While her author’s children argued, Emma kept her head lowered and tried her best to be present yet invisible. The table that the waitress had given them was wobbly, the legs tipping back and forth every time Marcus or Raquel put their hands on it. Even a week ago, Emma would have quietly tried to steady it for them to stop the banging, but she didn’t now. Marcus was adamant that they call their relatives in São Paulo, but Raquel said they wouldn’t give that kind of money. She said their mother hadn’t been in touch with them for so long. Marcus tilted the table and said the alternative was to give Flamenguinho’s messages to the media and see if the coverage scared him into backing down, but Raquel told Marcus he was naive. She said the media made a soap opera of kidnappings all the time and it changed nothing. The news in Brazil, she said, was run by a bunch of union-loving idiots. Marcus asked her not to launch into one of her tirades and she told him to go to hell.

In the tense silence that followed, Emma kept her eyes down and her hands on her lap. She couldn’t think of anything to offer and knew they were not going to ask anything of her either, which left her free to panic about Miles landing in Bahia in nine hours. From there, he’d make his way to her hotel and then to her room. These were facts she had yet to relay in Portuguese to her author’s son.

She heard Marcus push back his chair. Anyone else want a caipirinha? Emma wasn’t sure she could stomach alcohol this early in the day but she nodded yes. In Marcus’s absence, she became more acutely aware of Raquel’s foot or knee, something of hers, tapping frantically against the table leg.

When the breeze sent Emma’s napkin sliding toward the edge, Raquel pinned it to the table like a bug. You should’ve called me the second he arrived, she said. He’s my brother.

But it was two in the morning. It was so late.

Did you show him my mother’s pages?

I told him about them, but I—

Give me the manuscript.

Raquel snatched it from Emma’s hand before she could place it on the table. Let’s make something clear, okay? If my mother never surfaces, you can find someone else to cheat on your husband with and some other book to translate. This is my family.

Emma opened her mouth to say that she wasn’t married, that she would be devoted to Beatriz’s work for the rest of her life, when something happened inside the café. Several large men had entered, their movements so dark and swift it was as if a colony of bats had taken over the entrance.

Something screeched.

Somebody shouted.

By the time Emma and Raquel rushed inside, all that was left of Marcus was a tall glass shipwrecked on the bar in a spill of caipirinha. On the floor, a scatter of ice and lemons.