Lies That Bind Us(72)

When I am sure the light is not turned toward me, I risk a look over the buffer. He has the flashlight aimed at the ground and seems to have dropped to his haunches. I can see the cell door open. It is one of three, though the others are closed. The light fixes on the floor and by the overspill I see, silhouetted and unfocused though it is, the size of him, the bulk of his body and head. All the old terror floods back at the strangeness of the sight as my hindbrain shrieks

Minotaur!

But then he moves, and I realize with another shock that his body above the waist seems so large because he’s wearing something, something that goes with the mask on his face.

An air tank.

He’s not just wearing the scuba mask to hide his face. He’s wearing the complete breathing apparatus.

From my hidden vantage I stare, and that’s when I realize what he’s doing. He’s seen something on the cell floor. I feel the slickness clotting around the thumb of my left hand, and I know what he’s seen.

Blood.

Not a lot, but enough. I’ve left a trail.





Chapter Twenty-Eight It was just Simon and me. I had hoped Marcus would come. Or Kristen. But for all Melissa’s words of understanding and forgiveness, they were all still wary of me and I couldn’t blame them. However much they might pity me, who would want to be friends with someone who might break into your room and cut up your underwear? They might tolerate me. They might even accept me, look after me, but you can’t love someone this fucked up.

If Marcus had come, I told myself, I would have found some way to tell him my confession had been false, but that may have done more harm than good. It was probably just as well that we were apart.

So I rode with Simon, back through the mountain villages to the coast road past Rethymno to Heraklion, and it was only in that last stretch that we encountered any real traffic. In the hills there had been rockslides, and trees had come down in the storm. It wouldn’t take much, I thought, to cut us off if the weather worsened.

Simon said little for the first hour. He seemed tense, focused on driving, and when I reached for the radio he said, “I’d rather not, if you don’t mind.”

I snatched my hand back as if burned, but I smiled and said, “Sure, no problem,” because that was what I did, those little lies that grease the wheels and make life bearable.

“Why did you come, Jan?” he asked without preamble.

“What?” I said, still smiling. “I told you. I want to speak to Gretchen . . .”

“No, not now. I mean Crete. The whole trip.”

“What do you mean? You invited me and I thought—”

“Yes, but why did you come? I mean, we cover your costs and all, so it’s a free vacation and you don’t have a lot of spare cash, but . . .”

“Well,” I began, about to counter that last remark and probably spin some stupid falsehood in the process. I didn’t get the chance.

“No, but seriously,” he said. “It’s just us. Just you and me. So what’s it all about? Why are you here?”

I blink, genuinely confused.

“You think this is about me wanting to get back with Marcus,” I say.

“No,” he says. “Maybe. Is it?”

“No.”

“OK, so what is it?”

“I just wanted to see you all, relive our last trip . . .”

“And how are we doing?” he said. His eyes were on the road, riveted to it, but his voice was clipped, the words bitten off like meat.

“I don’t think I understand . . .”

“Which bit of our last visit did you most want to relive, Jan?”

“Just seeing everyone and—”

“OK,” he said, cutting me off.

“I’m not sure I get what you’re . . .”

“I said, ‘OK,’” he said. “Leave it.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, confused and uneasy. “Is it something I said?”

He laughed at that, a short, snapping sound without amusement.

I think to ask him about Manos, but I don’t. His mood is too strange and Gretchen’s odd warning is ringing in my head. We barely speak again till we reach the airport, and when I say I’m going to find a bathroom, he just nods.

The bathroom isn’t as easy to find as I thought it would be, and I have to walk a ways. While I’m sitting there in the stall, I fish out my phone and take the opportunity of a signal to scroll through my e-mail. There are a few notifications from work, the announcement of who got the executive lead position—a woman I’d never heard of—and a few other minor bits and pieces. Nothing of significance, and I’m struck by how little time I have actually been away. It feels like weeks, but it’s only been four days, and the rest of the world has proceeded at its tedious and familiar pace.

I open Google and type in Manos. The list of results is unhelpful: a low-budget horror film, a scattering of sites in Greek, some games, some charitable organizations. Nothing obviously significant. I add the term Rethymno to the search and then, on impulse, the date of our visit to the cave five years ago. Now, most of the results are in Greek, and I have to run each one through Google Translate. Most are newspaper stories. Manos, it seems, is a name. A man’s.

Or a boy’s.

The picture loads slowly, but I know him immediately. I have his face filed away on my laptop back home.