EIGHT

At a café in Barichara, Talia watched tourists at tables hunched over guidebooks, staring into their phones, wearing leather and string necklaces, mochilas at their sides. They drank coffee and juice, connected to the Wi-Fi. The only Spanish Talia heard came from the television hanging above the bar counter. Among the hour’s top stories: a dozen girls escaped from a reform school in the mountains of Santander. They didn’t show pictures or give names, only reporting that four girls had already been located but another eight were still missing. Cut to Sister Susana standing in front of the guard gate, a microphone held to her face: “We are concerned for the girls’ safety and hope anyone with information will do the right thing and contact us or the police. Their families have been notified and are very worried about them.”

Talia was glad she’d swapped her prison sweatshirt for a T-shirt she’d seen hanging on a clothesline after the old man left her on the town fringe, but she still wore her school sweatpants, grubby from running and wear. She finished the soda she’d paid for with money he gave her before parting along with a bendición across the forehead as if he were a relative. She went to the café bathroom to wash her face, topknot her hair. When she came out, she saw a man had just sat at a table alone—maybe her father’s age or a little younger, definitely not a local—and decided to approach.

“May I sit?”

He motioned with his hand to the empty chair opposite him. She’d learned a little English in school and from movies and TV programs that weren’t already dubbed. When her mother put Karina and Nando on the phone, she was able to understand some of what they said, even if she could tell they spoke extra slow for her benefit.

“My name is Elena.”

He studied her as if she might pick his pocket in plain view. None of the typical blitzed tourist expressions of dazed joy and overstimulation. She could tell in the past ten seconds he’d already determined he was much smarter than she was.

“What can I do for you?”

She understood he was waiting for lies so she opted for a version of the truth. “I ran away from my boarding school. I need to get back to Bogotá. My father is waiting for me. I have no money. Can you help me?”

He may not have believed her but was intrigued enough not to shoo her off as tourists do to children begging outside restaurants for change. His Spanish was good, though he gargled his r’s rather than let them rest on his tongue and extended his vowels like some trench-coated villain. He said he was French. His name was Charles but he went by Carlos, since he’d been in Colombia for years already, obsessed with the country since he first heard about Ingrid Betancourt, held captive in the jungle, and kind of fell in love with her. He studied philosophy, worked a government job that was a slow eradication of his essence until he heeded his heart’s call to South America.