By the end of the meal, he had a fairly good picture of Raul’s situation. His mother had been a wild child who ran away from her wealthy family. Tristan got the impression drugs were involved. When she got pregnant, she went home to have the baby, then left Raul with his grandparents. They’d raised him, almost entirely. Every so often his mother would come back and visit, then get into a fight with her parents and leave again.
She’d met Sebastian Perro—Seb Antonov—very recently. He’d romanced her and swept her off her feet. She’d requested some time with Raul so that he could meet her new boyfriend. Raul hadn’t liked him from the start, but he’d been polite about it. They’d all gone to a festival together, and Raul had gotten separated from the two adults.
“I was eating my churro and I looked around and couldn’t see either my mother or her stupid boyfriend,” Raul explained between bites of fried potatoes.
“That must have been scary.”
He nodded as he chewed. “I’ve practiced what to do if that happens, so I also was quite excited. I went right to the nearest polizia that I saw. But before I could reach him, Senor Perro found me. He said to come with him and we’d find my mother. But we didn’t. We got into a car and drove for a long time. I wanted to call my grandparents. He called them, but as soon as I said “Hola Tata” he pulled the phone away and got out of the car. He locked me in so I don’t know what he said.”
Tristan exchanged a long glance with Lulu. A ransom demand, no doubt.
“How’d you end up on the Northern Princess?” he asked Raul gently.
“In the morning we went to Buenaventura and got onto a big ship. A barco mercante.”
“A container ship?”
“Yes. Container ship. I think he paid someone for us to be on it. We had to hide.”
That made sense. If their IDs didn’t match, a child traveling with a lone adult could inspire some questions.
“Where did that take you?”
“To a city in America. After we arrived there, he talked to someone on the phone. A man came to meet us and give us some papers. And then we got on the cruise ship, all three of us.”
“The other man was your guard on the Northern Princess?” Lulu asked.
“Yes. I think…” He took a break to stab a chuck of salmon into his mouth, then chewed until he could speak clearly again. “I think he wanted money to give me back to my grandparents, and he’s waiting for my abuelo to send it to him.”
Tristan glanced at Lulu to see what she thought. She was listening to his tale as if some of it was new to her. Maybe she hadn’t had a chance to hear all the details before now. “What do you think, Lulu?”
“I agree. It sounds like he paid their way onto the container ship, and by the time they reached the U.S., his forged documents were ready to go. I don’t know why he chose the cruise ship. Maybe for all the free babysitting?”
Even though she said it lightly, she had a point. “Taking care of a ten-year-old has its challenges. But wasn’t there a risk that Raul would tell someone?” He looked again at Raul. “Did he threaten you if you told anyone?”
“Si, Capitán. He said he’d find my mother and kill her. I don’t know if he can but he was very scary when he said it.”
Lulu’s face paled, the blue of her eyes like forget-me-nots against her skin. “You were very brave to trust me.”
“Why did you decide to tell Lulu?” Tristan asked him gently.
“The guard was always following me, but he didn’t pay attention in the pantomime class. I didn’t say anything out loud. But I thought it might be safe to do the miming. I tried it and he didn’t notice.”
“I’m glad you did,” Lulu told him. “But it was very reckless and brave.”
“Also, you didn’t treat me like a stupid child with an accent. I thought you would listen and maybe believe me. And then you kicked someone. I thought you were very strong.”
Lulu pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, her eyes welling with laughter. “Strong is one word for it. I aimed one of my high-kicks at a customer who’d been bothering one of the other performers. Hit him right in the stomach. Of course I’d been aiming a little lower, but it worked. I apologized like the ditzy dancer I am.” She made a little face at Tristan. “They docked my pay for the day, but he never tried that move again.”
Tristan saluted her with a forkful of salmon. “Cheers to the ditzy dancer.”
Who was clearly not nearly as ditzy as she presented herself to be. He wouldn’t even use the word “ditzy,” actually. In his view, her lighthearted style masked a lot of things. As if she used laughter to move beyond pain.
Maybe it was the reverse for him. He’d always been an easygoing, carefree sort of guy, until the painful things had piled up like a load of bricks on his head. Only occasionally did he see daylight through that pile. As she’d put it, maybe he was being crushed.
One thing Lulu had done, for sure, was break him out of that rut. Maybe it had taken a tap-dancing cruise ship staffer and a brave kid thousands of miles from home to wake him up. At any rate, they were on his boat now and that made them his responsibility. He would not let them down.
Seventeen
Tristan assigned Lulu and Raul bunks for the night, and gathered his own sleeping gear to take on deck.
“What if it rains?” Lulu protested as he bundled up his sleeping bag and a pillow.
“Then I’ll come inside. I want to keep watch as much as I can. Don’t worry about me. I’ve slept in conditions neither of you can imagine.”
He launched a story of the time the Desperado had gotten trapped by ice during a cold snap in Unalaska. They’d radioed for help, but while they were waiting for an ice cutter to arrive, they’d reduced their rations and hunkered down. They were all driving each other nuts in the confined space of the cabin, so he remembered a story he’d read about a baseball game among whalers in the Arctic.
He’d rigged up snowshoes out of plastic dinner plates and duct tape, and whittled a bat from a backup spar. One of his deck hands had made a ball out of old fishnet. And they’d climbed out onto the ice and played baseball until it got dark. By the end he was so exhausted that he’d taken a nap on the ice, with his head resting on Bennie Crow’s right leg.
“That can’t possibly be true,” Lulu protested. “You’re making it up.”
“You can ask Bennie’s right leg when we get back to Lost Harbor.” He grabbed a jacket for extra warmth, then nodded to them both. “Hot tip for you. Never question a fisherman’s story. Just enjoy the ride.”
He winked at Lulu as he turned to leave. He could have sworn he saw some color rise in Lulu’s cheeks at the word “ride.” Was she imagining a different kind of ride, the kind that ought to follow a kiss like the one they’d shared? He hoped so, because he sure was.
On the deck, he chose a sheltered spot on the leeward side of the fish hold and unrolled his sleeping bag. In the darkness, he felt it before he saw it: a light coating of frost on the weathered boards of his deck.
It was here. First frost. Time was running fast through the hourglass, and before long the world would be covered in snow and the forest would sink into its deep winter slumber.