Sabrina was shocked. She had wondered what Heather’s reaction to the necklace would be, but she never expected her to suggest that Sabrina might have stolen it. How dare she! She was desperate to talk to Neil, but Sean came off the path and over to the pool, so Sabrina shoved the baggie back into her pocket, furious to have regained possession of it.
“Hey, Sabrina. Did Neil get off okay?” Sean asked. He looked more rested today.
“I saw the plane taking off myself,” Sabrina willed herself to sound cheerful for Sean rather than outraged at Heather, who didn’t peek out from behind her book. “I’d better get going. I have water for my dog in the car and I’ve been chatting for ten minutes, which is a long time for a dog in the tropics to go without water, even in the shade.”
“Let me grab a bottle of cold water out of the fridge for her and I’ll be right out,” Sean said.
Sabrina walked to the jeep, grabbing Girlfriend’s portable bowl. She checked her phone for messages and saw a text from Neil.
“PR a dead end. Everyone remembers explosion but not the people. Trying city hall next. Wish we had more to go on. Stopping at St. Thomas on way back.”
Girlfriend barked as Sean approached the car with three bottles of water. Sabrina gave Girlfriend’s bowl to Sean, knowing he would make friends with the thirsty dog this way. He crouched down and before you knew it, Girlfriend was slurping water all over her new pal. Sean laughed as Girlfriend proceeded to nuzzle him.
She hated to spoil the tiny slice of joy Sean was enjoying, but she thought it might be better to cushion him for the disappointment he was in for when Neil and David returned from their unsuccessful mission.
“I got a text from Neil. They’re not finding any information about Elena. Lots about the explosion, but nothing specific about the people who were in it or survived,” Sabrina said.
“Damn. Why didn’t I make her talk more about her life and especially what happened? I tried, but she was so tight lipped about it and I hated making her feel worse. And it was hard. Living in San Francisco, we kept going to places where I’d meet friends from school and I’d have to explain who they were and how I knew them. She was so interested in learning everything she could about me and my life, but she didn’t understand that I wanted the same from her.”
“Maybe she was embarrassed about how humble her beginnings were compared to yours.” Sabrina could understand how Elena might not want to compare notes about growing up poor and without family.
“The only time I heard even an iota about her childhood, beyond the bare facts, was when I introduced her to Angel Pagan at a Giants game.” Sean scratched behind Girlfriend’s ears, sounding as if he were far away. He should get a dog to help him through this, Sabrina thought. She remembered when Henry had given her Girlfriend and how having a dog had gotten her through the aftershock of what had happened in Nantucket.
“Who’s Angel Pagan?” Sabrina asked.
“Not a baseball fan? He’s the center fielder for the San Francisco Giants. He grew up in Puerto Rico. The company has season’s tickets in the Virgin American Club box and sometimes some of the players will circulate in the boxes before a game. Angel popped into ours and I introduced him to Elena. They spoke a little in Spanish to each other. I could tell that she found the meeting stressful. Elena didn’t like spontaneity. She liked to plan things,” Sean said.
“Did she know him from Puerto Rico?” Sabrina couldn’t grasp why someone would find meeting a baseball player from their homeland stressful.
“Oh no. It was just that his name was similar to the classmate she had been with on the day of the explosion. She had been doing a school project with a girl who was an only child and had a much quieter apartment than Elena, who had five brothers and sisters.”
“What was the name of the friend?” Sabrina asked.
“Angelica Pagan. There was another name in the middle that I can’t remember. Elena called her ‘my little angel.’ She said if she hadn’t been with Angelica that day, she would have died with her parents and brothers and sister and everyone else in the building, for that matter. And after all that Elena went through to survive, she ends up being murdered. It’s not fair. I want to know who did this to her.”
The fury in his voice suggested she had better get him back on topic before she lost the opportunity to ask a few follow-up questions. She wondered what it would be like to lose your entire family in an explosion that killed everyone in the entire building. Would you feel guilty for surviving? Sabrina’s own meager beginnings in Allerton felt privileged compared to Elena’s.
“Did Elena keep in touch with Angelica?” Sabrina asked. She needed to rein Sean and herself in.
“I asked her that. She said Angelica’s mother sent Angelica to live in New York with her father, where she would be safe after the explosion.”
“Did you share this with Neil?” Sabrina suspected that what Sean had just told her had little value to the investigation, but it was more than what Neil already had to go on. Even a new last name might help. Maybe Mrs. Pagan still lived at the caserio.
“I can’t remember. I told him about the fire, but I don’t think I told him about Elena meeting Angel Pagan.” He refilled Girlfriend’s empty water bowl with what was left of his own bottle.
Sabrina reached for her cell phone and called Neil, hoping first for reception and second that he and David hadn’t left San Juan. For once, luck was with her. Neil picked up, and she quickly imparted the information she had learned to him.
“I know it’s not much, but it’s something,” she said breathlessly to Neil, who told her they would go back to the caserio.
“Maybe this will help,” Sabrina suggested to Sean, whose eyes she noticed were filling again. She knew only too well what it was like to be flooded with shifting emotions. Sorrow to anger to remorse and back to sadness swept in on relentless waves. The worst part was never knowing where each wave would toss you.
“How will I go on? How can I have a life without Elena? We hadn’t even moved into our apartment that she had decorated so carefully. We hadn’t taken the cooking classes we both needed because neither of us knew how to cook. We hadn’t done so many things she had planned for us, and now we’ll never be able to do them.”
Tears streamed down Sean’s face. Sabrina knew he was about to sob. Why did people feel so comfortable sharing their secrets and their feelings with her, dammit? She had no skills, no words, no nothing to soothe them with. Why couldn’t they sense that? Henry told her people opened up to her because she knew how to practice silence, to just be attentive and listen instead of trying to fix their problems. He said she knew how to bear witness.
“Sean, you will always have your memories. No one can take those from you. All those moments when you and Elena were together, especially those when you were alone with her and it felt like there was no one else in the world.” Sabrina thought about sleeping next to Neil on his boat the night before, both of them too tired to even contemplate sex, holding hands across their berths while the trawler rocked them to sleep. The sweet moments are what will get Sean through, she thought, until she realized she had unintentionally triggered a deeper grief.
“We hadn’t even, even . . .” Sean said. He bent over, sobbing.
Sabrina placed her hand on his back, hoping to rub away the agony and loss in Sean’s heart for all he never had and would never have with Elena, which Sabrina now understood included physical intimacy.