The desire to be left alone in peace with her lover.
I blinked and the moment passed, the memory vanishing like mist. The quiet in the room thundered in my ears. I had finally left my uncle to rest, but energy curled tight under my skin.
I wanted to hunt my mother down.
Wherever she was, I would find her. She would pay for what she stole from me.
*
My uncle slept like the dead. I’d tried to make him comfortable, pulling the bedding up under his chin, but he’d restlessly shoved them off in his feverish sleep. I sat in a chair by his bed at Shepheard’s. His room was disorderly and crowded with books and rolled-up maps, several trunks and clothing heaped into piles around the floor.
My mind was full of blood.
No matter how long I sat in the bathtub that morning, I couldn’t rid myself of the sand crusted under my nails, embedded in my ears and hair. I couldn’t get clean enough. I couldn’t scrub the image of Elvira’s face from flashing across my mind. The despair on her face right before she died.
Her death was my fault.
She came after me, followed me, and I’d failed to protect her. How could I ever forgive myself? She ought never to have gotten involved in my mess. She trusted me to look after her. I should have barred the door so she couldn’t have left my hotel room. I ought to have woken up before her and anticipated her doomed decision to go down to the lobby.
I ought to have known what my mother was.
But I hadn’t, and she was gone.
I pressed my palm against my mouth, trying to keep myself from crying out. I didn’t want to wake my uncle. I slumped against the seat and tried to keep my eyes open. I hadn’t slept or eaten anything in . . . oh, I had no idea.
One day turned into another and then on the second day, my uncle finally opened his eyes. He stared unblinking in the dimly lit room. Whit had come in earlier, and he’d sat with me while I hovered over my uncle, wiping his brow with cloths that I’d dipped in cool water.
“Hola, Tío.” I stood and went and sat by his side on the bed. “How do you feel?”
“What happened?”
“You were treated in Thebes and then brought back to the hotel in Cairo. The local authorities arrested the men who kidnapped us. Whit and I had to”—my voice broke—“leave Elvira in a cemetery in Thebes. I didn’t know what else to do with . . . her body. They told me that I could always move her coffin wherever it needed to go. I suppose that means Argentina. My aunt will want to have her close.”
Whit stood and laid a hand on my shoulder, his thumb drawing circles.
My uncle regarded me with a tender and grief-stricken expression. “I’m so sorry, Inez. I never meant for any of this to happen.”
I met his gaze squarely. “I want to know all of it. I deserve the truth.”
He nodded, his throat working hard. “I’ve been excavating alongside Abdullah for a little over two decades. Your mother began acting strange early on. She claimed to be bored at the dig sites, so she stayed behind in Cairo, finding her own amusements. She started lying to me, became obsessed with searching for alchemical documents, of all things.”
My eyes flickered to Whit, but his expression revealed nothing of his thoughts. My uncle pressed on with his account. “As the years went on, she’d make excuses and not join us at all at various dig sites. Your father grew concerned, but he loved what he was doing and so turned a blind eye to her behavior. Cayo was always too passive when it came to my sister.”
“Go on,” I said. “What happened next?”
My uncle lowered his eyes. “During this last season, your father and I had to come back to Cairo unexpectedly. When I was on my way to a meeting with Maspero, I saw your mother with a group of men who I knew to be Curators for The Company, thanks to Whit’s sleuthing. I tried to warn her, but she refused to listen. I think that was when your father suspected she was having an affair. Your father started acting strange, hiding things from me, not trusting me.”
Whit moved away from me and sat on the bed next to my uncle. He replaced the washcloth across Tío Ricardo’s brow with another.
“When he might have found Cleopatra’s tomb,” I said, “did he mail something for me from Philae?”
Tío Ricardo nodded. “Yes, I think so. We had a lot of tourists coming and going on the island. He would have had opportunity.”
I nodded. “There’s something I still don’t understand. Why didn’t Papá come to you? Why were you angry with him?”
“I campaigned hard for Cayo to forgive your mother for the affair,” Ricardo said quietly. “The scandal would have destroyed Lourdes, and I still thought I could help her. We argued constantly, to the point where he became paranoid, believing I was involved with her schemes.”
I licked my lips. “He didn’t trust you. That’s why he sent me the ring.”
“I believe so.”
“What happened then?”
“Your parents left. In all likelihood back to Cairo. That was the last I’d seen of them.”
“Where my father presumably died,” I said.
“Why presumably?” Whit asked.
“Because my mother is a liar,” I said. The last line of his letter to me was seared into my mind. Please never stop looking for me. I would not let him down. “What if my father is alive somewhere? He could be kept anywhere.”
“Olivera,” Whit said softly, his eyes kind and full of sympathy.
“He might be alive,” I insisted. I turned away from him, wanting to hold on to hope that my father still lived. It was foolish. It was almost impossible. But it could be true. “Tell me the rest of it, Tío.”
“When your parents didn’t come back for weeks, when my letters were unanswered, I left Philae and came back here.” Tears gathered at the corners of his eyes. “Inez, I searched everywhere for them, but they’d disappeared. No one knew where your parents were. I feared The Company might have murdered them both. After weeks of searching, I had to come up with a plausible story for their absence.”
“Which is when you wrote to me.”
He nodded sadly.
“Meanwhile, my mother was preparing to frame you for my father’s murder. She left behind a letter for someone to find, addressed to Monsieur Maspero, warning him that you were dangerous and involved with criminals.”
“Then,” Whit said, picking up the narrative, “she must have come to Philae, hoping you’d discover the tomb since her husband had.”
“I led her right to it,” I said bitterly. “She took the treasure, and then double-crossed Mr. Burton, whose associate came up with the plan to kidnap me in retribution, hoping to make a trade.”
“Whoever the associate is, they must have deep ties to The Company.”
“Isn’t it obvious,” I said bitterly. “It must be Mr. Sterling.”
Whit shook his head. “Or it could be Sir Evelyn. He did plant a spy on Philae.”
“Whom you never discovered,” my uncle said sourly.