How about her vitals? Any identifying marks? Piercings, tattoos, scars?

The sisters close their eyes, each one doing her own memory scan of Izzy’s body. There’s some debate about her height: five foot three or four, no way she’s five foot five, as she likes to give out; weight, anywhere from a hundred to a hundred and fifteen pounds, up and down depending on her moods and diets. Remember her breatharian phase? Mona reminds her sisters. Izzy was convinced she could survive on air and sunlight? The sisters launch into storytelling. Officer Morgan keeps running his hand over his face like it’s a magic slate he can wipe clean. The chip on her upper front tooth from when she fell on her face as a kid showing off she could fly from a not-too-high branch of a backyard tree; her really skinny, narrow feet, making it hard to find shoes that fit; her nails bitten down to the quick, and oh!—

She has this tiny birthmark on her left wrist in the shape of a plane, Antonia offers. Every time Izzy boarded a flight, she’d show off her birthmark. A santera, that’s like a fortune-teller, predicted I would die in a plane crash, she’d announce to her seatmates, knowing full well what she was doing, drama queen that she was, always stirring things up. Not a good idea after 9-11 and the widespread fear of terrorists blowing up planes. A couple of times flight attendants had to ask her to keep her fortunes to herself or she’d have to be escorted off the flight.

Officer Morgan wipes his face again. They keep this up and he’s going to tear that form up, Antonia reminds her sisters in Spanish.

When he’s done being the amanuensis to all their stories, Officer Morgan begins tidying up his desk—signaling the conclusion of their interview, not unlike the custom back home of standing a broom by the door to let la visita know it’s time for them to leave. He has done all he can do. He’ll enter Felicia’s information into his computer, but unless there is some proof of foul play or mental issues—and that, too, would need proof, he adds when their faces brighten—there’s not much else he can do. There are several internet registries that the sisters can access on their own and post photos as well as all the statistics of the missing person, thereby broadcasting their search worldwide.

The officer takes down Tilly’s home and cell numbers, Antonia and Mona’s cell numbers, dismissing them finally with a noncommittal We’ll keep an eye out. These missing-person situations resolve themselves on their own 95 percent of the time.

Has the data behind this claim actually been gathered? Mona challenges. Another hand wipe across his face. A gesture he has repeated so many times, several nicks have started bleeding again, leaving tiny red teardrops like birthmarks all over the tired face.

What a jerk! Mona vents in the car. Did you see how his whole face was full of scratches? I bet he beats his wife. I bet she tried to defend herself with her nails.

That’s hilarious, Tilly says, riding Mona’s riff. I bet that’s why he was so la-di-da about Felicia Vega. She mimics his mispronunciation.

I can’t believe he’s never heard of Catch-22, Mona adds, one more demerit. I mean, it’s even been on Jeopardy!

Her sisters are doing what they always do when they depart a scene, parsing the meat off its bones, analyzing, judging, exclaiming over the different personalities, a kind of sisterhood digestive system.

Come on, you guys, be fair, Antonia reminds them from the back seat.

How can you say that? He was a total idiot! Mona has turned around to face Antonia. The interior of the car is too dark for Antonia to see Mona’s outraged expression, but she knows it’s there.

Back at the house, the three sisters commandeer Kaspar’s laptop and spend the hours until dawn visiting all the missing-persons entries from Massachusetts to Illinois. Several times they have had to consult Google to figure out which states neighbor each other on the way to Tilly’s. The only geography they were taught as children was of their half island.

Do they post a profile? Or would that bring on el fukú of bad luck? Maybe Kaspar is right? Maybe they’re doing the familial overreaction and they just need to calm down? Officer Morgan said most times, especially with adults, these “disappearances” work themselves out. And Izzy loves the shock value of turning up when you least expect her.

As they scroll down the profiles of the missing, Antonia catches herself lingering among the entries. Maybe she’ll spot a familiar face, Samuel Sawyer, 71, last seen on the way to his favorite restaurant one evening in late June to celebrate his wife’s retirement.

Mona is the first to break down. She blames herself for not insisting earlier on an intervention. She has long suspected that Izzy was not well, and it’s only gotten worse in the last couple of years. Izzy with her grandiose plans of saving the world, wildly ecstatic during her manic phases, then plunging into dark moods during which, like astronauts behind the moon, she cannot be reached. But they’ve gotten used to it, inured to Izzy’s chronic craziness, even at times amused at how outrageous she can be. Bottom line, they’ve not wanted to be their sister’s keeper. Living your own life is a full-time job. Mona bewails the fact that she doesn’t even have a single photo of her sister on her iPhone, but dozens of shots of her dogs.

Your dogs are important, her sisters keep reminding her. Come on, Mo-mo. You can’t blame yourself. It’s nobody’s fault.

Or everybody’s fault, Antonia thinks, remembering the times she counseled Izzy to take care of herself so as not to become a burden on anyone else, code for I’m overwhelmed by your needs.

But Mona won’t be comforted. She’s on a roll, bending over, swaying and wailing, grieving in a way that feels ancient. She wants to know where her sister is! Izzy, who hasn’t been in touch for now going on forty-eight hours, not even texting happy birthday to her momentary twin sister; Izzy, who called from somewhere in Western Mass, on her way to Ill-y-noise, after she took care of some business having to do with buying an abandoned motel to house her migrant artist revolution.

How crazy it all sounds. Antonia runs her hand over her face, recalling Officer Morgan’s gesture. Three kids. How can he manage if he is divorced or widowed? Especially when he’s on the night shift? Antonia’s heart is momentarily heavy with his load.

The narrow path, the narrow path, she keeps pulling herself back. His burden is his, Mario’s and Estela’s theirs, and hers is hers. But Antonia is having trouble keeping everybody separate. O, that way madness lies; let me shun that, she reminds herself. It has always worked, a guardrail of the best that has been thought and said. Culture is a great help out of our present difficulties; she recalls a discussion over Matthew Arnold’s essay. Her senior seminar looked doubtful. Kids raised on medications for attention deficits, anxiety, mood and behavior disorders. Meanwhile Antonia has read her Arnold; taken daily doses of her favorite poems, novels, plays; practiced meditation on and off for years.

But even so, she can’t seem to ward off the dragons of the world. An ongoing problem, which is why she tends to be reclusive, constructing the firewall that others must have inbuilt as part of their healthy emotional operating system. She thinks of Officer Morgan on his night shift, calling home to check up on the kids, making sure they’re not doing something they shouldn’t be doing: visiting forbidden websites or watching naughty videos; reminding the oldest to heat up the macaroni and cheese in the fridge, feed his younger sibs, do the dishes. Good night then, say your prayers, Antonia imagines him saying. Be sure to lock the front and back doors, there are a lot of crazies out there—three of them have just visited the station, a fourth one is still on the loose.