Lies That Bind Us(76)

There is a snake on the tower stairs.

It’s long and green and bright as spring leaves.

Wait.

No. It’s not a snake. It’s a hose. Like you’d use to water the lawn.

I’ve seen it before, but not here. Not in this room. My brain lurches and fumbles. My stomach turns, but now I remember. I saw it in the basement. It was coiled around some tools. It was next to the generator.

And now I understand.





Chapter Thirty-Two

It was late when we got back to the villa. Roadwork in one of the villages outside Rethymno had added almost an hour to the journey. At one point I pulled out my cell phone to see if we still had a signal. We didn’t, but the last thing I had been looking at—the Manos story—was still up on my screen. I whisked it away again as fast as I could, but I couldn’t be sure that Simon, unreadable in his sunglasses, had not seen.

There was a funereal mood back at the house. Everyone lined up to welcome Gretchen with hugs and pats and simpering smiles, as if she had just come home from war. All except Brad, who gave her an arch look and tipped his imaginary hat like a character out of Yankee Doodle Dandy. Gretchen looked hurriedly away and avoided his eyes for the rest of the afternoon.

But then, so did everyone else. At first I thought I was imagining it, but I kept an eye on him as the rest of us talked and ate and (of course) drank, and it was clear that if the group felt some unease about me and Gretchen, they felt more about Brad, and I found myself wondering what had been said in our absence. For his part, Brad thumbed through magazines, read or played on his tablet, and sat in the corner, moving only to refill his glass—a bottle of red he was not sharing—or go to the bathroom. I don’t think he said a word all afternoon, but at one point he started humming deliberately. It took me a moment to realize he was imitating the keyboard riff from Prince’s “1999.” He caught me looking at him and gave me a bleak, mocking smile.

Are we having fun yet? It seemed to say. Enjoying the millennial reunion? Who wouldn’t want another two thousand days of this?

In spite of her previous pronouncements about me—or even because of them—Gretchen seemed at pains to keep me close, to make a show of how unified we were, though she never said that she no longer held me responsible for what I still thought of, absurdly, as the panty incident. In fact, we didn’t talk about it at all, and I suspected some kind of mutual gag order had been decided upon, as if to spare both our blushes. Or because they suspected someone else had been responsible but didn’t want to open that particular can of worms.

It was a fitting image: slimy, repulsive, and stinking of decay.

That’s maggots.

Same difference, at least in this instance.

When I went into the kitchen to get ice for my drink—I had moved on from wine to vodka and didn’t give a shit who knew it—Gretchen came with me. She eyed the basket of crusty bread on the counter, then opened the fridge and lifted out a cucumber, a fat, ripe tomato, a jar of black olives, and a block of feta cheese. The light from the fridge was cold and blue. It hollowed out her fragile beauty and made her waifish.

“Do we have anything less Greek?” she mused, half to herself. “I mean, it’s good and all, but I could murder a pizza.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Drink?”

“God, no. I think I need a break.”

I nodded, sipping mine absently while she assembled a rickety sandwich, and suddenly the weight of my past lies was too much to bear and I wanted to be done with it all.

“My sister died a long time ago,” I said without preamble, like I was confessing to a priest in the hope not just of forgiveness but of redemption, the chance to start over.

She looked up, her eyebrows raised, and started to say something puzzled, but I shook my head.

“I know,” I said. “I told you she worked in the movie industry doing CGI. I lied. Sorry.”

She put the knife down and considered me.

“Why?” she said at last.

“I honestly couldn’t tell you. It’s something I do. Did. I’m trying to quit.”

She gave a snuffling laugh. I had meant my confession, but I saw suddenly how it opened a door to ask something in return.

“Gretchen?” I said.

“Don’t ask,” she said quickly. “I know I shouldn’t have blamed you, and I’m sorry, but I didn’t want to talk about it. Still don’t.”

I nodded, but I wasn’t letting her completely off the hook.

“You said we were in danger—”

“I was being stupid,” she said quickly. “Forget it.”

“O . . . K . . . ,” I said.

“Really.”

“One more thing.”

“Do I have to?” she said, not so much defiant as whiny, like a kid being sent for a bath.

“Yesterday afternoon,” I said. “When the rest of us went to the fort and you stayed with Mel.”

She was immediately on her guard, pushing her hair behind her ears as I’d seen her do sometimes when she wasn’t comfortable.

“What about it?” she said, slicing the tomato with more care than was strictly necessary.

“Did you see Brad?”

She put the knife down again and turned to face me, lips pursed and face red, like she was ready to tell me where to get off, but then she deflated and looked at her hands. For a long moment she said nothing, and when she finally spoke her voice was barely above a whisper.