Lies That Bind Us(74)

Was that how he died, trying to bring a souvenir for a tourist lady he had a crush on? Could it be that simple?

God, I thought. How awful. How utterly, pointlessly wretched.

That poor boy. And his mother. No wonder she hated us. No wonder she had been ready to flay Melissa’s skin from her face with her nails the moment she realized who we were. I felt suddenly stupid and worthless, a tourist who had gathered up those bits of the place and its people that seemed nice and fun and then left, knowing nothing, unaware that one of the people who actually lived there had died trying to make us happy.

I felt sick to my stomach and sat very still for a long minute, trying to decide if I was going to throw up. I replayed it all as best I could, both the recent visit to the Diogenes and the last one five years ago. The boy had been dead by then, but the restaurant was still doing business and we hadn’t noticed anything amiss.

They hadn’t known yet. How long after we left had the police arrived? How long before Maria—our comic, boisterous Greek servant and entertainer—had been made to identify the remains of her child?

God.

But then other thoughts came and I, tourist still, moved on. If this was the key to the mystery word Manos, as seemed likely, why was Gretchen so convinced we were in danger?

You most of all.

It didn’t make sense. Or rather, it made perfect sense up to a point but didn’t explain what had happened to Gretchen or why she had made her odd pronouncements. It explained Maria’s anger when she recognized Melissa, but it had nothing to do with Gretchen’s shredded underwear, and the simplest explanation was that the two things were, therefore, unconnected, that they were separate issues. One was an accident—tragic and perhaps influenced by Melissa’s flirtatious manipulations, but an accident nonetheless, though one that perhaps some local had seen fit to underscore by piling the leaves into the shape of the boy’s name.

It was a poor revenge, I thought, ashamed of myself. We hadn’t even known what the word meant. Maybe that had only been a beginning, and there was more—worse—to come. But if so, if someone blamed us for Manos’s death and meant to do something to us as a result, how did Gretchen know, and why would she think I was the one most in danger?

Thinking of Gretchen brought me back to the other matter. She hadn’t even been with us last time, so ravaging her clothes was either a mistake or was unrelated to the boy’s death. A mistake, though unlikely, wasn’t impossible. I thought of those big windows in the villa. If someone had seen her going to her room, they might have mistaken her for Melissa and targeted her by accident. She did look a lot like her.

But tearing up someone’s underwear to revenge a child’s death? No. It felt petty, wrong. I couldn’t believe it. Either that was an unrelated bit of spite from someone else, or Gretchen had done it herself in a melodramatic—and frankly psychotic—bid for attention.

My gut said that was it, and not just because I couldn’t think of who would hate her enough to do something so mean-spirited and creepy. I had believed her when she told me she knew it wasn’t me who had cut up her clothes. Maybe this was all just willful self-delusion, an extension of the bad dreams she told everyone about in which she had been interrogated by monsters, and that her warning to me about being in danger was just more amateur theatrics. Some people like being at the center of drama, even when it’s the drama of malice and intrigue.

Especially then.

There was no doubt the woman had issues, and I of all people should understand that. She was sad, lonely, overwhelmed by her more sophisticated and glamorous friends—myself, obviously, excluded—and she wanted the limelight. If she had grabbed it in a way that was preposterous and inconvenient for everybody, there was still no more point in attacking her for it than there was in indulging her fantasies. Leaving the bathroom and heading back to the car, I resolved to be Gretchen’s friend until she felt comfortable enough to tell me the truth. After all, if anyone should understand someone lying to make a shitty situation seem better, it should be me.

So I gave her a welcoming smile when Simon led her to the car. He was using his cell phone, talking, I assumed, to Melissa.

“I have her,” he said. “We’re on our way back.”

Gretchen looked wan, her face pale and un-made-up, her eyes sunken and bloodshot. She gave me a weary hi and the kind of shrug that could have been an apology but could also have just been a comment on her lot in life. I offered her the front seat, but she shook her head. She wanted to be as alone as the car would let her. I couldn’t blame her for that.

His task complete—or half-complete—Simon’s mood improved considerably. And he flicked on the radio. By the time we were back on the coast road and speeding toward Rethymno, he was humming along to Pearl Jam and drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. Gretchen said nothing, just stared blankly out the window as the dusty scenery slid past. She looked numb and exhausted, and she clearly didn’t want to talk. Perhaps later, I thought, I could get her on her own.

I wanted to talk about Manos, to tell them what had happened to him, if only to explain his mother’s bizarre behavior at the restaurant, but I couldn’t. Partly it was the fear that, after a cursory sympathetic remark, Simon would shrug it off as irrelevant to him, to us, that it would make me like him less. But it was partly something else too, a lingering anxiety that Gretchen hadn’t been lying, that there was still something I didn’t understand that made the situation far worse than I could imagine.