call the ship.”
“But they aren’t at the ship.”
The Jeep was driving down a paved road among trees, just like the one where the tire had blown up. That seemed like a long time ago now. Would her mother have gone back to the ship?
“I really have to poop,” June said.
“Keep holding it,” her brother said.
“I am!”
The Jeep stopped at a place where another road crossed, and the two men hopped out of the back, leaving the shovels. The woman waved to them. Then the Jeep was climbing a mountain, and a few houses appeared on the side of the road. The road wound and twisted and then a man on a tall white horse was riding toward them. The Jeep slowed. Penny thought she might be imagining the horse, it was so white and bright. But then June whispered, “He’s beautiful,” and Penny knew that the others could see it, too.
The Jeep stopped, and the man on the horse looked down at them. He had dark, frowning eyebrows, and he spoke with the woman in Spanish. It was all too fast to understand. Penny looked to Isabel in the back seat for a translation, but Isabel ducked her chin toward her yellow bikini as if trying not to be seen.
The horse snorted. It had soft nostrils, gray and pink. The man on the horse smiled. His teeth were white and straight. “Welcome,” he said.
“We need insulin,” Penny told him. She felt blinded by embarrassment and confusion, the heat rising to her face. “Insulina. My brother is diabético. Also we need a bathroom.”
“I have to poop!” June said.
“Pues, vámonos,” the man said, turning the horse with the reins, and the Jeep started up the mountain again.
8.
NORA’S HEAD THROBBED. All of her high school Spanish had vanished. She stammered and spoke English too loudly, as if that might make people understand and comply. What the fuck had she been thinking? She’d walked into the rain forest with Pedro in an erotic trance, and not like the mother of two children who needed to keep her act together.
Camila’s policeman brought a boat, an inflatable with an outboard, and put it in the water. It took forever. The outboard took them upriver, and they found the inner tubes on the other bank. And the small footprints headed into the trees.
The inner tubes had been hung deliberately, and the policeman said the footprints didn’t look like they were running, and there was no sign of blood, so it looked like they could rule out a crocodile.
Nora felt her lungs being squeezed; she could barely get a breath in and out.
They followed the footprints through the woods and found a clearing. There was a fresh rectangular disturbance in the ground. The cop tried to keep the women from trooping through his crime scene, but Nora fell to her knees at the edge of the freshly turned dirt, sure that her children were beneath it. She felt on the verge of insanity then, her world dissolving, her skin no longer containing her. Suicide had always seemed a mystery, but now she felt capable of killing herself to follow Marcus and June.
Shovels were brought. Men came, with stern voices. They cordoned everything off with tape. The grave was shallow, and soon they uncovered a body shrouded in a plastic tarp. It was too big to be a child. The police unwrapped it and found a man shot in the forehead.
Nora started shaking uncontrollably. “Who is that?” she cried. “What does that mean?”
Someone put a blanket around her shoulders. She finally got through to Raymond on a police officer’s phone, the conversation confused and urgent. The husbands were on their way. That should have been reassuring. Instead it was terrifying.
News teams came, and she didn’t want to talk to them, but Liv said that someone watching might know something, might have seen the children. Her cousin was stern with her, a little cold. She was keeping it together better than Nora was. So they talked to the cameras, pleading for the children’s return. Afterward Nora had no idea what she’d said.
Then the police quietly separated the parents and started questioning them alone. Nora found herself alone in a squad car with a tall female officer. The car doors were closed. The woman said her name was Detective Rivera. She had short hair, spiked up in front, and good English.
“You do missing persons?” Nora asked her, trying to think what a person said in this situation.
“No,” the detective said. “I usually do sex crimes.”
“Oh, fuck.”
“That’s not why I’m here,” the detective said quickly. “I was available. It’s Christmas week. And I speak English. That’s all.”
“Where are my kids?”
“I don’t know. That’s what we’re trying to find out.”
As they talked, Nora realized she had not been ruled out as a suspect. The other mothers hadn’t, either. Probably the fathers were suspects, too, even though they had been on the golf course all day. Did the detective think they had formed some Satanic cabal? The whole thing felt unreal.
“You think it’s like Murder on the Orient Express?” Nora said. “Like, we all took turns killing them? You understand these are our children?”
“Did you go off
alone with the guide?” the detective asked.
Nora froze. She’d forgotten her own actual guilt, for a minute. “Yes,” she said. “We were looking for birds.”
“What birds?”
“We saw a blue-crowned motmot on the trail. I wanted to see a quetzal.”
“By the beach?”
“Yes.”
“You are a bird-watcher?”
“Not really. We don’t have birds in LA like you do here. I mean, there’s a flock of feral parakeets, but that’s not really the same. They’re green and loud. And we have, like, crows, and seagulls. And hawks, and little birds like doves and robins. And pelicans. And there’s an owl I hear at night.” She was talking too fast.
“That sounds like a lot of birds.”
“It’s not,” Nora said. “We don’t have blue-crowned motmots. Or quetzals.”
“What is your occupation?”
“I’m just—a mom. I used to be a teacher.” She always hated that question. Her job was taking care of her family. And now the one time she had slipped, she had been punished like Job. God had sent a lightning bolt to destroy everything she cared about. She shivered.
“You had met Pedro before?” the detective asked.
“No,” Nora said, and she realized that Pedro would be interrogated alone, too. He might be arrested. He had taken them to the beach. He had failed to warn them about the tide, or the crocodiles. They might give him a polygraph. And what would he say? That they’d been looking for blue-crowned motmots? That he had fingered her expertly in the trees but hadn’t meant any harm? Were they recording these interviews? She looked around the car for a camera but didn’t see one. Weren’t interrogations supposed to have cameras?
“How did you meet Pedro?” the detective asked.
“Um—” she said, trying to remember. “We arranged for a shore excursion, on the ship. To go zip-lining. Pedro was the guide who came with the van to pick us up. It was arranged by the ship, through a local company. But then there was an accident. The tire blew out, and someone hit us when we swerved.”
“Did you call the police?”
“I think he did,” Nora said, but she found she couldn’t remember. Pedro had radioed—someone. “It was going to take a long time to get another van, and the road wasn’t safe, so we went to the beach.”
“And you trusted this guide?”
“Well, yes,” Nora said. “We thought all these people had been checked out by the ship. Should we not have trusted them?”
The detective shrugged. “Your children are missing.”
“He should have told us about the tide. He definitely should have told us that. But I don’t think he knew it would happen. And I was with him when it happened.” She stopped.
“What were you doing?”
Nora felt her armpits dampen with sweat. “We were looking for birds.”
The detective nodded and made a note.
“I’m not defending the decision to go to that particular beach,” Nora said. “That was a terrible, terrible decision. But I just mean he didn’t do anything to the kids.”
She remembered Pedro wiping his hand on the soft flat leaf, and wondered if the forensics team would find that smear of evidence. Would Pedro admit to what they’d done, in order to explain his absence from the beach, the length of time? She thought of Raymond finding out. Her neck grew hot with shame.
Detective Rivera didn’t seem to notice. “The other mothers,” she said, “what were they doing?”
“They fell asleep,” Nora said bitterly.
“Both of them?”
“I know,” Nora said. “They woke up and the kids were gone. Liv said she would watch them.”
“And you believe they fell asleep?”
“Of course.”
“Why?”
“Because I know them. Liv is my cousin.”
“And the woman from Argentina?”
“We just met on the ship. But she didn’t do anything to the kids.”
“So you have known her one week.”
“Almost,” Nora said. “Well, yes. A week.”
“Almost one week,” the detective said, making a note on the pad. “And were you drinking?”
Nora took a breath. “There was a slushy rum drink,” she said. “Daiquiris. Not very strong, just a lot of sugar. We had one drink each.”
“Who provided this drink?”
“Pedro,” Nora said, with an odd chill, as if she were drinking the icy liquid now, as if it were sliding down her esophagus. “He said they usually serve it at the end of the day.”
“Could it have been drugged?”
“No!” Nora said. She thought of date-rape drugs. Could that excuse her actions? But no, those knocked you out. And she had been fully conscious—more than conscious. Hyper-alert and vibrating. “I mean, sure, test the thermoses. But I had some, and I didn’t fall asleep. And Liv wasn’t asleep for that long. It was just hot out.”
“I’m only asking questions,” the detective said. “We are making no judgments at this time.”
“This is madness,” Nora said. “You could be looking for them right now! This country isn’t even that big! They’re out there!” She had a sudden image of Junie in the emergency room after dislocating her elbow on the monkey bars, being very brave but sobbing quietly, and she was plunged back into the pain. There was a physical ache in her chest.
“I promise you we are doing everything we can,” the detective said.
“I need my kids,” she moaned.
Detective Rivera watched her and made another note.
9.
AT THE TOP of the mountain, lost in the trees, Penny saw a house of bright, varnished wood, with a deck all the way around, looking over the forest. She remembered her parents talking about Switzerland, and this looked like Switzerland in books. Like Heidi lived here. The tank-top woman drove the Jeep through a security gate and up a road, and parked below the house. Sebastian had fallen asleep, his shirtless body sweaty against Penny’s arm, and she jostled him awake. He moaned.
She unbuckled their seatbelt and helped him out. He had a red mark on his pale skin where the seatbelt had been. Marcus helped June. Isabel was trembling, hugging herself in her yellow bikini.
The man with the white horse swung off the saddle and unlocked a door in the lower level of the house. “Welcome,” he said, standing back from the open door.
“I have to poop!” June said, and she ran inside.
Penny started to follow her, but Isabel reached for her arm. “Don’t,” she said.
“We have to,” Penny said. “She can’t go alone. She’s six.” Isabel was being so annoyingly chicken. Penny stepped into the house, and found herself in a large windowless room, a kind of entryway, with two doors off it to the left.
“June?” she called.
“I’m in here!”
Penny walked through one of the doors into a tidy bedroom, and then into a clean white-tiled bathroom. June had her swimsuit down and was folded in half on the toilet, legs dangling, with her chest on her thighs and an intense, staring look in her eye.
“You good?” Penny asked.
June nodded.
The woman from the Jeep led the rest of them—even reluctant Isabel—upstairs. The house was beautiful. Sunlight flooded in through enormous windows, and filtered through green trees. They could see a dappled valley far below. There were stables outside, and a big lawn.
The floors were polished wood, and a big sunken living room had low red couches, with a thick white rug between them. These people probably didn’t have kids, if they had a white plush rug. Penny longed to stretch out on it and take a nap. But first she had to take care of Sebastian. And call their parents.
The kitchen was open and bright, with a big island in the middle. Penny’s mother would like it. The man wit
h the white horse spoke to a woman with a plump, nice face, who began to take food out of the refrigerator.
Then he said, in English, “I call the doctor for your brother.”
“Can we call our parents?” Penny asked.
“After the doctor. It is important.”
“My parents will be worried.”
“Of course. So we take care of your brother.”
“We’re Americans,” Penny said.
The man smiled his handsome smile. “Yes, I know this.”
The woman was slicing papaya with her knife: nick, nick, nick, against the wooden cutting board.
“When will the doctor come?” Penny asked.
“Soon,” the man said.
The woman set out a platter on the table: sliced papaya, mango, and banana, with white rectangles of cheese, like a fruit plate in a hotel.
“Please, eat,” the man said.
“We have to wash our hands,” Penny said.
He gestured to the sink.
Penny helped Sebastian wash his. Then she watched as he took fruit and cheese. Cheese was okay. Fruit was good if his blood sugar was low. But he’d already had the Coke. They needed to get back to his pump. The mango was soft and ripe and sweet. June came upstairs, her swimsuit straps twisted. Penny asked if she’d washed her hands.
“Of course,” June said, indignant, reaching for a piece of papaya, and sitting beside Marcus in the same kitchen chair. He moved over for her.
Only Isabel refused to eat, hugging herself in her swimsuit.
An older man came into the room. He was tall, with white hair and bushy eyebrows, in a button-down shirt.
“Hola, Papi,” the man with the white horse said. Penny could tell he was trying to act casual.
The old man watched in silence as they ate, then shook his head and went upstairs to the third floor.
By the time the doctor came, Sebastian was like a rag doll, slumped on one of the low red couches in the big living room with all the windows. The doctor was a woman, and she seemed nervous. She had a bony face and her hair in a bun at the back of her neck. Penny answered her questions about the lost insulin pump.