What the River Knows

“For as long as I could remember, their bags were always packed, their goodbyes as constant as the rising and setting of the sun. For seventeen years, I sent them off with a brave smile, but when their exploring eventually stretched into months, my smiles had turned brittle. The trip was too dangerous for me, they said.”

Even before Inez believes her parents are dead, she is Living with Grief and Loneliness because she spends so much of her life apart from them. This separation impacts her characterization by making her both fascinated with Egypt and resentful of the country for capturing her parents’ hearts in a way that she seemingly cannot. Eventually, Inez learns that her parents left her in Argentina not because they truly considered the trip “too dangerous” but rather because they wished to conceal their marital problems from their daughter.

“The ring glinted in the soft light, and I remembered the first time I’d slipped it on. The moment I touched it, my fingers had tingled, a burning current had raced up my arm, and my mouth had filled with the taste of roses. An image of a woman walked across my vision, disappearing when I blinked.”

The tiny golden ring possesses enormous significance to the plot because it grants the protagonist the power to sense objects imbued with Cleopatra’s magic. The ring serves as a motif of the theme of The Perils of Extending and Withholding Trust because Cayo entrusts the treasure to his daughter, and the roses that Inez tastes during her visions symbolize Cleopatra.

“‘Well then,’ I said in Spanish. ‘You’ll understand when I tell you that I won’t be leaving Egypt. If we’re going to be traveling together, I ought to know your name.’ ‘You’re getting back onto the boat in the next ten minutes. A formal introduction hardly seems worth it.’”

Inez and Whit’s relationship follows the rivals-to-lovers trope, and their frosty first meeting establishes their conflicting objectives. As Ricardo’s employee, Whit is meant to ensure that Inez returns to Argentina immediately.