This isn’t at all how Lydia wanted to begin, so formal, so cold. She shakes her head, inches her chair closer to the desk. Paola does not back away.
‘I need your help,’ Lydia says.
Paola nods. ‘Of course,’ she says, reaching out to pat Lydia’s hand before clasping her own hands together on the desk again. ‘All we need, then, is her death certificate and a copy of her will, if you have it—’
Lydia stops the woman from talking by clearing her throat. She looks not at Paola’s face but at the knot of her hands on the desk between them, at the simple gold wedding band. She speaks without looking up.
‘My mother was murdered. My whole family was murdered by the cartel in Acapulco. My husband, my sister. Sixteen of my family members.’ She is speaking very quietly now, leaning toward Paola across the desk, and she can hear that Paola’s breathing has changed – no – has stopped, actually. She glances up at the woman’s face and sees the same stillness there. It’s a paralysis born of empathy, so Lydia chases the rest of the words out of her mouth quickly, before she loses her nerve or her track, before she begins to cry. ‘My son and I escaped. He’s there, just outside. We had money, but we were kidnapped in Sinaloa and now it’s gone. And we need my mother’s money to pay the coyote now. To get across. I’m my mother’s only remaining child.’
There’s only one hand left on the desk now, the one with the wedding ring. The other has gone up to Paola’s face, to Paola’s mouth, where its presence might prevent the escape of some of Paola’s informal reaction. ‘Oh my God,’ Paola says. Because what else could she possibly say? She opens a lower drawer and withdraws a box of tissues, which she places on the desk between them. ‘That birthday party massacre in Acapulco, I read about you. Your family, oh my God. I’m so sorry.’
‘Thank you,’ Lydia says. ‘It was my niece’s quinceañera. Yénifer.’
Paola crumples a tissue from the box and holds it beneath her nose. Lydia takes one, too. Then they look each other in the eye. Lydia whispers.
‘Do you have children?’
Paola nods. ‘Three.’
‘I’m afraid we’re going to die. This money is the only way to save my son.’
Paola pushes her rolling chair back from the desk. ‘Wait here,’ she says.
She’s gone for what feels like a very long time, and when she returns, she’s carrying a folder stacked with documents. She sits back into the chair, and Lydia straightens her posture. Paola opens the folder and, using the mouse, clicks the computer monitor to life. ‘Do you have any identification?’
‘Yes.’ Lydia digs into her backpack and finds her voter ID card. She hands it to Paola, who studies it for a moment, looks more closely at Lydia’s face, and then sets it on the folder.
‘Bank card?’
‘Yes.’ She produces this as well.
‘Are you a custodian on your mother’s account?’
‘No.’
‘And you don’t have a death certificate for her, I’m sure,’ Paola says.
‘No.’
‘Or a copy of her will?’
‘No.’ Lydia tries not to panic. Surely this woman is going to try to help her. She understands. She knows that Lydia has none of these documents, has no way of obtaining any of these documents without returning to Guerrero and getting herself killed. But what if it’s simply impossible? What if Paola is trying to help Lydia find a loophole, but all she’s really doing is confirming the inevitable bad news that Lydia has no legal right to this money? Lydia tries to breathe deeply, but everything shakes.
‘What is your line of work?’ Paola asks.
‘I own a bookstore in Acapulco. Or I did. I guess I still do.’
Paola types into the computer. ‘Name of the business?’
‘Palabras y Páginas.’
She types some more, and then twists the monitor so Lydia can see. She’s not filling in forms, Lydia realizes. She’s googling her. Verifying her story. Making sure this is not a con job. ‘This is you?’
She’s opened the website Lydia’s been meaning to update. There is her picture on the ‘contact’ page. She’s wearing black leggings and an oversize sweater. It’s an outfit she’ll never wear again. It’s in her dirty clothes hamper in Acapulco. Lydia’s unremarkable happiness in the photograph takes her breath away, and a sob cuts loose into the cubicle. Lydia wishes the walls stretched all the way to the ceiling. Her eyes are two lines, her mouth, a line. She nods her head at Paola, who reaches across the desk and squeezes Lydia’s hand. Then she stands and steps around the desk. She removes Lydia’s backpack from the chair and sits down beside her.
‘My nephew disappeared last August,’ Paola whispers. ‘He was missing for three days. When they found him, his head . . .’ She pauses for a long moment, so Lydia thinks she might not continue. But she’s only gathering strength. ‘His head was separated from his body.’ Her hand trembles in Lydia’s. They squeeze each other tightly. ‘He was a beautiful boy,’ she says.
And now it’s Lydia’s turn to experience that empathy-paralysis. The depth of her feeling surprises her, because how can she have any leftover grief available for other people, for Paola’s murdered nephew? But there it is – an anguish that makes her feel hollow in the bones, despair for a beautiful boy Lydia never met. For the innumerable griefs of all those stolen boys, stretching from family to family like one of Luca’s connect-the-dots. It’s so big, the pain. It’s exponential. Each violent death amplifies itself a hundred times, a thousand times. Everyone in this bank knows some small or large portion of that grief. Everyone in Nogales. Everyone who lives in a place that’s been carved up into plazas and parceled out for governance by men like Javier. For what?
Lydia lets go. All the torrent of emotion she’s been corralling for weeks, it all tries to squeeze through at once. She curls into a tight ball in the wooden chair and she sobs quietly, and her body is a knot of grief, and Paola is a stranger, but her hands on Lydia’s back are the hands of God. They are Sebastián’s and Yemi’s and Yénifer’s. They are her mother’s hands. Lydia weeps into Paola’s lap, and Paola weeps with her. They weep for themselves and for each other. And when they’re finished, they clean themselves up using only the Kleenex on Paola’s desk.
Paola rubs Lydia’s knee roughly and then honks her nose into a tissue. She tosses it like a three-pointer into the wastebasket on the far side of the little cubicle. And then, ‘I might lose my job,’ she says quietly. ‘But I will get you that money.’
Lydia’s head pounds. She closes her eyes in grateful disbelief. The aftermath is like a jackhammer in her sinuses.