Then Mayur steps forward. “These are my cousins, Saco and Roberto. This is Loco—his real name is Achal.” Mayur introduces the other boys, too.
Mother smiles at each in turn, studying them. “Ah, yes, Saco, I’ve heard of you.” She says it as a warning, though she sounds like she’s teasing.
Too late, Kammi steps away from him, already having drawn enemy fire to him by standing too close.
Loco refills his own cup, as if he isn’t a guest. “Mayur’s mother says you are an artist. What do you paint?”
Mother folds her arms. “Landscapes, still lifes.”
“Like fruit bowls and bottles?” Loco asks.
Mayur laughs and punches his cousin in the shoulder.
Mother blanches. Loco doesn’t seem to realize he’s insulted her. Maybe he really is crazy. Or maybe he’s truly interested.
“It’s not just junk on a table,” I answer. I’m not defending Mother but I don’t want her to say something rude to Loco, even though he doesn’t mean anything to me. “Still lifes are carefully composed. It’s all about balancing shapes and colors.”
“Like Cézanne? The way he drapes the folds of cloth next to the fruit?”
“Yes.” Maybe Loco’s not so crazy.
“We have to go,” Mayur says, making a display of handing his cup back to Martia so it won’t blow away and litter the beach. “Mother’s driver is taking us into Willemstad to the arcade.” He doesn’t ask if we can go. He’s just showing off. “Thank you, Mrs. Walters. Don’t forget Saturday.” As he walks by me, he says low, so only I hear, “Maybe I have something for you. On Saturday.”
“So tell,” I whisper.
“If you’re nice.”
“Thank you,” Saco says to Mother and Martia as he turns away stiffly. He knows Mother doesn’t approve of him, just because he appears to like Kammi. Loco and the other boys mumble thanks, too, as they follow Mayur back down the beach. When they’re almost out of sight, I hear them laugh, and they start jogging again.
Martia begins to clear the tray. She always shakes her head about the Bindas family and their big house and all the ornamentation that just exudes from their property, their green lawn. Even the rings on Mrs. Bindas’s fingers and the bangles on her wrists. But Martia’s careful around Mother. “Is good to see boys hungry,” Martia says. “Polite, too,” she adds.
“I’m surprised Mrs. Bindas encourages so many cousins to visit at once. I’m not sure Saco or Loco are positive influences on Mayur.”
I roll my eyes when Kammi looks at me with raised eyebrows. For an artist, Mother is about as observant as a shark: she can’t see what’s right in front of her, but she can smell blood at a great distance.
Mother suddenly seems to remember Kammi and I are still standing there.
“Kammi, I see you have your supplies. Why don’t you and I go inside? Still lifes make excellent studies, as Cyan properly noted. You want to make the most of your time here.”
Kammi almost trips, she’s in such a hurry to gather her materials and follow Mother inside. She doesn’t seem to notice that I am not included.
Chapter Twenty
ON THE twenty-third, early in the still-dark, before even Martia is up, I slip outside. Flip-flops, headscarf, T-shirt, and skirt. I know as I leave the house, feel the damp sea air on my arms, that this is not my usual scavenger walk down the beach. I know the date without looking at the calendar. I went to bed last night knowing and I woke up knowing.
June 23. A year ago today, Dad died. If I dreamed last night, I don’t remember.
I clutch the key I borrowed from Martia’s key ring. If I drop it in the sand, I’ll never find it, not in the dark.
Shadows skitter along the sand. Not lizards, it’s too cold at night. Their bodies don’t hold heat. No, these are sand crabs. Scavengers like me, ghostlike at night.
The air feels so damp, maybe it’s misting.
In front of me, the boathouse looms darker than the air around it. It looks like the entrance to a cave. I touch the peeling-paint walls, the indentation of the door—I think it’s the door—and feel for the padlock. The metal chain is cold and wet. I trace my fingers down it like a blind person reading Braille. What if the lock has rusted through inside and the key won’t work? What if no one can ever get in again?
The key fits, turns. I push and the bottom of the door scrapes along the sand, leaving a curved scar.
I climb into the boat. Where would he have put a note, if he left one? I run my hands along the lip of the boat frame, certain the police missed something. What do they know about anything? I search under the seats. Sometimes the Arabic-language teacher at school would tape a prize to the underside of a student’s chair, a random surprise—a set of notecards, a book of children’s poetry in Arabic, a package of date candies.