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“She was an artist?” Elliot asked. His mom, Naomi, had been an artist. She made baskets, wove small tapestry hangings, and even made jewelry to sell at markets in Green Bay and Shawano and at the gift shops in the Menominee Casino.

“No,” Taavi answered. “She just sold things for a small group of women who didn’t really speak much Spanish.”

“In Mexico?”

“My mother grew up bilingual—Spanish and Huastec. There was a community outside the city who made traditional Maya crafts, and the elders there only spoke Huastec.”

“Huastec?”

“It’s a kind of Mayan,” I put in. That was pretty much the extent of what I knew about it, but at least I had that.

Elliot nodded. “Like Menomini.” The way Elliot says it is different than the way white people—yours truly included—say ‘Menominee.’ “Mom spoke Menomini with the grandmothers she wove with.”

Taavi nodded, tucking the final beef enchilada into the next aluminum pan before sliding it toward me. “Back right pan.”

I did as requested. This sauce was a dark red and smelled spicy and rich.

“What happened to her?” Elliot asked, turning the conversation back to Taavi’s mom.

“When I was sixteen, she just stopped writing,” Taavi answered, having taken the mashed-up beans away from Elliot to smear into tortillas and top with a thick slice of cheese. “I didn’t find out until this year what happened.”

He took a long, deep breath, then slowly let it out.

Elliot waited. So did I, although I knew where the story was going.

“She was on her way home from work at PEMEX. They took her. Maybe because she was a woman. Maybe because she was a shifter. Maybe simply because they could.”

I watched his hands move automatically, going through the motions of spreading beans, adding cheese, folding over the tortilla, setting it in the pan. Starting the process over.

“She didn’t tell me what happened, exactly. How long it took or what they did. But they killed her, sooner or later.”

More beans.

“When she stopped writing, I wasn’t stupid.”

He added cheese.

“It took a few months, but Papá and I both knew she was dead.”

He finished folding the enchilada and put it in the pan.

“It happens a lot inMéxico.” He said it the way Mexicans said it. “Women disappear. Especially Indigenous women.”

“It happens here, too,” Elliot said softly.

“I know,” Taavi replied. “I was staying with Val when he talked to Ward about your cousin.”

Elliot just nodded at that, and I tried not to look too guilty. I had gotten Ward to help find River… a lot later than I probably should have.

“They never found her body,” Taavi continued. “Or, if they did, nobody ever bothered to identify it.”

“What about your father?” Elliot asked, softly.

“He went to find her. Or, more likely, to find out what had happened to her. Two days after I turned eighteen and could take care of myself.”

“Shit,” Elliot breathed.

“He left the house in my name, probably because he knew he wasn’t going to come back, although he told me it was so that I could take over everything that needed taking care of while he was away.”