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F ive days before previews, New York City’s heat wave turned lethal. Temperatures reached 104 degrees in the shade while industry ground to a halt and young and old alike died of heat stroke in the poorly ventilated tenements. Not a soul in or outside the city could explain why the ocean breezes had mysteriously died, leaving boats to boil on the piers or sink in the harbors as the heat melted the pitch.

I had to believe Río’s decline had something to do with it. As if the sea was retaliating on his behalf by refusing the entire American Northeast its cooling breath. Río’s skin had paled so much his copper hair looked garish against it. His fins, once lush and sharp with fronds, looked feathered and frayed. He moved like los hambrientos in Puerto Rico, like a sheet left hanging in the breeze, a living ghost.

Lulu discovered a long-forgotten tarpaulin in a steamer trunk, a remnant of the show’s traveling days. Painted against a faded red-and-white-striped backdrop was the voluptuous form of a scantily dressed woman holding a large hoop over her head in which letters read in bright golden script: “Queens County Menagerie.” It made the perfect costume for the tank.

She’d need more fabric than just ten feet of canvas, so we all turned our bolsillos inside out to pay for more. Lulu and Igor, having both cleared their act revisions with Morgan, set about taking apart Saul’s clothes, dragging tiny hooks through the seams until they had converted his costumes to strips of fabric they could bleach then patch together.

Then Navya came into the parlor dragging a mass of brightly colored satin behind her.

“Navya, nyet,” whispered Igor, shaking his head. “Your favorite saris...”

Madam Navya raised her dignified chin. “I have enough for my personal uses,” she said. “Once we return Mr. Benny’s maahi to the sea, these clothes may never see a stage again anyway. I feel better knowing they will help to conceal the merman on his way to freedom.”

I looked down at the rainbow pile with a lump in my throat. “I’d say your karma’s looking pretty good right about now, madam.”

She sniffed and quickly swiped at her eye. “Of course, it is,” she said, then left the room.

As Lulu and Igor hurriedly worked at the tarp, the rest of the company took turns directing Morgan’s eyes away from the treason happening right under his nose. Matthias and I scouted the path from the rear entrance of Luna Park through Dreamland while Eli and Emmett set upon Sam at his tent with a never-ending onslaught of bad jokes and bizarre ideas for new gags to impress the crowds.

The way Eli told it at the dinner table that night, Morgan tolerated this like a convict facing the firing squad without the benefit of a blindfold.

“Emmett goes, ‘Hey Eli, whaddaya call a clock with too many ticks?’ And I say, ‘A metronome with the hiccups!’ And then we start tap dancing! Get it? ’Cause of the ticks?”

Emmett’s face took on the purple hue of repressed humiliation. “That’s when Sam threw us out,” he grumbled.

The most difficult task fell to Sonia and me. As players in the headlining act, we walked the tightrope between proving the Prince of Atlantis would be ready for previews and denying Morgan the chance to rehearse Río to exhaustion. I played extended versions of every song I’d ever learned until he started nodding off in his chair. Sonia’s strategy was far more developed, a pattern that started with an especially tricky maneuver that required a new prop or costume change, followed by complaints of tenderness in her wrist or ankle, ending with demands for a different trick altogether.

Despite our best efforts, Morgan made sure he had time alone to bully his star attraction into quién sabe qué .

I stayed close to Río whenever I could. Despite the suspicion I’d seeded in Morgan’s mind when I protested the whistle, he still relied on me to maintain the water, which had become a daily necessity now that it only took hours for it to cloud over. At least Río no longer winced when the whistle blew, which told me Lulu’s earplugs were helping, but in a particular instance when Río and I shared the stage in Morgan’s presence, I’d noticed a new problem—something anyone without asthma might have missed.

After his dozenth turn about the tank, Río faltered, gulping water. I noted his posture, the way his chest was heaving, and instantly recognized what was happening.

Río couldn’t breathe.

Morgan took the pipe out of his mouth so he could blow the whistle. “No, no! Where is the power? Where is the drama? You are supposed to be the god of the ocean, Poseidon himself!” he hollered. “Again!”

I’d been hoisting a full moon into the rigging over the stage, a flat panel of wood and plaster I had spent the morning painting. As the mercury on my rage rose, I pulled it higher into the fly system over our heads until it had reached the catwalk.

Then I let go of the rope.

Sonia shrieked. The moon hit the stage with a hollow crunch— mere feet across from where Morgan stood.

He staggered back and shot a crazed look in my direction. “What the devil—”

“Sorry!” I ran over to pick up shards of splintered plaster. “My hands got too sweaty in the heat—it just slipped through my fingers.”

Slowly, Morgan strode toward me, the pits of his shirt wet and his face slick with sweat.

“Sam,” said Sonia in a small voice. “It was just an accident—”

He ignored her. “How exactly does heat make a blacksmith lose his grip on a bit of rope?”

I stood up with shards of the shattered set piece. “I’m only human.”

Faster than someone courting heat exhaustion should move, he pulled the derringer out of his breast pocket. My arms instantly emptied, scattering splintered wood and plaster as he shoved it in my face.

“Sam!” gasped Sonia.

“You must think I’m an imbecile,” he snarled. “You think I don’t know what’s going on here? That I haven’t seen through your ruse since the day you burst in here shouting about whistles?” He jabbed the tip of the gun at my face. “How much was it? Come on, now, what did he pay you?”

Pay me? My heart was thundering, but this suggestion was even more shocking to me than his threat to shoot me. “What are you talking about?!”

“Reynolds, Reynolds,” he shouted, spit flying into my face. “You’re in league with that grifting bastard, aren’t you!”

My eyes pinned themselves on the business end of his roscoe. “I’m not in league with anyone ! I couldn’t tell Reynolds from Juan ni Pedro!”

“Liar!” He grabbed me roughly by my suspenders. “Tell me the truth, you greasy spic!”

There it was, right on cue. My entire character reduced to profanity as soon as some pendejo decided I needed reminding of where I stood. My eyes hardened as they stared into his, and for a moment, his expression wavered with something like fear. If he wanted the truth, I’d give it to him.

“I would never sabotage the show... for Reynolds .”

Breathing hard through his nose, Morgan held me there for as long as it took for him to snap out of his tantrum. Finally, his hand unclenched around my suspenders, and he stepped back with a look that told me he’d been less unnerved by my “accident” than his explosive reaction to it.

“Fix that prop,” he muttered. “You’ll pay for it out of your wages.” He smeared the sweat off his face. “Now get out of my sight.”

By the end of the day, I’d rebuilt the moon, but I didn’t do it for Morgan.

I did it for Río. I’d hoped the counterfeit version of the real thing hanging over his head at night would console him and, after the previews, never be needed again.

Gracias a Dios , I had help now when it came to lifting his spirits. The company’s acts resumed their rightful place on the stage whenever Morgan saw no value in pushing a merman who had nothing left to give, so we’d leave the curtain open so Río could watch and be entertained.

Lulu debuted her new beard to the praise of everyone in the company. Igor and Madam Navya choreographed a dance together wearing their traditional garments, a spectacle that lacked all the absurdity they were going for and looked strangely beautiful instead. Eli and Emmett successfully fit into their shared set of trousers thanks to Lulu’s handiwork and delivered a comedy set so terrible it succeeded in being hilarious. And when Vera took the stage, it was as the beguiling, flame-wielding Phoenix.

The Mighty Matthias, the final act and original headliner, swaggered onstage like a demigod. Effortlessly, he lifted his enormous barbels. Bent thick iron rods with his bare hands. Sonia balanced herself on her forearms atop a large weight marked in white numbers—”2,000 pounds,” it read—and he hoisted them both into the air with vibrating arms while she arranged her legs in an elegant tower over her head.

Matthias never did tell me how much that thing actually weighed, but I decided to take the numbers at face value. Because as the company cheered and Río smiled at them from the floor of the tank, I realized that, just when I thought I’d lost my faith in everything, I believed in my family.

I hoped, when the time came, I would be strong enough to let them go too.