“Another survivor,” Buick said. “Safety in numbers.” He had jelly on his chin.

“Wait, how’d you find us?”

“You told me you were going to Silver City. I figured you’d get here all right with Chance.”

Calliope pursed her lips. She could’ve gotten to Tía’s without Chance. Is that what everyone thought of her? That she was a helpless pregnant woman who needed a man to survive? She let it go, asked instead, “How’d you find my tía’s?”

“Yellow pages and a map, in town.”

“Smart girl.”

“Yeah.”

“There’s running water here.”

“How?”

“Tía’s is a genuine sanctuary, Amy. You’ll see. Go shower, eat something. I need to get Eunjoo to bed. Wait till I tell you what we’ve been through here, what this little girl has been up to. And I want to hear about your journey.”

Amy laughed in her crumpled-bag kind of way, her smile lopsided. “Sounds good, momma.”

Calliope didn’t bristle this time. In fact, she was relieved to hear it.

* * * *

Calliope lifted Eunjoo’s sweatshirt over the girl’s head. “Get in the shower, chica. I’ll get clothes.” She dug through Phoenix’s backpack: her son’s clothes. She pressed them to her face, breathed in, hoping his scent might have lingered, though she knew it was impossible. These were clean—they smelled of laundry detergent. Shower water jetting behind her like rainwater on pebbles, Calliope reached into the bottom of the bag for a clean pair of her son’s chonies and felt instead a piece of paper.

A piece of eggshell-colored stationary, which she unfolded. It was Susana’s letterhead, a letter, inked in Susana’s hand.

Calliope was trembling.

When had she written it? It must’ve been old, right? A letter she’d written Calliope months before, that Phoenix had stuffed in there. She’d probably already read it.

Or Eunjoo had picked it up from the table at Susana’s. A grocery list, a list of sites to explore. Directions. It couldn’t have been anything else.

She was afraid to read it. The words swirled black ink across the page, hazy, unfocused.

Eunjoo was singing now, from the shower, her bird’s voice rasping a tune Calliope vaguely recognized as a pop song from the radio.

She breathed deeply, read the first line:

Calliope, mija—

It was as if the paper had seared her hand, she dropped it to the bathroom tile. It couldn’t have been a recent note. This had to be old. They had been comadres, colleagues. Susana must have written it and forgotten to give it to Calliope, before the world broke apart. It was a coincidence. Eunjoo had picked up a harmless piece of paper from the table. Coincidence Eunjoo had been carrying a letter from Susana to Calliope this whole time.

A clock picked up and jostled, hands frozen at the time of death, that was all.