They took turns sleeping for a few hours, and as soon as it was light they put out the fire before descending the collapsed side into the ravine. The sky was still a dense orange above them, and occasionally, as they walked along the bottom, they could get the telltale acrid smell that hinted at the origins of the pollution.

After a few hundred yards, they found a way out on the other side, and Kate led the way along the trail at the top, as familiar with it as if she’d walked it a dozen times.

They stopped to collect some fruit from a tree, papaya or some variant of it. Tom noticed another fruit-laden tree nearby and pointed it out, but Kate seemed unsure.

“I don’t know what it is.” She looked at the fruit in her hands. “I remember a guide giving us these when we were in Colombia.”

“We might be in Colombia now.”

She laughed. “Okay, when we were in Colombia on vacation.”

They walked on but after a few minutes, Kate pointed to something littering the ground around a tree and said, “These are even better.” She picked one up and handed it to him. It looked and felt like a coconut, only heavier. “We’ll crack them open when we reach the others—brazil nuts.”

He smiled and said, “And you said I should be the leader?”

“It’s not my thing.”

“It’s not mine, either.”

“Yes it is, Tom. You just don’t know it. Come on, let’s put these in our packs and move on.”

“Yes, boss.”

They walked on in near silence, though occasionally Kate would point out some animal or plant or tree and make a comment about it. And he could hardly blame Joel for not seeing the knowledge Kate had, because Tom hadn’t been aware of it himself. Not even the brief preview in the jungle—when they’d found Naomi’s sneaker—had prepared him for how adept she was in this environment.

When she walked in front he noticed the ease with which she moved and yet the complete awareness she seemed to possess, of what was around her, what was underfoot, what lay ahead. Kate and Emma had been ready to walk out of this jungle on their own, and seeing Kate now, he had every confidence they would have made it.

They stopped for lunch in a spot where a couple of trails met and there was enough room to sit on their backpacks. They shared a small pack of oatmeal cookies and the smallest of the papayas they’d collected, and it was only the juice from the fruit that made Tom realize how thirsty he was, but they held off on drinking any more of their diminishing water supply.