Although he lived in front of the ocean, Rocha did not stop to watch it. To do so had come to feel like a cliché. Yet this morning, he could not resist. And so ten steps behind him the temporary bodyguard he’d hired for himself and Alessandro stopped as well. To be followed all day in this manner was exasperating, but until the services he’d paid for were completed, he had no choice. He had taken his free movement for granted.

He had also forgotten this splendid breeze, how one couldn’t feel it without coming to a stop completely, although it was not really the ocean that he was considering now so much as Raquel moving across it, how long it would take her to reach Boipeba. He found her a rather tiresome young woman, but imagining her alone on some boat full of tourists, he felt an ache for her.

Even if she did find her mother, the conversation, or lack of it, would be excruciating. Beatriz would fix her gaze on some gloomy incongruity on the beach—a plastic spoon jutting out of the sand, the hand of a broken doll, some dying bird. Raquel would see her mother looking away and would want more, much more, and who could blame her? Didn’t he want more from Beatriz? Didn’t everyone?