The Lost Sisterhood (30 page)

“Did he like his leash?”

“He always got happy when he saw it,” said Rebecca, chin trembling again.

“Off you go, then, both of you,” ordered Granny. “Help each other, and come back here as quickly as you can. Hurry-hurry-hurry!”

When Spencer was finally laid to rest on his blue cushion, with his favorite things around him—all snatched from the house while the vicar and his wife were busy with a clogged toilet—Rebecca started crying again, and so did I. But it was a different kind of sadness now.

“Remember,” said Granny, “you can always come back and talk to him whenever you like. But now he has to sleep a little. Bow your heads.” We dutifully did as she said, while Granny recited a long string of words in a foreign language. We understood none of them, but they had a strangely soothing effect. Then she gave us the shovels and told us to fill up the hole. When we were done, she took a handful of soil and brushed it over our faces with her palm. “You are in grief,” she told Rebecca, framing the dirt-smeared face with her hands. “But you have done the right thing.”

It was not until we stepped through the front door of my house that I suddenly remembered the birthday party. A few balloons were floating about aimlessly, and there was a warm smell of ginger cake, but the whole house was eerily silent. A small collection of gift bags sat on the tile floor beneath the coat rack, but the gift givers were nowhere to be seen. Only then did I hear the clock in the living room strike five. The birthday invitations with the embossed silver horses had said three o’clock.

Just as we were tiptoeing up the staircase, my parents appeared in the kitchen door. They were both grave and pale, but they didn’t say anything, merely watched us as we stood there caked with dirt, not knowing whether to go up or down. “I fear this is all my fault,” said
Rebecca to them in a feeble, but unfaltering voice. “And I apologize. I know it’s all … quite unforgivable.”

“Well,” said my mother, pulling her shawl more tightly around her, “why don’t you girls come and have some birthday cake?”

After that day, there were no more nocturnal discussions in the living room, no more appealing glares from my mother to my father … merely silence. A pained, exhausted silence, heavy with finality. And within a week, my parents began driving off to meetings in faraway places, only to return with brochures and forms that they were careful to hide from me.

But I knew, with a child’s instinctive grasp of adult skullduggery, where all this was going. They were preparing to send Granny away, to some impenetrable building with unsmiling men and large iron keys, and I would never see her again. They would strap her to a bed and put needles in her arm, and it would be my fault—for letting her be my friend.

T
HE ONLY ONE NOT
afflicted by the theft was Mr. Telemakhos, who stubbornly refused to think of my handbag as being stolen. “It will show up!” he kept saying, waving a hairy hand at the wondrous ways of fate. “They always do.”

To hide my misery, I threw myself into every available task around the boat and endeavored to ruminate as little as possible. The scheme was so effective it took me over an hour to look up from what I was doing. Only then did I feel a tremor of suspicion. If we were just going up the coast, why was there nothing but bright blue sea in every direction?

I approached Mr. Telemakhos, who was at the helm, laughing it up with Nick and Rebecca. “Excuse me,” I said, suddenly feeling like an interloper. “Where exactly are we going? It’s already ten o’clock—”

Mr. Telemakhos smirked. “I told you: We’re going to the place where it all ends.” When I kept peering at him, demanding more, he added more loudly, as if talking to someone with a hearing impairment,
“We are going to Troy. I have abducted you, Diana Morgan. For the next few days the three of you will be the hostage of my obsessive need for intelligent company.” Seeing our shock at his boastful confession, Mr. Telemakhos broke into thunderous laughter. “In ten years, ask yourselves: Was he a pirate or an angel?”

“But you promised—” I began, almost choking on my own outrage.

“I promised to get you where you need to go,” said Mr. Telemakhos, nodding as if we were in agreement. “And that’s what I’m doing. Besides, what’s the point of taking you to the airport when you don’t have a passport?”

So furious I could have pushed the big man overboard, I turned to Nick. “Will you help me turn the boat around?” I asked him, fully intending Mr. Telemakhos to overhear me.

After a second’s hesitation, Nick folded his arms. “I’m not a sailor. Sorry.” Something in his eyes—a strange, devilish satisfaction hiding behind the apology—told me he was lying.

I looked at Rebecca, who was strangely silent. “Please explain to your friend”—I nodded at Mr. Telemakhos—”that this is absolutely unacceptable.”

Rebecca’s dumbstruck expression turned into irritation. “Do you really think he doesn’t know that?” She glared at Mr. Telemakhos, who smiled blithely in response, as if our argument was merely birdsong in his ears.

“Bex,” I said, struggling to contain my desperation, “for every day I don’t keep my commitments around Oxford, a cyclops by the name of Professor Vandenbosch rips another limb off my career.”

Rebecca looked away, apparently already resigned to her fate as abductee. “At least you
have
commitments. How wonderful that must be.”

Realizing I was completely alone in my ire, and that neither Rebecca nor Nick would help me persuade Mr. Telemakhos to return to Nafplio, I left them and stalked off to the bow of the boat. I had rarely felt this helpless, and I didn’t want them to see me like this, almost in tears with frustration.

It was true that I wouldn’t be able to board a plane without my passport, but that only made my need to return to shore so much more
urgent. I would have to find alternative transportation, and even if everything went smoothly I couldn’t possibly hope to arrive in Oxford before the weekend. Truly, my situation was extremely distressing even without the added complication of my being currently trapped on the
Penelope.

And yet … even in my wretchedness, I couldn’t help feeling a treacherous tickle of excitement at the prospect of visiting Troy. Was this not, after all, precisely what I secretly wanted? To continue on the Amazon trail? For all my determination to return to Oxford without further delay, I hadn’t been able to quell a strong feeling that by doing so I would forfeit my only chance to find the missing link between Granny and the priestesses from Algeria.

Standing in the bow, looking out over the Aegean Sea and the islands materializing in the distance, I decided I might as well come to terms with the situation. We were going to Troy, and there was nothing I could do about it; pouting was a nonstarter. As soon as I returned home, I would make up for all the canceled tutorials and lavish so much attention on my students that they would come to regard my absence as a blessing. With regard to Katherine Kent, I clung to the hope she would forgive me once I explained myself—she always had in the past.

When I finally felt confident of my poise, I returned to the others. By now, Rebecca was steering the ship, giddy with the thrill of it, and Mr. Telemakhos was busy giving her instructions. The only one who paid any attention to me was Nick, who gave me a sideways glance and said, under his breath, “I think you just broke the world record for sulking. Under ten minutes. Very impressive.”

Not quite ready to be chummy, I responded with curt detachment, “I don’t sulk. I calculate.”

Later that night, after putting on a patient face all day, I left Rebecca asleep in our shared cabin and crept up on deck to be alone. Dinner had been jolly—I had even laughed—but I was not yet over my anger. Mr. Telemakhos was so proud of his own power over us, so self-satisfied … A childish part of me wanted to teach him a lesson.

We had cast anchor in a quiet bay, and the only sounds I could hear were the waves lapping the hull of the boat and an occasional flapping
of wings against water. Earlier, in the golden glow of sunset, the bay had appeared uninhabited, but now, long after nightfall, a few distinct lights shone from windows in the hills. How far away were the houses? I wondered. Were there people on this island who might be able to help me? Or were the specks of light in fact stars, just rising over the forested ridges? Despite the moon, which gave a bit of structure to the darkness around me, I couldn’t quite tell where the earth ended and heaven began.

As I sat there on the deck, hugging my knees and meditating on fanciful escape plans, Nick appeared. I hadn’t heard his approach, for he was barefoot and, as always, moved completely silently. After a moment’s hesitation he sat down next to me and nodded at the gibbous moon. “Almost full.”

When I did not reply, he continued, “A wise bosun once told me there is a guardian angel who watches over young men. To me, that angel was always the Moon. She has saved my life many times.”

“Really?” I said. Despite the fact that Nick had done nothing whatsoever to help me reason with Mr. Telemakhos earlier, I still preferred his company to my own grumpy solitude. “Did she ever deliver you from boats with mad Greek captains?”

I sensed him smiling in the darkness. “We can try. Maybe she will grant you a wish. What do you want? To be back in Oxford right now?”

For some reason, my affirmative “yes” got stuck in my throat.

“Don’t worry.” Nick spoke directly into my ear. “I won’t tell anyone.”

A little annoyed with him for thinking I was won over so easily, I leaned away and said, “I promised everyone I’d be home today.”

“Here.” Nick handed me his phone. “Call and explain.”

“Thanks. Maybe tomorrow. My parents are in bed now.”

“What about Boyfriend? Doesn’t he pick up after ten?”

Not knowing what to say, I shook my head and gave him back the phone. Nick chuckled. “Relax! They’re not going to fire you. They need you. You’re smart. In my experience, beautiful women are only attractive until they open their mouths. With you, the more you speak, the more—” He broke off abruptly, then said, more quietly, “I wish I had your ability to
focus. To sit in a library for days … months … and just
read.
But I’ve never had that kind of patience. And so I’ve never become really good at anything.” Perhaps realizing he was doing himself an injustice, he elbowed me teasingly. “Well, a few things I do well, or so I’ve been told.”

The words, although spoken in jest, crept all the way into my imagination and caused a quiet burst of chaos. “And what else are you good at?” I heard myself saying.

Nick straightened. “Taking risks. I’m a pro at that.”

“Give me a for instance.”

He pondered it briefly, then said, “How about free-climbing? Or canoeing the Nahanni River in November?”

I frowned. “I don’t even know where that
is.
What else?”

“Oh.” He slouched a little, as if he wasn’t terribly proud of himself after all. “The usual. Trying to push the limits. Impress my friends.”

I unfurled my arms, no longer as chilled as I had been before. Part of the warmth, I realized, emanated from Nick’s body and lingered in the narrow space between us, luring me closer. “Somehow I imagined you out there in the service of mankind,” I joked, grateful for the increasingly humorous trajectory of our chat. “Trucking food aid to starving villagers—”

“I did that, too.” He spoke calmly, with a shrug, and didn’t even bother to look at me to see whether I believed him. “Until I realized the only people I was helping were the warlords and the pig-headed politicians who had caused the problem in the first place.”

“I see.” I studied his profile, wondering whether I was finally seeing Nick the way he really was, or whether this, too, was just another role in his seemingly endless cast of characters. “You were demoralized by the malfunctions of civil society and so flung yourself into frivolous pleasure seeking as a result?”

He thought about it for a moment. “More like pain seeking. But yes, that sounds about right. Hey, if you ever get demoralized by the malfunctions of academia, you should go into public relations.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “I’ll hire you as my spokesperson.”

“Maybe I’ll start by canoeing the Nahanni River,” I countered. “In July.”

“You’ll be eaten alive by blackflies. Or grizzly bears.”

I touched a gamesome fist to his thigh. “I’ll hire you as my guide.”

Nick chuckled. “You may regret that. I wouldn’t shave, and we’d be sharing a sleeping bag.”

The image went straight to my cheeks, and I was grateful all he could see of me were shades of gray. “Why couldn’t we have one each?”

His sweatered shoulder bumped teasingly against mine. “Why do you want to go camping with me in the first place?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” I cleared my throat, astounded by the flirtatious turn our conversation had taken. “You are quite the amusing conversationalist.”

I couldn’t help it, there was something about his eyes that made me lean a bit closer, and for a few breathless seconds I was certain he would kiss me. As a matter of fact, at that precise moment—despite how fundamentally at odds we were—I was rather hoping he would.

Instead, he reached for something and handed me a flat, familiar-feeling object. “There. I took the liberty of removing it from your bag this morning, before we left the house.”

It was Granny’s notebook.

“But—” I was so flummoxed by the reappearance of my most prized possession I burst out laughing. Clutching it to my chest, eventually I worked up the wherewithal to thank him, although a small part of me was dismayed at the fact that he had gone through my bag.

“After the attack in Crete,” Nick began, the tone of his voice suggesting he wasn’t too proud of himself, “I had a hunch your shadowy thief would try again. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about it, but we’re never alone.”

“This is all a bit … shocking,” I stammered, my perception of Nick doing somersaults in my head. If there had been the tiniest part of me thinking it just
might
have been him, and not the Rollerblade gang, who had made my tasseled bag disappear, then that possibility was now thoroughly buried under a rather clammy avalanche of shame.