The Newark terminal was a river of noise and bad lighting, but when I found Joyce sitting near Gate 62 with a large plastic cup of iced decaf and a book of crossword puzzles, she looked up and beamed. Joyce was seventy-three, had two artificial hips that set off every magnetometer on the eastern seaboard, and possessed the indestructible cheerfulness of a retired middle-school librarian.

"Myrna!" she shouted, waving a half-chewed pen. "You made it! I told Harold before I left that if you didn't show up, I was going to find an Italian widower and spend all my money on leather jackets."

"Harold would have sent him a thank-you note," I said, sinking into the seat beside her.

Joyce looked at me closely, her smile tilting into that shrewd, diagnostic expression she had used for thirty years to catch eighth-graders passing notes. "You look different. Did you get your hair cut?"

"No," I said, looking out through the floor-to-ceiling glass at the massive Boeing 787 that was being prepped for Lisbon. The belly of the plane was open, a conveyor belt slowly ingesting silver containers of baggage under the gray New Jersey sky. "I dropped the children off at Patrice's."

Joyce stopped chewing her pen. Her mouth formed a small, perfect 'O'. "Tori left them with you?"

"This morning. At six-thirty."

"And you took them to Patrice?"

"I did."

Joyce stared at me for three long seconds. Then she reached into her oversized straw bag, pulled out a small bag of chocolate-covered pretzels, and dropped them into my lap with the reverence of a priest offering communion.

"Myrna Miller," she said quietly, "you are finally becoming a dangerous woman."

We boarded the Dreamliner at six o'clock.

There is an odd, floating unreality to crossing the Atlantic at night. Once the meal trays were cleared and the cabin lights were dimmed to a soft, bruised purple, the world shrank to the hiss of the air nozzles and the low, heavy thrum of the two massive engines hanging beneath the wings. Beside me, Joyce pulled a satin sleep mask over her eyes, tilted her head back, and began a gentle, rhythmic snore that sounded like a cat purring in a cardboard box.

I couldn't sleep.

I stared at the small digital map on the seatback screen in front of me. A little blue airplane icon crawled across an ocean of black pixels. To the west, thousands of miles behind me, another airplane was crawling across the northern arc of the Pacific toward Tokyo.

I thought about Caleb at seven years old, sitting on the counter while I picked splinters out of his knee after he had tried to climb the neighbor's cedar fence. He had been so brave, biting his lower lip until it was white, holding my thumb with both of his small, sticky hands. *You fix everything, Mom,* he had told me then, through a mouthful of tears.

And that was the problem, wasn't it?

I had fixed everything. When he forgot his lunch, I drove it to the middle school. When he missed the deadline for his college deposit, I called the registrar and begged for an exception. When he brought Tori home for Thanksgiving and she criticized the china pattern Charles’s mother had left us, I had pulled Caleb into the pantry and told him she was just nervous, that it was fine, that we would use the modern white plates next time.

I had built the ramp that allowed him to glide through thirty-six years without ever having to feel the jolt of hitting the curb.

I adjusted my neck pillow and turned my head toward the window. Outside, through the thick layers of acrylic, there was only the immense, terrifying black of the ocean, five miles below, indifferent to our schedules, our folders, and the small, cowardly arrangements of the people who inhabited its shores.

***

Chapter 4 - The Sound of Cobblestones and Dead Air

Lisbon in late May smells of roasting coffee, diesel exhaust, and salt from the Tagus River.

When Joyce and I stepped out of the arrivals hall at Portela Airport, the morning light was so clear and golden it felt like being struck gently between the shoulder blades with a warm flatiron. We took a taxi through streets lined with buildings covered in blue-and-white tiles—*azulejos*, our driver called them, pointing with a hairy hand as he took a roundabout at forty miles an hour while Joyce gripped the door handle and recited the names of her grandchildren under her breath.

Our hotel was a small, high-ceilinged building in the Alfama district. The floors were dark chestnut that groaned with every step, and the tall French doors in my room opened onto a wrought-iron balcony that overlooked a labyrinth of red-tiled roofs descending toward the river.

I set my suitcase on the luggage rack. The yellow ribbon was still tied to the handle.

I sat on the edge of the bed, kicked off my walking shoes, and turned on my phone.

It took forty seconds for the international roaming to connect to the Portuguese cellular network. When it did, the phone didn't merely chime; it shuddered.

Nine missed calls from Caleb.

Fourteen missed calls from Tori.

Six text messages from Tori.

Two text messages from Patrice.

I opened Patrice’s messages first.

The first was from nine-thirty the previous evening, which would have been mid-afternoon in Ohio:

*Finn tried to feed the whippet an entire waffle. The whippet survived. I have canceled Tori’s access to the shared grocery delivery account.*

The second was from twenty minutes ago:

*The screaming has begun from Tokyo. Do not yield.*

I stood up, walked out onto the balcony, and leaned against the cold iron railing. Down below, an old woman in a black apron was sweeping the stone steps of an alleyway, her broom making a dry, rhythmic *scritch-scratch* against the granite. A yellow tram clattered along the ridge of the hill above us, its bell ringing twice—sharp, cheerful, and distant.

My phone rang. The screen displayed Caleb’s face—a photo from two years ago, where he was wearing a baseball cap at the lake, squinting into the sun.

I answered it.

"Mom?" Caleb’s voice was hollow, distorted by twelve thousand miles of satellite relays and the roaring background noise of an airport terminal. He sounded panicked, the way he used to sound when he woke up from a nightmare about the dark. "Mom, where are you? What is going on?"

"Good morning, Caleb," I said. "It’s nearly ten o'clock here. The weather is lovely."

"Mom, Patrice has the kids!"

"I know," I said. "I dropped them off on my way to the airport."