The meeting about André took place on a Friday morning around Leonardo's desk, which she'd come to know well enough to clock the changes: the rock still in the corner, a second photograph beside Eduardo's — this one of Daniel on the Setúbal ship, taken by a crew member, the captain's hat at maximum authority angle. She hadn't known he'd had it printed.
Paulo was there. Rafael was there. She sat across from Leonardo and the rock was between them and she thought about how things accumulated, the small talismans of a life being built.
Paulo presented what he had. André Nunes, thirty-one, from the Alfama, formerly employed in construction project management, recruited eighteen months ago by a Mendes subsidiary under the title "community relations consultant," which was a phrase that covered
