Inside the trailer, Antonia tries to persuade Mario. Estela’s just a girl. She’s got nowhere to go. And no, I can’t keep her with me, she adds. You’re going to have to figure something out.

Mario studies the scuffed linoleum floor as if it were a road map that might show him a way out of his dilemma. Antonia knows he’s in the unenviable position of not wanting to contradict la do?ita: she could turn him in; she could complain to el patrón. But he can’t get past his revulsion at taking up with a girl who willingly gave herself to another man. He has his own honor as a man to defend, he says.

Honor, schmonor. Antonia waves the word away. What about showing a little compassion? Estela made a stupid choice, but it was only because she was lonely. She thought she had lost you. She loves you. It’s you she wants to be with.

Then she shouldn’t have done what she did. He had to make many sacrifices himself. It took him a while to cross over, to pay back the money he’d borrowed to pay the coyotes so he had something to send home. Even then, he had been against her making the journey north, precisely because he did not want her exposed to any harm. But it turns out, she had already willfully thrown away the flower of her girlhood.

Antonia is surprised by the fanciful phrase coming from the mouth of this impoverished and uneducated man. As if poetry can’t survive in such impoverished conditions. In fact, poetry (and honor) might be all you do have. Sometimes she catches a glimpse of her faulty default self, and she doesn’t like what she sees. We all make mistakes, she reminds Mario more gently. Look at Jesus, didn’t he teach us to forgive? Perdónanos nuestras deudas, así como nosotros perdonamos a nuestros deudores, she intones. Forgive us our trespasses. How readily she recalls the words of her childhood prayers. Bedrock stuff she’ll never get rid of. Madre Teresa, after all.

But Mario’s bedrock machismo has an equally strong hold. He shakes his head in quick jabs. He will have nothing to do with esa puta. Take her to the migra and they will send her back home, where she belongs.

Don’t call her that! Antonia feels her own anger rising. She’s not a puta. She’s . . . una jovencita, loca enamorada . . . Antonia struggles for the correct term, convinced if she lands on the right phrasing, it will be the abracadabra that unlocks the young man’s heart. But she’s fallen out of practice of arguing her case in Spanish now that Mami and Papi are gone.

Call her what you want, Mario says, a snarky insolence in his voice Antonia has never heard before. It grants her a rare glimpse of who the young man might be in a world where he could be the macho, wielding power. But to me she is no better than a prostitute.

José has been standing by, witnessing the escalating scene. He comes forward now. El patrón is due back any moment. If la do?ita will allow him, he, José, will talk to Mario, convince him of the honorable thing to do even if the girl has done a dishonorable thing. ?Hasta ma?ana?

Antonia is relieved to defer the confrontation till tomorrow. She needs to run into town, get a few groceries, connect with her sisters over what has or hasn’t transpired with Izzy. Has Investigator Kempowski come up with anything? Has Mona landed in Boston? Tilly set out from home? She also needs to make those calls to the clinic and the hospital.

The last thing she needs . . . She doesn’t dare complete the thought. Just thinking it might bring on the next worst thing.

On her way into town, Antonia calls her sisters, using the Bluetooth device Sam recently installed in her car, knowing how Antonia liked to use her driving time to make many of her obligatory calls. I don’t want to end up being a widower, he had remarked. Those now seemingly prescient moments come back to haunt her: the past signaling this future, but with the roles reversed.

Tilly’s number, then Mona’s, goes to voicemail after half a dozen rings. Do they hear church bells and decide not to pick up? Any news? Please call me back. She dials Izzy. Why not? Instantly, she’s shunted to voicemail, Izzy’s phone out of juice or turned off.

Kempowski also can’t come to the phone right now, but her call is important to him. Please leave a detailed message. She decides not to, as there’s only so much nagging you can do, even if you are paying someone a hefty fee to find your missing sister. Besides, she wants to talk to him in real time, another strange phrase, real time. What other kind of time is there? Language seems increasingly strange. When did that start?

She’s in the checkout line when a call comes in from Mona. She landed a couple of hours ago at Logan, where she was picked up by Maritza, and they’re headed to Athol. Some interesting details have been surfacing. Maritza saw Izzy a couple of days before Izzy left to look at some properties for her centro. Izzy was high as a kite, talking nonstop. At one point Maritza said Izzy went to the bathroom, and her cell started to ring, so Maritza opened Izzy’s handbag to answer it, and whoa! It was full of cash, packets of bills, and half a dozen bottles of medications. So, did you rob a bank? Or a drugstore? Maritza confronted Izzy when she came back to their table. Izzy just narrowed her eyes and grinned with mischief. I mean, just the idea that Izzy would be walking around with a bag full of loot.

Kempowski needs to know all this.

I’ve already told him, Mona informs her. There’s a gloating tone to baby sister’s voice. As the youngest, she loves it when she can be first one to know and then report to the others.

Antonia unloads her cart onto the conveyor belt, a pile of groceries she would never buy for herself. But back in aisle two amid the sugary cereals, Antonia decided to bend her strict eat-healthy rules to accommodate Estela. Cocoa puffs, potato chips, Oreos, soda, taco shells, Goya beans, cheddar cheese, chocolate milk. The items speed forward into the ready hands of Hi, I’m Haley.

Hold on a sec, Antonia tells Mona. Haley needs to know if Antonia wants paper or plastic. Antonia hoists her paper bags into the cart and rolls away from all the noise.

Sounds like you bought up the store, Mona says, sounding offended about having to wait.

Does she tell Mona about what has come up? Antonia decides not to. Last thing she needs is Mona’s advice about what to do with Estela.

Anyhow, as I was saying, I called Kempowski, and he already was in touch with the Realtor, Nancy Something, who couldn’t say enough nice things about Izzy, how she, Nancy, felt she had met a long-lost sister. How she showed Izzy some really great deals. But for now we’re just going with the motel and the farm. Mona has moved from recounting what she has learned about the Realtor to imitating her.

A farm! Antonia feels she’s trapped in the maze that is Izzy’s mind in one of her manic spells. The world is crazy, grant it that, and granted she has been so wrapped up in her grief, but still, how could its craziness have come so close and she never noticed until recently? She needs the psychic version of Sam’s movement lights to flash warnings in her brain when precarious situations and needy people are nearby.

Mona, too, has lost her glee. She continues her narrative in a weary voice. How Izzy slept over at Realtor Nancy’s house before taking off to visit her sisters outside Chicago. How Nancy tucked her in that night. Her “long-lost sister” on whom she can unload all her worthless properties. What a total jerk! I don’t even want to talk to that woman, Mona says in their mother’s ultimatum voice.

We’re going to have to work with a lot of jerks if we want to find our sister, Antonia reminds Mona. She, too, is finding it increasingly difficult to keep up her faith in people, in herself. In the past when her own stash got this low, there was always Sam filling up her cup with his abundant kindness. She has continued to think a lot about the afterlife, especially in the absence of any sign from Sam. What, if anything, does it mean? An afterlife? All she has come up with is that the only way not to let the people she loves die forever is to embody what she loved about them. Otherwise the world is indeed depleted. Sam: always thinking the best of people. Izzy: casting her bread upon the waters. Generosities of which Antonia was often the lucky recipient. But what is she thinking? Izzy is not dead.

And guess what? Mona interrupts Antonia’s thoughts. Kempowski was going to have Izzy’s cell phone pinged, but no need. Nancy turned it in. Seems Izzy left it behind there and it ran out of juice. No wonder we couldn’t reach her.