“Tío,” I said. “Will you put down your reading for ten minutes?”
“What do you need, Inez?” he asked absently.
I sat in the chair closest to him. “We’ve barely spoken since I arrived, aside from you telling me that I needed to leave the country.”
“Much good it did,” he said with a small smile, putting the book down. He leaned back against his chair, folded his arms across his flat stomach, and studied me, tracking the curve of my cheek, the slope of my jaw. I got the impression that he searched for any sign of his sister.
A sister who believed him to be a criminal.
“I miss my parents,” I said softly. “Being here helps me hold on to them.”
His face bore every one of his stories; the lines held untold adventures, his scars displayed the perilous moments in his life, the glasses a necessity from long years of being hunched over a book. All put together, he was a study of secrets and academic pursuit, the marks of an explorer.
“What do you wish to know?”
My breath stayed at the back of my throat. Would I have many more moments like this? Only the two of us? When we reached Philae, his attention and time might be pulled into a thousand different directions. “They spent seventeen years in Egypt. Were they happy here?”
Tío Ricardo let out a soft chuckle. “Do you know why I invited them to come?”
“You needed money,” I said flatly.
He gave me a rueful smile. “I’d drained all of my personal resources and I refused to accept funding from institutions who demanded artifacts in return. Zazi and I were at our wits’ end, and then she had the idea for me to reach out to Cayo and Lourdes. It was the only way she thought the three of us could continue with any integrity. Her brother Abdullah’s work had bound us all together . . . but then she died.” Acute misery swept across his face, and I wanted to reach forward to take his hand in mine. But I held still, somehow knowing he’d stop talking if shown any pity.
And I didn’t want him to stop talking.
“I continued to ask for the money because I believed in Abdullah’s mission, and because I knew that Zazi wouldn’t have wanted her brother to carry it alone.” The line of his mouth relaxed as he fell into a memory. “Your father was happy from the start, but it took time for Lourdes to fall in love with Egypt. But when she did, she fell hard. Soon, she made herself indispensable to the team. She was so organized, and I trusted her to pay everyone on time, keeping track of their hours. She was a favorite among the crew, always making them laugh with some of her pranks. Eventually, she made a life here.”
“She played pranks at the excavation site? That doesn’t sound like Mamá.”
My mother always knew how to behave, knew the right thing to say, and was a favorite in the social circles of Buenos Aires.
“It’s who she was as a young girl,” he said quietly. “Egypt brought that out of her. Try to remember that she married young, younger than you are now, and to a man much older than her. My parents were rigid people who expected much from their only daughter, and while they had a good name, they didn’t have money. Your father made his money by working hard, making smart investments, and succeeding in the railroad industry. It was a good match, though, and they both were able to relax here. Become the people they were meant to.”
“But still, to play pranks . . .” I let my voice trail off. The idea was as foreign to me as my mother wearing a bright red evening gown. She had never showed any playfulness with me. Hurt pinched my heart and I tried not to think about how we might have laughed harder if she had behaved more like herself around me.
“She has an old silk scarf that can shrink anything it can cover down to the size of a charm.” Grief tinged his smile. “I can’t tell you how many shoes of mine have gone missing.”
I finally found my voice. “Well, I can see her ordering everyone around on the team.”
“Much to the dismay of Abdullah. He’s the one who likes to keep order, but your mother tried to override his decisions at every turn. I had to come between them many times.” He gave a rueful shake of his head. “Between the two of them, I never had a question of who did what, or when. What time everyone would arrive to commence digging, or long how anyone worked. She managed everything and kept record of all the discoveries.”
“Record?”
“Yes, she . . .” He hesitated, and then decided against continuing that sentence. “It was important to her that she kept track.”
“Where did she keep such records?”
“That’s something you don’t need to know. But since we’re on the subject, I’m going to repeat the need for caution when discussing your time with us here. If you care at all about my life’s work, then you’ll keep what you see and learn to yourself. Do it for your parents, if not for me.”
“You can trust me.”
“I wish I could,” he said with real regret underscoring each word. “Not for something like this. You might be family, Inez, but you’re a stranger to me and I won’t risk everything merely because your feelings might get hurt.”
He didn’t know me well enough to pass judgment. He hadn’t taken the time to get to know me. We were strangers by his choice, not mine. “Well, you haven’t proven to be trustworthy yourself.”
He stilled.
“I know you’re keeping something from me,” I accused. I hadn’t planned on saying any of this to him, but now that I’d started, I couldn’t stop. “I heard you talking to Mr. Hayes about Mamá and Papá, so don’t bother denying it. What really happened to them? What aren’t you telling me, Tío?”
“Listening at doors, Inez? That’s beneath a young lady of your upbringing.”
I threw my hands up. “Well, I have to if you insist on lying to me.”
He stood, his guard up.
“You’ve hired Mr. Fincastle, who practically brought enough guns to outfit a militia. Why must you have security at your excavation site, Tío? My parents wouldn’t have approved of having so many weapons.”
His words rang out. “You didn’t know your parents.”
I reared back as if he had struck me across the face. But he hadn’t lied, and perhaps that was what hurt the most. In a hundred years, I never would have expected my parents to be so reckless with their lives, and travel across the desert without any precautions. Not unless they had good reason.
“Were they looking for something?” I asked, a sudden idea striking me.
“What?”
“Were they,” I said slowly, fury lacing each word, “looking for something? Did you send them out there?”
Emotion flickered deep in his hazel eyes. It might have been guilt. But my uncle remained silent, even as my pulse thrashed in my veins. He adjusted his glasses, averting his gaze from mine. My heart sank. That was it, then.
My uncle had sent them on a wild hunt and they’d lost their lives because of him.
“Tell me about their last day, tell me what they were doing.” My voice cracked. “Why weren’t you with them?”