“Look at this.” Ana holds out one of the larger volumes, pointing to an open page. Numbers and letters are scribbled down in neat rows and columns, but they don’t appear to be actual words.

I frown at the page. “Is it in code?”

Ana hefts the book onto the table, laying it flat. “Yes and no.”

“Oh, well, that clears it all up.”

“Hush you.”

“Did you just actually say hush to me?” I feign clutching at a set of nonexistent pearls.

“Yes, I did, now shut up.” She points to one of the columns, tracing her finger down its length. “It’s a ledger. These values are for money coming in.” She points to another column. “This is for money going out. And these are dates. And this”—she taps her finger against the first row, the one with the illegible word scramble—“is for what exactly the keeper of this ledger is moving.”

“How do you figure?”

Ana shrugs, her shoulders tight. “Esmeralda had one just like it.”

“But I thought—” I cut off said thought before I can speak it aloud. It seems too rude to point it out.

“What? That I couldn’t read before I met you?” Another shrug. “I couldn’t, not really. No one bothered teaching me the alphabet, but I could make sense out of shapes and patterns. I saw more than that old bag probably wanted me to. She assumed my ignorance meant I didn’t understand what was going on. But I did.”

There’s something lurking beneath her words, some dark thread woven throughout. I shouldn’t grasp for the end and tug but …

“What was she tracking?”

“People, mostly. Girls coming in. Girls going out. What they were pulling in every night and what they were costing her.”

“I suppose it’s a business like any other…” But still, the thought sits uneasy.

Ana cants her head to the side as she studies the page.

“Can you make sense of it?” I ask, crowding beside her. She doesn’t move, though her arm is pressed flush to my stomach. “We know it’s a ledger, but for what exactly?”

She shakes her head. “No. Maybe if I look it over, compare it to other pages, other records but…” Her voice trails off. “What did you say Magdalena’s cousin’s name was?”

“Juana. Juana Garcia Lorca. She and Magdalena shared a family name. But why—”

Ana waves me silent, bending over the page with the same look on her face as when she’s working her way through one of the many puzzles my father gifted me with as a child. He’d returned with one for us—for me and Alejandro—after each of his travels.

“These are initials.” She indicates one of the entries. “JGL 210958. Juana Garcia Lorca. Did Magdalena say when she disappeared?”

I think. The realization flows into me like molten lead. “She came to me on the twenty-third of September.”