The Tide Between Us

9, 1975. Hillsbor

y old wooden things do, and Gideon

sound came to him over the diesel: a wet, tired groaning, like a mule that had walked too far. For

ega, who had come up the ladder from the engine room

hat you

iti

its beam across the Atlantic, a hundred miles of nothing, and each time it passed, he saw heads. D

inlet," Lola said. "The tide

make it f

hat was sinking as he watched. He put the Maribel alongside in a swell that wanted to kill them both, Lola threw the line, and a man on the s

Coast Guard got there first, and then the Border Patrol, and then the long white vans with INS lettered on the doors. By two in the morning the Pompano side of the inlet was bl

e. As

I don'

si

ched an agent give up and look around for someone, anyone, who understood.

at a boat landing at two in the morning. Her hair was pinned up under a scarf. Her hands held a notebook again

ded like water over stones. The woman's face broke open. She grabbed the girl's wri

laced like a coin on a counter, "zat they are from Jérémie. Her husband is in the wa

ve got a p

procedure. E

at made it worse. The agen

t Guard,"

ot meant to speak. He set

. I'll go back out. Somebody te

grave face, brown eyes like tea held to the light, and th

n of zat boat," she

ught the

em in. They w

e vans, the clipboards, the barbed gray fence behind the Border Patrol trucks. "To zis. They wil

a mortgage payment he could not make was riding in his sh

he ocean. Somebody else gets

way a person tastes spoiled mil

s your

uld I te

o thank when I f

the right thing, and she kn

erre-Louis,

to a cooler lid two miles offshore, alive, blue with cold,

had not gone home. She stood on the pier with her notebook, looking gray with fatigue, and when the hus

m more than th

when she came to t

pta

deo

toward a van, thin and gaunt, his shirt buttoned wrong. He turned his head and looked at the girl across the par

e was on t

careful English began to fray at the edges. "They will take him to Dade County. They will not let me speak with him. But he wi

ing at

ude before. It w

e corner of his mouth

he agents and put his hands

er, the quick press of something into her hands. When he turned around she was hol

me she meant it, and this time it

's in

not want

ably

battered green Plymouth at the end of the lo

omething from the INS i

hink

ike

ed me a m

xi." Lola considered

of A1A with the windows rolled up against the heat and the sun coming through the salt-streaked glass. Solange Pierre-Lo

es and pages of numbers, dates, ship names. The Estrella del Sur. The Marea Alt

ight margin, circled twice in

erhead on every document sh

rtrait that hung in the l

.

an C

egan, very quietly, to pray in French. Then the car radio, which she had left on low, cut

is morning at his Palm Beach estate. Police say foul play is not suspected. Mr. Crane leaves

d fell open on the floor mat, i

person alive who knew what her uncle had bee