Page 90 of Girl in the Water

“I went to college with boys, yes.”

“Did you have a boyfriend?” The girl’s eyes sparkled with mischievous curiosity. Both sisters watched her with rapt attention.

“I had friends who were boys.”

The younger girl giggled again. “Gabriela has a boyfriend,” she whispered.

Her sister shoved her. “Fernanda!”

And Daniela said, “I won’t tell.”

Gabriela shot a warning look at her sister. To Daniela, she said, “He only came upstairs once. When I was sick and I couldn’t go down to work. He brought me fried piranhas.”

Daniela remembered fried piranhas fondly. “Seems like a good guy.”

Gabriela allowed a shy smile. “He is. He wants to marry me when I graduate from here.”

Daniela smiled back, grateful beyond words that places like this existed.

She fanned herself with her hand as they stood out under the sun. She’d gotten used to the cooler climate in DC. Manaus was even hotter than the jungle village she’d grown up in. In the village, they had the tree canopy above to cast shade. The city was little more than streets and buildings. The blacktop radiated back the sun’s heat, and the buildings trapped the sweltering air, kept it from moving.

Earlier, during the un-air-conditioned truck ride to the shops and back, sweat had dampened Daniela’s shirt, and she was even hotter now, standing in the garden. The combination of heat and humidity was too much.

“So just one boy?” she asked. “No other outsider has ever been upstairs?”

But the girls just shook their heads earnestly, and as Daniela looked into their open and honest gazes, she believed them.

After she finished the garden tour with the sisters, she decided to go upstairs and wash off, put on a clean dress.

As she reached Carol’s room, she slowed. Then, on impulse, she knocked.

She couldn’t shake off the image of Carol so cozy with Ian on the couch downstairs earlier. What had they been talking about? Daniela wanted to chat with the woman, even if only for ten minutes, wanted to get a feel for whether or not Carol was maybe interested in Ian.

Because when Daniela had turned to leave with Pierre earlier, Carol hadn’t been upset. She looked relieved. As if maybe she’d been upset not because Daniela had been out with Pierre, but because they’d come back and interrupted Carol’s little chitchat in the rec room with Ian.

The thought made Daniela mad enough to choke a caiman.

She had no trouble seeing Carol being attracted to Ian. Who wouldn’t be? And Ian…

Carol was older than Daniela. Ian had a hang-up about age. Carol had lost her husband. Ian had lost his wife. They had that in common. Carol was having a baby. Ian missed his sons, even if he refused to talk about them.

Is Carol what Ian looks for in a woman?

Daniela clenched her teeth.

As she knocked again, the door pushed open. It hadn’t been properly closed.

She stuck her head in. “Carol?”

But Carol wasn’t in there.

A printout on the small table just inside the door caught Daniela’s eyes. A plane ticket confirmation for the day after tomorrow. Then she noted the half-packed suitcase in the corner.

Daniela pulled the door closed and walked toward her own room. Carol was leaving? Was that what she’d been talking to Ian about earlier?

Nobody could blame the woman if she’d changed her mind about having her baby here. Daniela was sure Manaus’s hospitals were great and very modern, but she’d bet hospitals in the US were still better.

She washed, changed, then went back downstairs. Ian and Carol were gone from the couch. Daniela looked around, but when she didn’t find him, she hopped on a bus, then another and another, and rode around the neighborhood. With Ian off somewhere, she was free to follow up on an idea she’d had earlier.