She could not let him. Wouldnotlet him.
Upstairs, she knocked on her bedroom door.
“Mum? Are you up?”
No answer.
Skye went inside to find the bed neatly made, her mother’s suitcase tucked away in a corner. She was about to try calling when she heard the growl of approaching vehicles. Through the window that overlooked the hillside, a police car appeared, followed closely by a van. They had arrived to remove the bones from the garden of the empty house, remains that would be collected, tested, investigated.
Twenty minutes later, Skye had dressed and was tugging on her sneakers when someone knocked on the front door. Immediately, she thought of Andreas. But it wasn’t him. Instead, Theo stood there, sunlight catching his dark curls and turning them chestnut-bright.
“Of course!” She clutched her head. “It’s Wednesday. George’s lesson. Is it OK if—”
“You need to cancel?” Theo said. “I guessed as much, given that your mum is here.”
“It’s not that,” Skye began. “I just have something I need to take care of.”
“Say no more,” Theo assured her. “I don’t think even astronauts from the International Space Station would be able to drag my son away from peering over the wall at what the police are up to. He hasn’t stopped going on about those bones we found.”
“Have you already been over there?” she asked.
Theo slipped a backpack off his shoulder.
“Everyone’s over there except you and the girls,” he said. “Dusty’s had some sort of construction disaster, Mia’s watching over the injured Bruno, and Louisa”—he paused, frowned—“actually, I’m not sure where she is. Anyway, I had a quick word with the lead officer over there, and he said something I thought you’d want to know.”
“Oh?”
Skye was halfway through tying her hair back with a band and only half heard him.
“The remains in your garden,” he went on. “What have the authorities told you about them?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Andreas spoke to them, and all they said was that the grave contained a mixture of both animal and human bones. Why?” As Theo cast a look toward the empty house, she added, “What do you know?”
“Well, when I spoke to the police a few minutes ago, they told me it was likely that the remains over there would turn out to date from the war. When I asked the man why he’d come to that conclusion, he said it was because of the other bones, the ones at your house.”
Skye felt a tingling in her fingertips.
“Do you think the two could be linked?” she asked.
“I can’t be sure,” Theo admitted. He unzipped his backpack and produced a manila folder. “The letters,” he explained. “The originals are all here, along with translations. I did the last few this morning.”
“Oh, wow. That’s amazing,” Skye enthused. “Is there anything mentioned in them that might shed a light on any of these discoveries?”
“Yes…” Theo said, drawing out the word.
“Sounds like there’s abut…”
“The girl,” Theo said, “Katerina. She wrote most of these letters, but none of them were ever sent. They’re all addressed to the same person, but most read more like passages from a diary.”
“That makes sense,” Skye said. “There was no postal service in the Cyclades Islands during the occupation. I looked it up.”
“Sad, really,” Theo replied. “It’s hard to imagine a world whereyou can’t simply pick up a phone or send a quick text, isn’t it? Not that some people even bother to do that,” he added bitterly.
Skye accepted the folder.
“There’s a lot of information in there,” he said. “I think it’s only right that you have a chance to see everything first, before we show the letters to the police.”
“The police?” Skye’s eyes widened.
