I pulled the soap dish out of my shoulder bag. I’d sealed it in a plastic bag, but I handed it to Rose and asked if she recognized it.

She barely gave it a glance before shaking her head.

“It wasn’t in the employee bathroom at the factory?”

“What? Something like that? We had a dispenser on the wall.”

I turned to Josie, who had peered over her mother’s shoulder at the little frog.

“You recognize this, Josie?”

She shifted from foot to foot, looking nervously behind her into the living room, where Julia was sitting on the couch. “No, Coach.”

One of the little boys was jumping up and down. “Don’t you ’member, Josie, we seen them, they was at the store, and—”

“Quiet, Betto, don’t be butting in when Coach is talking to me. We seen them—saw them—around, they had them at By-Smart around Christmas last year.”

“You buy one?” I prodded, puzzled by her nervousness.

“No, Coach, I never.”

“Julia did,” Betto burst out. “Julia bought it. She wanted to give it—”

“She bought it for Sancia,” Josie put in quickly. “Her and Sancia used to hang out, before María Inés came.”

“Is that right?” I asked the boy.

He hunched a shoulder. “I dunno. I guess so.”

“Betto?” I knelt so my head was at his level. “You thought Julia bought it for a different person, not for Sancia, didn’t you?”

“I don’t remember,” he said, his head down.

“Leave him alone,” Rose said. “You went and bothered Frank Zamar and he got burned to death, now you want to bother my children so you can see what bad things happen to them?”

She grabbed his hand and dragged him into the apartment. The other boy followed, casting me a terrified glance. Great. Now the boys would think of me as the bogey-woman, able to get them murdered in a fire if they spoke to me.

I pushed Josie into the apartment. “You and I need to talk.”

She sat on the couch, the baby between her and her sister. Julia had clearly been paying attention to our exchange at the door: she sat tense and alert, her eyes on Josie.

In the dining room beyond, I could see the two boys sitting under the table, quietly crying. Rose had disappeared, either into the bedroom or the kitchen. It occurred to me that the couch had to be her bed: when I was here before, I’d seen the twin beds where Josie and Julia slept, and the air mattresses for the boys in the dining room. There wasn’t any other place in the apartment for Rose.

“So where did Billy sleep?” I asked. “Out here?”

“He wasn’t here,” Josie said quickly.