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“You had the most peculiar expression on your face,” Whit explained.

For a moment, I was seized with a desire to tell him. To work through my suspicions, to not be alone anymore. But that would be reckless. I had no one I could turn to. I dodged the question by turning his attention somewhere else. “What does the team do in the off-season?”

“They go back to their families, work on their farms, and so on. You’re full of questions. Shocking,” he muttered under his breath.

I ignored the dig. “So, how do you assist Abdullah?”

“By keeping track of who does what, making sure everyone is paid accordingly and on time. I help with moving earth around, wield a pickaxe, and so on. In addition, I detail our findings. Your mother used to keep a perfect record, and most of her tasks have fallen to me.”

I let the despairing feeling run its course. The dread pooled in my belly, robbed me of breath. And then I exhaled, and the moment somehow became bearable. Not fine exactly, but livable.

Whit frowned. “Would you rather I not mention either of them?”

That intuition of his. I swore it was going to get me in trouble one day. I didn’t want to discover things I liked about him.

“It’s all right,” I said, after clearing my throat. “Seeing where they slept and learning how they worked makes me feel closer to them in a way that wasn’t possible in Buenos Aires.”

We rounded the corner and ran straight into my uncle. He looked harassed, as if wanting to be at work but having to do a million things before then. He strode forward in a hurry, carrying a bundle of something in his arms.

“Tío?” I asked.

“Whitford, I’d like a moment with my niece,” my uncle said. He waited until Whit stepped away before he shifted to give me his full attention. “I wanted to apologize. For earlier. I lost my composure, and I didn’t mean to sound harsh. Forgive me.”

I glanced down at the art supplies in his arms.

“I thought you’d like to begin sketching and painting.”

He went looking through my things? I swallowed the angry tangle of emotions rising up my throat. My uncle had no right to poke around my room. As if he owned that, too. I’d hidden my mother’s damning letter in the sleeves of one of my starchy, button-down shirts. The card with the illustration of a gate had gone into the pockets of my bicycle pants.

Had he found them?

His expression was closed off and remote, back to its stoic lines. The sun bore down over me, but it didn’t stop a chill from skipping down my spine.

“I want you to draw the paintings in the temple, por favor. Here are your pencils and a set of paints.” Tío Ricardo handed them over as he called out, “Whitford, watch over her.” He reached into the deep pockets of his vest and pulled out the half-chewed-up sandal. Carefully, he buckled the strap and the tip of the shoe ignited in a sharp blue flame.

Whit took the shoe turned candle. “I will.”

Tío Ricardo shot Whit a look filled with meaning, fiddling with the light scarf around his neck. A plaid pattern featured in the design and it looked incongruous with the rest of my uncle’s rough wear. “And I need to be briefed, don’t forget.”

“I haven’t.” Whit gave him a nod and then Tío Ricardo left.

“Briefed aboutwhat?” I asked.

“Where do you want to start?” Whit asked, taking my things from me.

His refusal to share anything was really starting to annoy. But I let the matter drop; it was a small island, I’d get it out of him eventually. For now, it seemed as if I had some work to do. I never expected my uncle to allow me to record any of the superb Egyptian reliefs or paintings. It was surprising and… curious. He’d gone out of his way to make me feel unwelcome, but now he brought my supplies to me? It felt off, in a way that I didn’t understand… except if he’d gone inside my room with the sole purpose of snooping through my things.

Which might mean that he was suspicious of me. For all I knew, he could be wondering if my parents had shared more about their time here than he originally thought.

All the more reason to sneak intohisroom.

“I want to paint the portico,” I said.

We returned to the temple, and I found a comfortable place to settle. I propped up my large sketchbook across my knees and began to do a loose drawing of the columns topped with what looked like palm leaves. Thecolors, while muted, gave me enough of an impression to know what they would have been when freshly painted. The bold reds and greens and blues reduced to pastels. Whit sat beside me, his long legs stretched out before him and crossed at the ankles, his back against a low screening wall. He watched my progress as I worked.

“That’s really something,” he said after I’d completed the initial drawing.

“Can you draw?”