“I spoke with one of her doctors again tonight while you were in the shower,” Dad said. He’d promised to fill me in on any new information he got about Mom, since he’d be the one everyone was talking to, and I wouldn’t always be there when he did. “Your mother is pretty sick. All her tests and blood work are starting to come back from the lab, and none of them are normal. They’re taking a bunch more and sending them out again.”

“But it’s just because she was dehydrated, right? There’s nothing seriously wrong with her?” I asked.

His eyes flooded with concern. “Technically, yes, but it’s complicated. Severe dehydration and malnutrition can really screw up your body’s systems and organs over time. We have to wait and see what the follow-up test results show before we know anything more.”

“How come the baby is so healthy?” I asked. I heard Meredith’s sharp intake of breath behind me at the mention of the baby. Dad hadn’t said anything about the baby, and I hadn’t wanted to ask, but not because I didn’t want to know. Everyone wanted to know about her.

“The baby is healthy because she was able to breastfeed, but your mother didn’t have that option, so your mother is severely malnourished,” he said without missing a beat.

“So the baby is hers?” I asked.

“Yes, the baby is hers. It looks like she gave birth seven weeks ago.”

Dad held my hand as he led me into the hospital room with Marcos the next morning. Marcos motioned to one of the padded office chairs lining the wall. Bad jazz music played from a speaker somewhere, and soothing magazines filled a rack in the right corner. I stood, crossing my arms, like somehow if I didn’t sit down, then they couldn’t tell me whatever it was they were going to tell me, since this was clearly the room where they told people bad news. Dad, Meredith, and I stood in an odd semicircle.

Marcos’s expression had been the same for two days; he never smiled, and there was nothing friendly about his eyes. The shirt underneath his jacket was red today. It darkened his skin.

“Why don’t we sit?” He phrased it as a question, but it was more of a directive.

I gripped Dad’s hand tighter as we sat in the chairs next to each other, so close our knees touched. It wasn’t the first time an investigator had led us into chairs like this, but we’d never been here before. Someone in the hallway shut our door, and the air left the room immediately. Everything felt fluid. My head swirled with the motion.

“I wanted us to talk about the next steps with your mother,” Marcos began, wasting no time getting down to business. He always referred to Mom as “your mother.” He never said “your wife” to Dad or even mentioned her by name. It was weird. How did he refer to her when he and Dad talked alone? “The medical director from the hospital arrived last night as expected and was kind enough to come straight from the airport. After—”