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felt far away and foreign. Mostly, she waited for whatever would come next. Then one day, just when Jennifer was beginning to think the police silence meant they must have found something to back up Emma’s story and were pursuing other leads, she got a call from José.
    After the usual pleasantries, he said, “I’m afraid I have bad news.”
    Jennifer’s stomach tightened as she waited for the rest. “The police have informed me that they will be picking up Emma again for questioning. Apparently they are confused by some elements of her story and need further clarification. I believe their questions will concern the murder weapon, which they claim they have found. It would be best for you to prepare Emma. Call me as soon as they arrive.”

CHAPTER 5
    J ennifer was surprised and distressed when the police showed up at 7:30 the next evening. She would never get accustomed to Spanish time. They didn’t seem to respect day and night the way Americans did. She placed a hasty phone call to José, who said he and Raul would meet them at the police station. It worried Jennifer that both lawyers were coming. Emma too seemed very nervous. Of course, she would be—who wouldn’t after what she’d been through? And then these relentless questions made everything worse. She reminded Emma not to say anything until José or Raul was at her side.
    When they arrived, an officer once again showed Jennifer into the waiting room, and then he led Emma away. Emma looked over her shoulder as she left, almost reproachfully, as if she believed Jennifer was letting her down somehow, as if her world was broken and she expected her mother to be able to fix it. Jennifer’s eyes followed her helplessly until she disappeared. There was nothing to do now but wait.
    She picked up a local newspaper someone had left on a chair and was appalled to see a front-page photo of Emma. She couldn’t understand the headline, but she saw the words
buen samaritano
and assumed they were sounding the call again for the Algerian to turn himself in. She stared at the photo. It was the same picture Emma had used on her Seville application. Jennifer looked sadly at her beloved daughter, this beautiful brunette in a floral dress smiling proudly at a dinner following her nineteenth birthday. They had gone shopping together for that dress. It had cost much more than she had wanted to spend, but Emma had begged her. She had loved it so much and looked so lovely in it, Jennifer couldn’t resist. She well remembered that dinner—how happy they had been—and her heart lurched.
    She continued to wait, her mind wandering. It seemed that motherhood for her had always entailed a lot of waiting. She was good at it by now. If you added it up, she must have waited hundreds of hours for Emma over the years—ballet lessons, piano, Model United Nations, soccer, tennis—and when she was in high school, waited past her 1:00 A.M. curfew, sometimes long past, sick with worry, until Emma walked in with some excuse or other. She had begged her to at least call to let her know when she’d be late so she wouldn’t worry so much, but Emma never seemed able to remember. “Call on my cell; just leave a number,” Jennifer would say, and each time Emma was late, Jennifer would check her cell phone for a message, but it was never there. She’d doze, then wake up automatically around 1:30 and peek into Emma’s bedroom. When she hadn’t come home, there was no going back to sleep. She’d wake Mark and he’d mumble that she’d be fine and tell her to go back to sleep before he turned over himself, but of course she couldn’t until, finally, she’d hear the key in the lock and the door open and her anxiety would subside, replaced first by relief and then by anger.
    There was a litany of fears about her children that sometimes tormented her, from the normal ups and downs of life—heartbreak, failure, disappointment, rejection—to the more serious dangers: illness, car crash,