“You’re a girl. An American girl.” He says it as if that’s enough reason. I’m an American girl, so I’m easy. I want something from him. He wants something from me.
He leans closer. I hold my breath. Behind my closed eyes, I see stars on a black canvas. He kisses my neck, letting his tongue explore that indented place below my throat. I hope he tastes salt.
“There was a note,” he says, and then kisses more of my throat. His hands touch my shoulders now and inch downward toward my chest.
I knew Dad wouldn’t have left me without telling me it wasn’t my fault. “Where?”
“His book.” Mayur puts a hand under my shirt. I can’t move. I’m waiting for each word to drop out of his mouth like a jewel.
“The note?” I ask. I’m confused. In what book? The one Dr. Bindas returned to us, The History of Language? Mayur’s hand brushes the top of my left breast over my sports bra. In the cold, his hand feels warm over my skin. I hate that it feels good, that I want his hand there so he’ll keep talking. “It—the note,” he whispers, his breath catching as his hand moves. “The note in his book. He left by the pool.”
Dad was in the sea for more than twenty-four hours. All that time Mayur had the note.
“What did it say?” I ask. Mayur’s lips touch mine, almost by accident. They move past to my cheek, then return.
He shifts closer. “It wasn’t your father’s.”
The blood goes out of my head. “I don’t understand. What do you mean? Not his note?”
Mayur’s lips touch mine again. He presses toward me.
I jerk back.
“Maybe you don’t want to know any more?” Mayur asks, his voice husky.
I want to know. I make myself kiss his cheek. The cave air pushes against me.
“He didn’t write it.” Mayur runs his hand under my bra. No boy has ever touched me there. The closest is when a boy in my class nuzzled my neck while playing spin-the-bottle at a party in seventh grade. I didn’t even tell Zoe. “It was written to him.”
“Mother wrote it?” Was it a farewell letter from Mother, asking for a divorce? Saying that she’d met Howard and she wanted to leave Dad? That would explain why she didn’t tell me about the letter. She’d feel guilty if Dad died with a note like that in his possession. She knows I’d hate her.
Mayur doesn’t answer. He’s too busy exploring the curves of my chest. He lifts my shirt and, pulling my bra aside, kisses one of my breasts. He runs his tongue over the surface, and I shudder, turning my head away.
“Are you here?” A voice—Saco’s?—sounds far away.
I don’t answer. Mayur doesn’t, either. I don’t want them to come back now. I want more time.
“Tell me.” And I push my breast hard into Mayur’s soft mouth. He sucks softly, and my body wants more.
He draws back. “I like that.” He runs his hand over my wet breast, brushing it lightly, teasing.
“That is the mystery,” he says. “It’s not a note from your father or your mother.”
I hear the others coming back. Mayur reaches over and pulls my bra down over my breast, as if I’m incapable of covering myself.
I can’t even speak. I don’t know what to think. The note was in the book Dad had been reading. Then why didn’t Dr. Bindas turn it over to the police? Nothing makes sense.
“Why didn’t your father give it to the commissioner?”
“He didn’t know about the note. I found it.”
I imagine Mayur thumbing through Dad’s book. Touching the pages with his guilty boy fingers. Finding a note creased inside. Hiding it. Keeping it secret.
“A note. So what? Maybe it wasn’t anything. Maybe it was just a receipt from a bookstore.” I feel my voice going higher. I don’t want Mayur to think the note is important.
“Part of it was written in Italian,” Mayur says.
“Dad taught Italian. He was an Italian professor.” It was a letter from a student or from the university in Rome where he researched.
“It was a love letter. From a woman.”
“What did it say?”
“It’s a quote from some artist. Chagall. Something about there’s only one color in life, the color of love. Then the rest is ‘I love you’ in Italian. Over and over.”
Mayur backs off now that he’s delivered his news, as if he’s embarrassed to talk about words of love, even in a dark cave where we can’t see each other’s eyes.
“Hey, what’s going on?” Saco shines his light on us.
Roberto chuckles. “Oh, ho, Mayur, I didn’t know.”