On this summer day, even here in the shade, the heat is oppressive. I look around and see people surrendering to the heat—women fanning themselves, men with bandanas around their foreheads, people pouring cold beers down their throats. But I also see children defying the heat—shirtless boys playing soccer, girls and boys jumping, splashing, screaming under the spray sprinkler.

“You want to go swimming, Peanut?” I say. I touch her nose again. “How about we go for a quick dip in the sprinkler to cool off, and then we’ll go into the museum and get changed, and then we’ll head home to see Auntie Sabryna.” The auntie title is my idea. Sabryna will go for it. I think.

Chapter 54

Chapter 54

TYONNA AND I HEAD on over to the spray sprinkler area. I put the diaper bag in easy reach and easy view of where we’ll be standing. We stand only a foot away from the edge of the small drainage outlet.

“Let’s get wet!” I say to Tyonna.

I hold Tyonna precisely the way I held Willie when he was a baby, so the water doesn’t sprinkle on her directly. The spray hits my face and hair, and I shake my head so a few drops fall on the baby. I swear that I see Tyonna smile. I swear I hear her chuckle over the noise of children squealing and steel drums clanking.

Then it happens.

Sometimes people say, “It happened so fast that I don’t really remember how it happened.”

How can that be? I know everything that goes on around me. I do. I really do. But I am wrong. It erupts so quickly, so horribly, that I don’t precisely remember how it even started.

I see the two of them—a blond man in a light-gray suit, a woman in a tight black skirt and high-heeled shoes. They stand at the edge of the sprinkler area. They are initially right next to our diaper bag. Then the man in the suit walks toward me. The sprinkler water cascades on the man in the suit. A few people from the crowd watch the pair getting wet.

I know them. The vaguely handsome man—yes, it’s Orlov. Then I recognize the woman’s shoes before I actually recognize the woman. I hold the baby closer. I eye the diaper bag at the water’s edge.

Orlov is near me. Orlov is now next to me. I hold Tyonna even closer. She is crying.

“Hold that baby, tightly, Miss Ryuan. Try to quiet her down, if you will. And please remain quiet yourself.”

In this split second I am certain that I see sympathy in Nina’s eyes.

So make a scene. What difference will it make if I scream? And then I see the difference.