She has a lot of reading to do. When he is ready to apologize, he can call again.
It is early spring in Poland. The remediation site is slippery with mud; small pockets of ice crackle under Lore’s boots when she takes samples for testing. The only wildlife she sees are worms, gray things that show a startling pink against the mud when a shovel cuts them accidentally in half.
It is a short job, but the weather and the work are brutal. Tok does not call. Lore is so busy she hardly ever sees Katerine, except one night when she is idly flipping through the net and comes across her mother, giving an interview to one of the national channels.
Katerine is smiling with that expert one-eye-on-the-camera-one-eye-on-the-interviewer stance Lore knows so well.
“—efficient job at the old Gdansk shipyards,” the interviewer is saying. “How do you persuade your employees and team members to take on such difficult projects?”
“It’s not hard,” she says. “I throw myself on their mercy. People love to be asked for help.” They actually like you better if you show some vulnerability, Lore remembers her saying at a party once, if you bare your throat and say please.
Of course, Lore thinks. Everything Katerine does is for a reason.
It is April by the time everyone is satisfied the bacteria are doing their job and Katerine decides it is time to leave the shipyards in someone else’s hands.
“It’s autumn in Auckland,” her mother says. “It’ll soon be winter. I think we deserve a few days in the heat, don’t you?”
They book themselves into a hotel in Belmopan, Belize. It is hot in the two weeks before the rainy season. Lore drives out alone to the beach every day to dive the reef, the second-largest barrier reef in the world, and the most beautiful. She tries not to think about Tok while she glides through the cool water with the blue tang and banded butterfly fish, through the aqua and rose of the coral. She rents a jeep and drives through the interior, stopping sometimes to film chechem and banak tree, sapodilla and blood-red Heliconia. There are leaves here the size of canoe paddles, and beetles as long as her thumb. All around her she can feel life—creeping, crawling, running, leaping from branch to branch.
The nights are warm and soft, black skies streaked with bright city light, laughter, and the scent of honeysuckle and cold cocktails.
Lore is in the shower when her phone rings. She ignores it. It rings again. She climbs out of the shower. It is her mother. “Turn on the news,” Katerine says. “They’re announcing the verdict on the Caracas class-action suit.” The screen clicks off. Caracas . . . Lore, undecided, finds a news channel, but then turns the volume up high and gets back in the shower, only half listening.
“. . .great disappointment this afternoon in Caracas . . . Michel Aguilar, chief attorney for the plaintiffs, said earlier that this was a blow to all those who expected justice to ignore matters of privilege and influence. . .”
Lore hums to herself as she soaps her legs.
“. . .Carmen Torini, former head of the project in Caracas that . . .”
At the sound of the familiar name, Lore turns off the shower and pads into the living room. Carmen Torini, surrounded by reporters and looking older than when Lore first saw her on Oster’s screen, is talking to the camera.
“And we think it is an absolutely fair settlement. The van de Oest company has always maintained that it scrupulously obeyed the law and all guidelines of the federal government of Venezuela. We are not to blame for the terrible tragedy of twenty years ago. The project undertaken here, the bioremediation of groundwater contaminated by careless contractors in the past, should have proved faultless. It would have proved faultless if not for the greed of the government-supervised subcontractors. If greed had not motivated the substitution of the correct bacteria there would not have been the release of mutagenic toxins into the water table. . .”
Lore, still watching, punches in her mother’s code. The news shrinks to a box in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. “When did you find out?”
“A few minutes ago. The judge just called.”
“And our liability?”
Katerine laughs. Her eyes, green today, sparkle. “None. None whatsoever. We’ll help, of course—that’s only good PR—but at least we won’t be suffering variations on this damn lawsuit for the next three generations.” She punches the air in triumph. “See