I said, “You left me some pretty good breadcrumbs to follow.”

“Call me Gretel,” she said with a smile.

I tilted my head to the side. “Actually, I didn’t find all your breadcrumbs. I was in the throes of dengue fever when the anthropologist from the expedition found your message under the bowl.”

“What expedition?” Gina asked, leaning back several inches. “Wait, you had dengue?”

She fought down a grin. “So that’s why you look like someone dug you up out of your own grave.”

“I guess there’s a lot to tell you,” I said. “And technically, I still have dengue, though I may look like shit because I’ve been living in the jungle for two weeks.”

She laughed and I was reminded of how incredible she looked when she did. Like someone who’d just found twenty dollars in an old coat.

Gina was getting ready to say something when there was a rustling deeper in the jungle. A moment later, a young man with a bushy blond beard emerged from the thick foliage.

Patrick Sewall jumped up.

“Daniel!”

“Dad?” The young man’s mouth fell open. “What are you doing here?”

Patrick Sewall raced forward and pulled his son into his arms. Even from twenty feet away, you could hear the older man sob into his son’s shoulder.

“Dad!” the son said, almost laughing. “It’s okay.”

“I thought you were dead,” Patrick said, pulling away slightly.

“Dead?”

He nodded at the grave a few feet behind him. “There was a cross on it, so I assumed this was your grave.”

“No, that’s one of the villagers.”

Martin stepped forward. “So why is there a cross?”

Daniel turned his gaze to Martin. If Daniel recognized the aging ethnobotanist, he didn’t show it. He said, “A decade ago, fires ravaged the Bolivian Amazon, and a village of Machinere Indians had to flee their home. They stumbled on this village, and they were taken in. A missionary had converted the Machinere to Christianity years earlier.”

Turning back to his father, Daniel said, “I told you this all in the email I sent. Though if you’re here now, you must not have gotten it.”

Patrick said, “The last email I got from you was on May eighth. I’ve been looking for you ever since.”

Daniel shook his head, obviously confused. “I sent you an email on June eleventh telling you everything. How I got lost, then hurt, then saved by these amazing people. And how I found the cure.”

“You found the cure for cancer?” asked Martin.

“No, not cancer.” Daniel rolled up his shirtsleeves and stuck both arms out in front of his father.

“It’s gone!” Patrick said. “Your psoriasis is completely healed.”

“That’s what I told you in the email,” Daniel said, grinning. “I think I found the cure for autoimmune disease.”