Praise
‘A perfect balancing act with terror on one side and love on the other . . . It’s marvellous’ Stephen King
‘From the opening page your heart will be in your mouth . . . it will change your view of the world’ Kirsty Wark
‘Made me understand better why someone would give up the home they know and love to survive’ Tracy Chevalier
‘Electric, important, heartbreaking and joyous’ Kate Hamer
‘A roaring human triumph’ Laline Paull
‘A dazzling accomplishment’ Julia Alvarez
‘Leaps the borders of the page and demands attention’ Sarah Blake
‘Relevant, powerful, extraordinary’ Kristin Hannah
‘Harrowing and necessary. As pacey as a thriller but full of deep compassion’ Julie Cohen
‘Not simply the great American novel, it’s the great novel of Las Américas’ Sandra Cisneros
Also by Jeanine Cummins
Fiction
The Outside Boy
The Crooked Branch
Memoir
A Rip in Heaven
About the Book
She feels every molecule of her loss and she endures it. She is not diluted, but amplified. Her love for Luca is bigger, louder. Lydia is vivid with life.
Yesterday, Lydia had a bookshop.
Yesterday, Lydia was married to a journalist.
Yesterday, she was with everyone she loved most in the world.
Today, her eight-year-old son Luca is all she has left.
For him, she will carry a machete strapped to her leg.
For him, she will leap onto the roof of a high-speed train.
For him, she will find the strength to keep running.
For Joe
Era la sed y el hambre, y tú fuiste la fruta.
Era el duelo y las ruinas, y tú fuiste el milagro.
There were thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle.
—Pablo Neruda, from ‘The Song of Despair’
Chapter One
One of the very first bullets comes in through the open window above the toilet where Luca is standing. He doesn’t immediately understand that it’s a bullet at all, and it’s only luck that it doesn’t strike him between the eyes. Luca hardly registers the mild noise it makes as it flies past and lodges into the tiled wall behind him. But the wash of bullets that follows is loud, booming, and thudding, clack-clacking with helicopter speed. There is a raft of screams, too, but that noise is short-lived, soon exterminated by the gunfire. Before Luca can zip his pants, lower the lid, climb up to look out, before he has time to verify the source of that terrible clamor, the bathroom door swings open and Mami is there.
‘Mijo, ven,’ she says, so quietly that Luca doesn’t hear her.
Her hands are not gentle; she propels him toward the shower. He trips on the raised tile step and falls forward onto his hands. Mami lands on top of him and his teeth pierce his lip in the tumble. He tastes blood. One dark droplet makes a tiny circle of red against the bright green shower tile. Mami shoves Luca into the corner. There’s no door on this shower, no curtain. It’s only a corner of his abuela’s bathroom, with a third tiled wall built to suggest a stall. This wall is around five and a half feet high and three feet long – just large enough, with some luck, to shield Luca and his mother from sight. Luca’s back is wedged, his small shoulders touching both walls. His knees are drawn up to his chin, and Mami is clinched around him like a tortoise’s shell. The door of the bathroom remains open, which worries Luca, though he can’t see it beyond the shield of his mother’s body, behind the half barricade of his abuela’s shower wall. He’d like to wriggle out and tip that door lightly with his finger. He’d like to swing it shut. He doesn’t know that his mother left it open on purpose. That a closed door only invites closer scrutiny.
The clatter of gunfire outside continues, joined by an odor of charcoal and burning meat. Papi is grilling carne asada out there and Luca’s favorite chicken drumsticks. He likes them only a tiny bit blackened, the crispy tang of the skins. His mother pulls her head up long enough to look him in the eye. She puts her hands on both sides of his face and tries to cover his ears. Outside, the gunfire slows. It ceases and then returns in short bursts, mirroring, Luca thinks, the sporadic and wild rhythm of his heart. In between the racket, Luca can still hear the radio, a woman’s voice announcing ¡La Mejor 100.1 FM Acapulco! followed by Banda MS singing about how happy they are to be in love. Someone shoots the radio, and then there’s laughter. Men’s voices. Two or three, Luca can’t tell. Hard bootsteps on Abuela’s patio.
‘Is he here?’ One of the voices is just outside the window.
‘Here.’
‘What about the kid?’
‘Mira, there’s a boy here. This him?’
Luca’s cousin Adrián. He’s wearing cleats and his Hernández jersey. Adrián can juggle a balón de fútbol on his knees forty-seven times without dropping it.
‘I don’t know. Looks the right age. Take a picture.’
‘Hey, chicken!’ another voice says. ‘Man, this looks good. You want some chicken?’
Luca’s head is beneath his mami’s chin, her body knotted tightly around him.
‘Forget the chicken, pendejo. Check the house.’
Luca’s mami rocks in her squatting position, pushing Luca even harder into the tiled wall. She squeezes against him, and together they hear the squeak and bang of the back door. Footsteps in the kitchen. The intermittent rattle of bullets in the house. Mami turns her head and notices, vivid against the tile floor, the lone spot of Luca’s blood, illuminated by the slant of light from the window. Luca feels her breath snag in her chest. The house is quiet now. The hallway that ends at the door of this bathroom is carpeted. Mami tugs her shirtsleeve over her hand, and Luca watches in horror as she leans away from him, toward that telltale splatter of blood. She runs her sleeve over it, leaving behind only a faint smear, and then pitches back to him just as the man in the hallway uses the butt of his AK-47 to nudge the door the rest of the way open.
There must be three of them because Luca can still hear two voices in the yard. On the other side of the shower wall, the third man unzips his pants and empties his bladder into Abuela’s toilet. Luca does not breathe. Mami does not breathe. Their eyes are closed, their bodies motionless, even their adrenaline is suspended within the calcified will of their stillness. The man hiccups, flushes, washes his hands. He dries them on Abuela’s good yellow towel, the one she puts out only for parties.