From then on, I never let my father pull my shoulders back. I didn’t like the idea that my grandfather’s ghost was there; I always hated him. Maybe, too, that’s why my father drank so much, and it had nothing to do with the farm or my mother’s condition. At first.

My mind roved so much on that flight. Hummingbird, salamander, life on the farm, my brother. Settled on Silvina, on the file, on her family.

Silvina’s parents were still alive, back in Argentina. I looked at the photos before the rest of the data—an old trick. The data always made the photos conform to a certain story. Sometimes the photos wanted to tell a different story.

The patriarch, Matias Vilcapampa, first glimpsed from a fairly recent picture, in his early seventies, with a great mane of silver hair and a ruddy, brooding, pockmarked face. A terrible flare of irritation to the eyes as he did nothing to soften his expression in the company photo. Perhaps even took pride in his anger, expressed. Yet in the bags under those eyes, an undecided quality to the set of the jaw, I decided I saw weakness or vulnerability or confusion that signified loss. Something the anger was meant to draw attention from or solve.

He fled repressive regimes in Argentina only to wash up in Miami even more absurdly wealthy and come back after to his native country with more influence, more millions, than his ranch-owning grandfather ever could have imagined. The empire he’d created during this time focused on mining, oil, and other dirty industries. Vied for wells and veins in African and Central Asian countries and then preyed upon the South American countries with the least regulation.

In Argentina, as if not to soil the nest, he stuck to cattle ranching, even gave to environmental organizations. Everywhere else: a major exploiter, extractor, and polluter, with his own private army of bodyguards, and ruthless tactics from a corresponding army of lawyers.

What did Matias do for recreation? A big game hunter, a trophy hunter. The glazed, open eyes of a giraffe, lion, water buffalo, bear, accompanied him across a grim progression of photographs. And in these I imagined the confusion was mitigated or canceled or briefly gone. Because there is, at the very least—and Silvina would call it less than least—a certainty of purpose, a calm in the aftermath. In death.

I knew this man. So close in kind to my clients. This was how they postured, how they showed off the size of their balls. Common knowledge that we tried not to think about: that some of our clients had their own security teams. People who were ex-military. People who would do things for their bosses beyond fixing their security systems.