Lily and the Lost Boy (14 page)

He turned to them again, keeping his distance from them. “He's a free and independent kid,” he said then in a hard voice. “I've made it my business to see that he's that way.”

“He's not free and independent if he can't make choices about how he behaves,” Mr. Corey said in a voice as hard as Mr. Hemmings's.

“Anyone can have an accident,” Mrs. Corey said, taking a step toward Mr. Hemmings.

“I saw him,” Paul said thinly.

Mr. Hemmings lowered his head, looking up from under his brows at Paul.

“How could you have seen him? It was dark,” he said gruffly.

“He lifted Christos onto the handlebars,” Paul said, his voice rising. “And they rode off. There was the crash of the bike hitting the ground. Jack screamed.”

“He didn't,” Mr. Hemmings contradicted. “He never screams!”

“He did!” Paul cried out. “It wasn't completely dark. There were lights in the fishermen's houses. The bike skidded. I saw the front wheel turn quick. It went over. Jack got himself off. One of his legs was up in the air a second. Then he was standing and Christos and the bike went over the edge—”

He broke off and glanced at his father. Mr. Corey was silent. “He didn't do it on purpose,” Paul said. “He couldn't help it.”

Mr. Hemmings covered his face with his hands.

“He must be scared,” Mrs. Corey said. “But he'll come home eventually.”

“Jack is never scared,” Mr. Hemmings avowed, but for the first time his voice wavered. He looked at Mr. Corey. “He
can
make choices,” he said, but he spoke without conviction now. It almost sounded as if he were pleading for someone to agree with him.

“Paul will help you find him,” Mr. Corey said.

“I know some places he might be,” Paul said eagerly. “He sleeps in the acropolis—well, he used to, before he started coming here.”

“And at the beach in the shack,” Lily offered. Paul looked at her, startled.

Mr. Hemmings stood flat on his feet, unmoving, his shoulders slumped over. “I know he does that,” he said sorrowfully. “All right, then. It'll be dark very soon. We'll look for him at first light. We'd never find him now. I have to go see the museum fellow.” He stared at them all. Lily wondered if he hoped someone would tell him he didn't have to go to see Costa and his family. When no one spoke, he said, “Yes. I'll go there first.”

“Shall I meet you somewhere in the morning?” Paul asked him.

He nodded. “I'll stay at Giorgi's,” he said. “He'll put me up.”

But it was Lily who found Jack.

NINE

Lily had not slept a wink. She lay on her bed staring at the open window. It was like a small stage where first Agamemnon leaped into view, his painted warrior's mask shining like the hard face of a huge, angry doll, then Mr. Hemmings, his face masked by his large hands. That afternoon, when he'd taken his hands away from his face, it had looked different, not so much softened as shapeless, his skin full of folds and pouches as though a screw at the back of his neck had been loosened by his worry.

Sometime during those hours she had crept into her parents' bedroom. Next to their bed, on the floor, was a small clock with a luminous dial, which showed her it was just after two a.m. She listened to their even breathing. One of them sighed, but she couldn't have said whether it was her father or her mother.

For a few minutes she sat on the balcony. Beneath a full moon the sea seemed to quiver. There was no wind. Her bare feet and legs were as pale as marble. She knew she was postponing what she had—at some moment—determined to do. In the kitchen she ate one of the English biscuits they had bought in Kavalla. She went to look in the sink to see if there were slugs curled in a heap around the drain. If she could look straight at them, it might give her courage. But there was nothing in the sink except a peach pit someone had forgotten to throw away.

Then she got dressed. She tied a sweater around her shoulders and wrapped up two peaches and a few biscuits in a cotton scarf. She tiptoed down the hall, out the door and through the gate, and made her way down to the village on the new stone steps.

The moonlit lanes and streets were ashen. The village slept. She kept her eyes away from the shrines, the gates and temples, the old abodes of the gods whom she did not wish to imagine; she was afraid to think about their faintly smiling, inhuman faces, the deep, distant look of their eyes. She thought instead of Paul, his arm reaching up to rest on Jack's stiff shoulders, and the older boy turning to him, bending to whisper something in his ear.

It was a long walk. She tried not to think, not yet. It was her feet that carried her through those moments when she wanted to turn back, go home, draw the cover over her head.

She had left the sea at home—now she had reached it again. Here it made a sound, a soft hissing as the waves uncurled on the sand. In front of the dark shack the oilcloth-covered tables gleamed as though pools of water lay on them. She went past them into the kitchen. A faint smell of fried potatoes lingered in the air. There was no one there.

Lily walked back to the beach. Her heart sank. She had been so sure Jack would be there, huddled on the floor asleep, that her mouth had opened to whisper him awake.

She looked out at the Aegean. Past the beach, the lawyer's house, beyond a point of land, was Halyke. Beyond that, to the east were Turkey and Russia, India and China and Japan, the Pacific Ocean, Australia, the western coast of the United States, the Atlantic, England and Europe, Athens, and back to the spot where she was standing. The vast world! She felt as little as Christine, alone in the center of it.

From the corner of her eye she saw a point of brightness, then it was gone. She gazed at the tiny islet. A light flared up, then another. Someone was lighting matches there in the black fuzz of scraggly pines on the islet's crest. She had once dog-paddled around it, gripping the rocks, and found a narrow path that wound up through the trees. She had not taken it, only looked, wondering about it, kicking to keep afloat.

The light flickered, died. What if it was not Jack but a stranger who had made a refuge of the island? But she was as sure it was Jack as she was that she was standing on the beach, her sneakers filling up with sand. She could imagine how it had been, how he'd run away after the accident, how he'd recalled the shack as a place he could shelter in. He might have spent the day in a dark corner of the acropolis or in the cool depths of the olive-pressing plant, which would be empty at this time of year. Then, at nightfall, he'd made his way here, to the beach. He would have gone to the shack at first, then recalled that
someone
had left him bread and honey. He'd seen the island and gone out to it, not thinking about the next day, only wanting to hide after the terrible event.

Lily took off her sneakers, tied them around her neck, and rolled up her slacks. Holding the scarf above her head, she waded into the water. It was not cold. The sand scrunched delicately between her toes. She hoped no crab would pinch her feet. She was no Spartan who could keep her mouth shut tight. No, she would shriek and run for shore, and Rosa would come barking, then the lawyer!

She had to swim the last few yards. He might hear her in the still night, but that couldn't be helped. He might think she was a dolphin—if he ever thought about such things as dolphins.

She felt her way along the rocks and came to the path. She pulled herself up, gripping the scarf, now soaked, in one hand, and made her way up the pine needle-strewn path. In a small clearing a fire of twigs was now burning, and hunkered down beside it, holding out a stick with a heel of bread stuck on the end of it, was Jack.

Lily squatted down, her clothes squishing with water.

“I figured it would be you,” Jack said quietly. He looked at her as he slowly turned the bread. “Last time—I figured it was you who left the bread and honey.”

She was too surprised to speak. That he'd ever thought about her at all was hard for her to believe.

“Everyone is looking for you,” she said. “I mean they will be in the morning. Your father, Paul …”

“And the police, I guess,” he said.

“No. I don't think so. Unless you got lost for good.”

“I'm not lost,” he said defiantly, taking the bread off the stick. He blew on it, then wolfed it down, making a face as though it pained him. He must be awfully hungry.

She unwrapped the scarf. “I brought this,” she said, holding out a damp peach to him. He looked at it for a moment, then back at the fire. There was a crumb on his lip from the bread. He was handsome, she saw for the first time. His eyes and brows were much like his father's, and he had the same fierce look. But his chin was different, softer. He took the peach from her, without looking, and put it somewhere behind him. He moved restlessly and began to pluck at the root of a pine tree as though he wanted to tear it from the ground.

“You can stay with us tonight,” she said. “In the morning you can go to your father.”

He wasn't listening to her. “It happened so fast,” he said in a low, brooding voice. “There must have been something slippery on the embankment. The bike went right out of my hands. I tried to catch him. Christos. But his leg was caught somehow. He was lying all crumpled down below. I went and hid in one of the places they've excavated until I saw the people come and get him. I knew he was dead. The men were all talking. They didn't know how to lift him up. His father came.”

He let out a sudden gasp as though someone had struck him a terrible blow across his back. For a second Lily thought he would fall into the fire. Then he reared back.

“I wish—” he began. He shut his mouth tightly. Then he seemed to feel the crumb because he brushed at his lips again and again.

She wanted to say, it isn't your fault. But she couldn't say that. He had been the cause of the accident. There was no way around that.

“God! God!” he exclaimed.

Oh—he
was
lost! Had she come to find him to win a prize for finding a lost boy? She couldn't think why she had come. She didn't know what to do. She felt her sodden clothes on her skin and shivered. It would be hard going back into the water, then starting the long walk home. And what was she to say to him?

“Why did you come looking for me?” he burst out.

She answered without thinking. “Because I was sorry for you,” she said. Then, because that wasn't all of the truth, she added, “At least, that was one of the reasons.”

He jumped back from the fire as though it had grown too hot. “I don't want anyone to feel sorry for me,” he said flatly.

“I can't help it,” she said.

He laughed at that. It was a clear, free laugh as though something in him had eased. “Okay,” he said. “If you can't help it …”

He began to put handfuls of earth on the fire. She saw how carefully he smothered it, making sure there wasn't an ember left.

“Don't you want the peach?” she asked. “I brought two, but the other is mushy and the biscuits are all wet.”

He searched for the peach among the leaves, found it and began to eat it as they stood there, the fire dead now, a breeze stirring the pines. When he'd finished, he bent and dug a hole with his hand, pushed the peach pit into it and covered it up. “Not enough soil here,” he said. “But maybe it will grow.”

They scrambled down the path to the water and slipped into it. Lily's clothes weighed on her, and she was relieved to feel the sand beneath her feet. Silently they walked along the road until they came to the crossroads at the stone farmhouse.

“Well—I go up there,” he said, pointing at the mountain.

“But you can stay with us,” she protested, then remembered. “Your father didn't go to Panagia. He said he was staying at Giorgi's.”

He seemed to hesitate, still facing the mountain road.

“He's going to see Costa tomorrow,” Lily said, feeling a current of fear, remembering everything at once as though the last half hour of swimming and walking had been time out of trouble.

“I have to go, too,” Jack said. “Maybe Christos' father will kill me.”

“He won't,” Lily said quickly. “Nobody will kill you. Paul went. Costa hugged him.”

“He won't hug
me
,” Jack said in a cold voice. Lily thought, what if they did do something to Jack?

“But I'm going there,” he said. “I'll go to Giorgi's now.”

They began to walk toward the village. She could imagine Jack walking into Costa's house, head down, his hands in his pockets, scared and determined not to show it. But it was hard to imagine Mr. Hemmings going even though he had said he would. People like Mr. Hemmings, Lily was thinking, if they ever said they were sorry for one single thing, they'd have to be sorry for their whole lives.

She would have liked to ask Jack why his mother paid his father to stay away, to keep
him
away from her. She would have liked to know everything about his life. She had the feeling that all she would ever know was what she knew at that moment.

They parted in front of the museum. A ray of moonlight fell on the face of the stone youth who had been gazing out to sea ever since he'd been dug up out of the ground.

She started toward home.

“Thanks,” Jack said in a low voice after her, “for the peach.”

TEN

“Yogurti! Yogurti!” cried the boy, banging the wooden box strapped to his handlebars as he cycled slowly down the street. It was startling to realize that in less than a week, Lily might be in the supermarket in Williamstown and she would stop to choose one of the small cups of yogurt displayed on a shelf. She could imagine herself opening it in the kitchen at home, the refrigerator humming, then taking a spoon from a drawer and eating the yogurt, which would be stiff and cold, not like the soft custard of Limena, and she would be staring at the big basket of kitchen gadgets her mother kept on the counter, gadgets she had loved to play with when she was little.