quickly, then reads aloud. “Dear Everyone, I’m afraid I won’t be able to make it to Ratnapida as promised, but I’ve taken an opportunity I wish I had taken years ago. Mother, I’m sorry, but I’ve resigned my job as project manager and don’t intend to take it up again. Sahla is competent until you find a replacement. I’ll be in touch soon.” Willem puts it down. “It’s just signed, Tok.”
Everyone is looking at Katerine. She seems calm, but Lore understands that she is devastated. It means the world to her that her children work in the family business. For the first time in years, Lore feels something for her mother apart from the urge to please. She feels the need to protect her. Katerine looks so fragile.
Oster sighs. “He’s probably decided to go study the flute, like he was always threatening to do.”
“What?” Katerine looks dazed.
“The flute,” Oster says again. “He has always loved music.”
Lore is staring at the table, watching dozens of tiny fans turn the wrong way in the spoons, trying to understand. Music. Her brother, Tok, has always loved music. How had she not known this? She looks at her father. And how had he known? She looks at the family, at Greta and Katerine, Willem and Marley, and wonders what else she does not know.
Why did Tok say nothing? Why did Oster not tell her? Something inside her twists just a little.
“. . .working on the phosphorus problem in the Lau Group islands,” Greta was saying.
Katerine seems to have moved out of her daze. “Is Sahla up to that?” she asks Marley.
Marley shakes his head thoughtfully. “I don’t think so. No.”
Katerine wipes her mouth decisively and drops her napkin on the table. “Then I’ll fly out there tonight.”
“Katerine,” Oster says. “For god’s sake. You can call him instead. And he knows how to ask for help. He—”
“Who knows when Tok wrote that letter—”
“It’s dated three days ago,” Willem says.
“—how long Sahla’s been out there alone, making who knows what kind of errors. Costly errors.” She pushes her chair away from the table.
“It’s not a big project. Not that important—”
But Katerine is already standing. “I’ll fly tonight.”
Lore finds herself standing, too. “I’ll come with you.” She tries not to see the hurt in Oster’s eyes.
THIRTEEN
Magyar was not around when the shift started, and Paolo was as eager as ever to learn. We were scheduled to check the leachate barriers under and around our troughs, a tedious, time-consuming job. It seemed like a good time to start him at the beginning.
“There are all kinds of different ways to classify bacteria. There’s temperature: thermophilic bugs prefer hot water, fifty-five to seventy-five Celsius; mesophiles like it medium; psychrophiles a bit cooler. They can be grouped by how they do or don’t use oxygen. Aerobic bacteria only work in oxygen, anaerobic only work without it, and facultative bacteria work with or without. Beyond that, there’s what the bugs eat. Heterotrophic bacteria feed on organic carbon sources, and autotrophic bacteria utilize carbon dioxide. Lots of those categories can be further divided into gram-positive and gram-negative, which is to do with the difference in the cell-wall structure.” Paolo looked confused. “You’ll have to stop me when I talk about things you don’t understand.”
Maybe someone had told him to shut up at school. Asking questions did not seem to come easily. I just waited. “What’s the difference between bacteria and fungus?” he asked diffidently.
Fungi, I thought, but now wasn’t the time to correct him. I wasn’t sure where to begin. “There are different ways to differentiate, but for our purposes, the difference is in how the microorganisms go about breaking down pollutants. Bacteria produce enzymes that break down the bonds between elements in a carbon chain. The enzymes are specific to certain types of organic compounds, and they’re intracellular.” He looked blank. “It means that the contaminant has to be soluble. It has to be able to enter the bacterial cell. So if the contaminant is a heavy organic, then a fungus is probably better. The enzymes they make also break down the carbon bonds but they’re nonspecific and extracellular. So they need only close proximity, not solubility.” His face was closing up. “Where did I lose you?”
“Everywhere.” His eyes were hard and dry, but his voice shook. “I don’t know enough to even learn. What’s a carbon chain? Or organic? An enzyme? What does soluble mean? I feel like there’s a whole world floating just out of my grasp, as though I’m