I handed Rose the baby and stood so I could look Julia in the eye, more or less—she was a couple of inches taller than me. “Julia, I’m too tired for a night of lies or half-truths. Tell me about the soap dish. Did you or did you not give it to Freddy?”

She shot a glance at her mother, but Rose was frowning at her. “You tell the truth now, just like the coach said, Julia. Your sister is missing, we don’t want to be a dentist taking the story out of you little bit by little bit with a drill.”

“I did give it to him, all right? I didn’t tell you a lie about that.”

I smacked the couch arm. “The whole story, at once. This is more important than your hurt feelings. When was this?”

Julia’s face turned as red and round as her baby’s, but when she saw neither her mother nor I had any sympathy for her she said sulkily, “Christmas. Last year, already. And Freddy looked at it, he said, what did he want with some girly present like that? And then I found out he gave it to Diego, and Diego gave it to Sancia.”

“And then?”

“What do you mean, ‘And then?’”

I heaved a loud sigh. “Did Sancia keep it? Does she still have it?”

She hesitated, and her mother pounced on her before I could open my mouth. “You tell me this minute, Julia Miranda Isabella!”

“Sancia showed it to me,” Julia yelled. “She bragged how Diego loved her, he gave her this beautiful thing, even with a little piece of soap in it shaped like a flower, and what did Freddy give me? I was furious. I said, how funny, I gave Freddy one just the same as this. Diego, he’s Freddy’s cousin, she asked Diego, did he steal Freddy’s soap dish?, and Diego, he said, no, Freddy gave it to him. So she was all insulted, secondhand goods, she said, and she wouldn’t keep it, she gave it back to me! Like I was trash who needed something like that, something I bought with my own money and my own boyfriend didn’t want!”

The tears began to roll down her cheeks in earnest, but Rose and I just looked at her in exasperation. “Where is it now?” I asked.

“I threw it out. Only, Betto and Sammy, they wanted it. I said, fine, they could use it as a tank, they could break it, I didn’t care.”

“Do they still have it?” I asked.

Again she hesitated, and again it was her mother who forced her to speak. Freddy had come to her; he had changed his mind, he did want this soap dish after all. Diego had told him about it, about Sancia giving it to her, and could he have it back?