Inside the cottage, it’s like a pajama party gone awry. Maritza is giving everyone supportive back rubs. Mona uncorks a bottle of wine. Dot puts a hand over her glass. She’s on the job. Just water, thanks. Dot wears no jewelry, nondescript clothing, no brands or logos. If the point is not to have any identifying marks—tabula rasa—she better get rid of those funky glasses.

Dot has run every check on Nancy—litigation and criminal history: none of the databases turned up a thing. The gal is clean. Which doesn’t rule out greed, self-interest, finding an easy mark and taking aim. There is a lot in this world you can get away with and still be within your rights. It is not a crime to profit from the troubled or soon to be missing.

But what about Nancy ending up with Izzy’s cell phone? Isn’t that kind of fishy?

I thought the same thing. Mona nods in confirmation. But Dot has already worked this angle and lays it all out. Possession of Izzy’s cell phone is not in itself suspicious. It’s plausible. Say someone leaves behind their cell phone in your house. Obviously, you can’t call them to let them know. You figure they’ll retrace their steps once they find it missing. Remember, Nancy had no idea that Izzy was someone who had gone missing. Besides, Izzy was supposed to come back on her way home from Chicago. That’s what she told Nancy. So, if worse came to worst, Nancy was planning to return the cell phone then.

Mona and Antonia lift their eyebrows at each other. An expression of incredulity all the sisters share with their mother. Mangos under the tree. They’re not buying it.

I’ll tell you what I would have done, Mona says with the righteousness of the aggrieved youngest whose ideas are always discounted. Mona would’ve gone to Recent Calls and called every last one of those numbers. Left a message. Please let Izzy Vega know that she left her cell phone at my house. Maritza agrees. That’s what she would have done, too.

Some people are careless, Dot reminds them, giving the Realtor the benefit of the doubt. A benefit they will all need to avail themselves of in order to get out from the shadow of many doubts. Who among them hasn’t been negligent toward Izzy? She wears everybody out. “You had to like burdens to love Carson,” a friend of Carson McCullers was quoted in a retrospective article Antonia shared with her class. “Many of us could not afford her emotionally or economically.”

The best thing we can give the people who love us is to take care of ourselves so we don’t become a burden on them.

And when we do become a burden? Izzy had confronted Antonia the last time she had quoted her dictum on the phone. Izzy liked to push other people’s hallowed pronouncements to outrageous conclusions. Crack open those chestnuts. Then what? she’d asked. You’ll set me down on an ice floe and throw away the key? Like others in the family, Izzy was also always mixing her metaphors.

Dot would like to interview each sister individually. At first, Antonia suspects the private investigator of wanting to stretch out her billable time by doing separate depositions. But once she’s taken into the back porch, and Dot starts plying her with questions about Mona and Tilly, Antonia understands the strategy. Digging for dirt. How did her other sisters get along with Izzy? How about Kaspar—did he sometimes clash with Izzy? And Antonia’s own husband?

He’s dead, Antonia says bluntly. Didn’t this Dot do her due diligence? Wouldn’t that come right up in an online search? Antonia Vega, 66, retired university professor, widowed. No litigation or criminal record. She did recently harbor a fugitive, set her up with an appointment at the Open Door Clinic. There is a lot in this world you can get away with and still not be found in a database.

I’m sorry to hear that, Dot says in a chastened voice. A tough time to have another loss.

My sister isn’t dead yet, Antonia snaps at the other woman. They’re getting off on the wrong foot. Why is she making it so difficult? What would Sam do?

Actually, Sam would probably get up and walk away. He hated when things were made more complicated than he thought they needed to be.

Dot stops her phone recorder to signal they are now off the record. I totally get how hard this is, Dot says sincerely. I’m only doing my job. All in the best interests of bringing your sister back safe and sound. But if now’s not a good time . . . The sincerity laced with a veiled threat.

The cage door is open—Antonia could just fly away. But if not now, when? And she does not want to be the problematic sister. In the world according to private investigators, her prickliness would probably make her a prime suspect.

What is the right time to do things?

Let’s get this over and done with.

Were there any recent blowups between Izzy and any of her sisters? Was she on medication of any kind? Was she bipolar, as sister Mona claims? There seems to have been no definitive diagnosis or treatment trail. Would Mona have any reason to malign her older sibling?

Antonia can feel the tension on her face. She recognizes her own propensity to doubt, second-guess, suspect, and judge. But Antonia does not want to live in that kind of universe, even if it turns out to be the real one. What are you getting at? she confronts Dot.

I understand your parents recently died. Was there any disagreement on the provisions of the will? Sometimes those things can tear a family apart. One sibling tries to claim more of the pot. Another sibling feels she got a raw deal.

Dot might be the best there is in gumshoeing disguised as an addled grandmother, but she has obviously not had much experience with a Latina sisterhood. Conflict is their modus operandi. Comparing, competing, bickering, issuing epithets, condescending ringtones, you name it, and at the same time, utterly loyal and bound to each other. You can’t flatten that out into simple villainy.

Nor can Antonia give Dot a condensed, coherent summary of Izzy’s life. It’d be like trying to contain a genie in a bottle. Several marriages, broken hearts, what Izzy has called her trail of tears. The doctoral degree that took her forever to earn. I don’t know how you do it, Izzy commented to Antonia about writing her thesis. Whenever I write something, I have to leave so much out. Not enough, Antonia thought, as she ploughed through Izzy’s thousand-page dissertation.

Then there was the period Izzy got involved in causes—never in a calm, consistent, sustainable way. Always with an element of high drama. She was going to Nicaragua to join the Sandinistas; she was going to be a human sandbag at the border; she was walking across America barefoot to call attention to the Pies Descalzos Foundation and would not put on a pair of shoes until every child in the world was shod.

But what about when it snows and you’re barefoot in Kansas with half a continent to go? Antonia queried. And how will you know for sure when everyone in the world has a pair of shoes to wear?

There you go again, always ruining everyone’s parade. Izzy shook her head. The naysayers she had to put up with!

Then, there was the time after the election when Izzy bought a bullhorn. She was going to park herself in front of the White House, like that lady in The Arabian Nights Antonia was always talking about, and tell Sultan Trump a thousand and one tales in as many nights. What do you think? she asked Antonia.

I think you’ll get arrested.

Meanwhile, ordinary self-maintenance was beneath her standards. Izzy couldn’t hold on to money; she fell for men who took advantage, cheated on her, stole from her, went shopping with her credit card. Lately, the rootlessness. Her house for sale, her house as refugee camp.

Even Dot is looking weary. She keeps returning to the criminal element where she’s on surer ground. What about those ex-boyfriends or refugees in her house—could they have done Izzy harm?

Antonia’s phone rings, a number she doesn’t recognize, but she decides to take the call anyway. She needs get away from Dot’s universe. She excuses herself, slips out the door of the sunporch, and walks a few steps into the dark yard to a wooden bench. Thank goodness she is sitting down when the familiar voice says, Don’t get mad, okay?

She was on her way to Tilly’s. She had every intention of getting there in time for Antonia’s birthday. As a matter of fact, her car is full of gifts. She just happened to be driving through a town where a pottery shop was having a liquidation—

Antonia cuts her off: Do you have any idea what we’ve all been through in the last—what is it now?—nine, ten days? Antonia has lost count. She is sobbing with relief. Izzy is alive! But now that she is, Antonia is ready to kill her.