Mona explains that she and Maritza are staying put in Athol. Moratorium on the jokes, okay? Mona announces, though she has been the one leading the charge in hilarity over the town’s unfortunate name. Mona has found a great Airbnb with three bedrooms, dogs allowed, a jacuzzi—where they can all camp out while local law enforcement devote some of their resources to finding Izzy. Tilly is on her way, with Kaspar, who insisted on coming along. They are driving east, tracing what might have been Izzy’s route, posting posters, talking to truckers. They’ll meet up late tomorrow night or early the next morning and go from there.

So, there’s really no urgency about Antonia’s arrival. What’s she going to do there that she can’t do from home? The overreactions of the sisterhood, always in crisis, sounding the alarm, so exhausting any time, but particularly now when Antonia feels hollowed out.

You’re the most American of us, her sisters have commented to Antonia in an accusatory tone. Just saying, they said smugly when she asked what was wrong with being whoever she was. Admittedly, she was the worrier, the insomniac, the most anxious and disciplined of the sisters. But it wasn’t that she didn’t feel as much as they did, but that she doled it out in limited portions. Of course, any such divergence from the culture of the sisterhood was considered a betrayal. So, for the last few years, she has been keeping her visits short and her interactions circumscribed.

Antonia considers coming up with some alibi, malingering for a few days before joining the fray. Not that staying home and dealing with the Estela-Mario predicament would be any picnic. But at least she’d delay days of escalating emotions, stewing in anxiety, listening to Mona and Tilly spout out conspiracy theories. She is the most important one. The selfish one who pulls away from the others, so sayeth the sisterhood. But now she’s also the next in line, duty-bound to take care of her younger sisters.

I’m actually driving, Antonia explains. I pulled over to talk. Just text me the address, and I’ll give you the heads-up when I’m on my way, okay?

Sure thing. Be careful. Love you. Reinstated into the sisterhood.

Love you, too.

Love you more, Mona says. Competing, even over who loves the others the most.

At the trailer, no one comes to the door in welcome, no one hurries down the steps to help carry in Estela’s bag. Maybe the boys are cleaning up in preparation for their guest? Maybe they’ll surprise her with female-ready digs? A cake, balloons?

Dream on. Antonia laughs at her wishful thinking.

Estela has been watching her closely. She doesn’t understand what’s funny, but nonetheless, she smiles a tentative smile—on her face the eager look of a child wanting to please. Antonia feels a flush of protective tenderness.

You’re going to be all right, she reassures the girl.

Once inside the trailer, Antonia is not so sure: Mario is grim and silent; José is all over himself, filling the silence with chatter; Estela, tentative, head bowed, her thank-yous barely audible. José shows the two women around: the tiny dirty kitchen, the dirty tiny bathroom, two tiny bedrooms—José has vacated his for Estela; he’ll join Mario in the other one.

The time has come. Antonia pulls the worried girl to one side and slips an envelope into Estela’s hands. It’s my number and la doctora’s and un dinerito. Anything . . . anything happens you go right next door to el patrón. The note explains what he’s to do.

And then, she repeats again, you’re going to be all right.

The young girl’s lips tremble, tears well in her eyes. A child who has realized that her mother will not be staying with her on the first day of school.

I really have to go, Antonia pleads. She touches the red string on the girl’s wrist. Acuérdate: you are armed with good luck. God will protect you. The tears fall. Estela’s crying is noiseless. Her sorrows aren’t meant to disturb anyone.

But they disturb Antonia. The girl, the two boy-men, the world of impending doom in which they and others like them live. Antonia has veered from her narrow path. Looked over the guardrail at the reflection on the water below. As in a dream, faces shift into each other: Izzy’s, Sam’s, the face of the girl she is leaving behind, her own.

Who is the most important one?

seven

Objects in mirror are closer than they appear

On her way to her sister rendezvous, Antonia can’t stop thinking about Estela. Not just the immediate solution to the girl’s problem, but what will become of this kid with a kid?

At the mountain pass, a car has pulled into the overlook area; a man and a woman are pointing out the landscape to each other. Never again will she do that with Sam. No matter the sips, the narrow path, grief keeps ambushing her: unsuspecting moments, nooks, crannies, cracks where the root system of loving is embedded in her life. Brutally yanked out with that tearing sound of detaching a clump of grass from the ground.

Antonia recognizes the very spot where in her recent dream she went off the road. No snow now, no icy patch sending her flying over the side of the mountain, no frost on the windshield. The trees are showing the faintest halo of green and gold. Spring, at last. Sam’s favorite season.

She has been listening to a podcast. A therapist, recently widowed, is discussing her experience of loss and grieving. The woman is saying some wise things; in fact, she is quoting some of Antonia’s own chestnuts—in the midst of winter . . . an invincible summer. In a dark time, the eye begins to see, and so on—but instead of feeling comforted, Antonia feels irritated. What is wrong with her? She listens to podcasts, reads books on grief, searches for answers to her questions. But any suggestions she is offered annoy her. She has already tried that—and guess what? It doesn’t work.

The widowed therapist brings up Rilke. More chestnuts. Love consists in this: that two solitudes protect, touch, and greet each other . . . Perhaps we are here in order to say: house, bridge, fountain . . . Cómo se dice parir, me duele, tengo hambre, tengo miedo? (Estela intruding again.) In a letter to his good friend, a countess with too many surnames, Rilke has this wonderful insight, the therapist widow is saying. She doesn’t want to mess it up. Give her a second to find the quote. The sound of turning pages and the woman reads, Death does not wound us without, at the same time, lifting us toward a more perfect understanding of this being and of ourselves.

Does Antonia really understand Sam any better now than she did before? Or herself? Perhaps with time she will. Everything is still too recent, though the year anniversary is fast approaching, the maximum she can ask of anyone’s indulgence. Right now, she doesn’t need to understand; she needs to stop the leakage of spirit, plug the hole in her heart.

She turns off the widow-therapist and plays a recording Izzy sent her recently. A medium who communicates with the dead. Izzy had gone to a group session in a large auditorium and the medium had picked her out of the audience—instantly endearing herself to their attention-hungry sister. Someone from the other side was trying to reach Izzy. Did the letter M mean anything to her? Mami? Izzy had offered up. Or, maybe, tío Manolo, a favorite uncle who succumbed to liver cancer? Then there’s ex-husband Mark, diagnosed with a brain tumor, dead before the year was out. Or maybe it was Maritza, but wait, Maritza isn’t dead. . .

Ay, Izzy, honey, that is the oldest trick! Does M mean anything to you? the sisters mimicked and scoffed. A safe bet when everyone in the world has to have a mother!

Why was Izzy messing around with this possibly bogus new-agey evangelist-type character? The sisterhood put their heads together. The evangelist was Izzy’s kind of person. Someone who hung out at the fringes—where Izzy went to cast her bread upon the waters, feed the dragons. Seriously, did Izzy have any friends who weren’t going through or recovering from some trauma or other? It’s like if there’s a fire, Izzy couldn’t just stand at a respectful distance and warm herself. Of course not. How borrrring! Watch this! she’d howl, leaping into the flames. Izzy needs help.