[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.”“Up north? I’m in Charlottesville.”“Right.I know.”“I just didn’t feel like fighting through the crowd for a beer,” Lucy said.“I’m just telling you in case you, you know, want to go out there.” Lucy seriously considered going out there, but she stopped herself.She remembered a simpler time when she went to all lengths to stay on the right side of those girls.She also remembered when she and her parents could lay every trouble and pain and failure in one location.But Melody’s term had expired, and she must have known it.Still, Lucy chastised herself and walked into the crowded kitchen instead.It was true that you shouldn’t go to a party if you couldn’t be friendly.When Brandon finally did arrive she went right over to him.It was awkward, she recognized, but she felt strangely driven.“I’m Lucy,” she said.“We were in chemistry together.”“Of course,” he said.“I know who you are.” He sloshed his drink around in its plastic cup.“I have a question for you,” she said directly.He used too much gel in his hair, which for some reason led Lucy to consider that he probably thought she was trying to ask him out.“Okay.” His eyebrows were raised into flirt position.“You knew Daniel Grey, right?” It seemed reckless and even thrilling to just say his name right out as though it was just any other name.His eyebrows floated back down a little.“Yeah.Somewhat.Not well.”“Well, do you have any idea what happened to him?”Brandon looked uncomfortable.“I don’t know for sure.But you know what Mattie Shire and those guys said.”Lucy heard the bleakness in his voice, and a slow thumping started in her throat.“No.I don’t.What did they say?”“The night of the last party and the knife fight.You heard about what happened.”“A lot of things happened,” she said warily.Brandon looked around the crowd in the dining room.He didn’t see Mattie Shire, but he saw Mattie’s friend, Alex Flay, and hailed him over.“You remember Daniel Grey, don’t you?”Alex nodded, looking from one of them to the other.“Were you there with Mattie when he saw him jump off the bridge?”Lucy stared at Brandon.“What?”“I wasn’t there,” Alex said.“But Mattie told me about it.I don’t know if Daniel drowned or what.”Brandon nodded.“He was an unusual dude, rest his soul.”“You’re saying he is dead?” Lucy asked.Brandon looked at Alex, and Alex shrugged.“I have no idea.That’s what Mattie thought.Nobody really knew.I never heard anything more after that.Everybody went off in different directions after that.”“He couldn’t be dead,” Lucy said fervently.She felt a burst of outrage, and she couldn’t keep it off her face or out of her voice.“Wouldn’t everybody have heard about it? Wouldn’t it be in the newspaper or something?”Neither of them wanted to argue with her.It wasn’t personal for them.“A lot of people did hear about it,” Alex said a little defensively.“I don’t know where you were, but Mattie wasn’t keeping it secret.”“And anyway, newspapers don’t go out of their way to report suicides,” Brandon told her.“Especially not teenage suicides.”Turning slowly away from them, she walked back to the sofa and sat on it, staring blindly at the window and seeing Daniel’s face as he’d looked that night.She remembered her own fragile state in the days after, so beset by panic she didn’t leave her house or talk to anybody.She was vaguely aware that Brandon and Alex were still standing there, that her social graces were a failure and her mother would be ashamed.Brandon said something to her, something like “I thought everybody knew,” but words were no longer making their way into her brain.Daniel couldn’t be dead.Numbly, she fished around for her keys in her purse and walked out of the party to her car.She got in it and drove.She drove aimlessly along the darkest streets, in spite of her mother’s constant exhortations to save gas.Finally it was late and dark, and she drove to the bridge.She left her car on the grassy shoulder and walked out onto it.She stared down at the Appomattox.It was a mythic name and place for her because of her father and grandfather.She once asked her father why they always talked about the Civil War, whereas it seemed like Yankees never did.“Because we lost,” he said.“You forget your victories, but you remember the losses.”She put her chin on the rail and watched the water flow darkly.This was a river of loss, and here was one more.She wondered how it would feel to jump.ON THE WAY TO CAPPADOCIA, 776My long absence from Pergamum was not enough to keep Sophia safe.I first heard reports from my youngest brother and then from my mother.In three years, Joaquim’s temper had deteriorated, as difficult as that was to imagine.My father died, and I mourned him and missed him terribly.Joaquim took over the butchery and drove a profitable business into the ground.I was horrified to discover he sold the family house and sent my younger brothers out into the world before they were teenagers.He left his wife with my mother in a room of a public house for long stretches while he ran away from creditors or ran up more debts.Sophia managed, mercifully, not to have his children.When I got the message from my mother, I made another momentous decision.I borrowed a horse and rode thirty-some miles toward Smyrna to a remote cave I had last looked upon a hundred years and two lives ago.There had been a lot of wind and sand in those years, but I could still see the tiny markings I had made on the limestone walls.With my torch and my secrecy I felt like a tomb robber, but the tomb was my own and my bodily remains, thankfully, were not to be found there.I wove through the passages, descending into dank earth as I went.I didn’t need the markings; I remembered how to go.I was relieved to see the pile of rocks I’d constructed completely intact.I moved them carefully, one by one, until I’d exposed the misshapen little portal [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]