“Another mystery,” Theo said, not unhappily.
“We should tell the police,” Skye said. “They want to track down whoever last owned the empty house and test the baby’s DNA against them. But we know whose baby it is. It feels important that she be reburied.”
Theo gave a small, measured nod.
“Reburied here?”
“No.” Skye thought for a moment. “There’s a cemetery, isn’t there, close to Chora?”
“I believe so, yes.”
“How likely do you think it is that Leni was buried there?”
The corners of Theo’s eyes crinkled as he smiled.
“You think the baby should be laid to rest with her?”
“I do,” Skye said. “I think Katerina would have liked that.”
“I wonder if she ever found Stefanos,” Theo said.
Skye glanced up. Two birds had swooped in low across the hillside, the tips of their wings stretched out as if yearning to touch each other. They rode on the current of the wind, dippingand diving, heading out together across the wide expanse of sea. She could not tear her eyes away, watching until they were little more than dark smudges against the glittering blue.
“My head tells me no,” she said. “But my heart…”
Dust rose from the road. A truck came into view.
Skye jolted. Her skin tingling as a thousand volts of anticipation hurtled through her.
She had asked her dad once. They’d been at Neist Point, on the Isle of Skye, sitting together below the looming lighthouse. Rods in hand, a thermos of cocoa between them.
“How did you know that you were in love with Mum?”
Cosmo MacKinnon gave her a sideways look.
“That’s a big question for a wee lass.”
“Fifteen isn’t wee,” she replied. “You’re never too young for love, remember?”
“Aye,” he agreed. “The more you can get of the stuff, the happier you’ll be.”
“But how do you know when it’s real?” she pressed.
He tilted his head, eyes fixed on the horizon.
“It’ll feel like a door swinging open. One that’s always been there, only locked. When you step through, there’s no going back. But that’s all right. Because it’s warm in there. It’s safe. It’s home.”
And that was it.
When Skye was with Andreas, that’s exactly how she felt.
Like she’d stepped through.
Like she’d finally come home.
Sixty
The coveralls were gone, as were the heavy workmen’s boots. Andreas’s hair looked damp beneath his red baseball cap. He was wearing a faded T-shirt and the same shorts he’d had on the day she’d bumped into him at the beach.
