I think about the statue of Ramesses II at Luxor, hewed from the same stone as his wife, Nefertari, who is depicted at a fraction of his massive image and nestled between his legs.
“Except when they build a temple for us,” Wyatt says, “your statue gets to be the same size as mine.”
“How do you always know what I’m thinking?”
He glances down at me. “Because I’ve been trying to get in your head for fifteen years, maybe.” He reaches for my hand, tangling our fingers together. “I used to have a fantasy that you wrote me and told me you weren’t happy.”
“Thatwas your fantasy?”
“One of the tame ones. I’d dream it, and then realize it was a dream, and then throw myself even harder into my work.”
“Did you write me back?” I ask. “In the dream?”
He nods. “I told you to fix it. But in general terms. To get on a plane and travel. To stay up all night. To kiss a stranger. But I really wanted to tell you to travel to me. Stay up all night with me. Kiss me.”
So I do. I press my lips to the rough edge of his chin. “What happened to that fantasy?”
“It pales next to reality,” Wyatt says.
But reality is a plane crash, and a head injury, and a Gordian knot of relationships that is no less tangled than it was when I left Boston.
There is a literary text in Ancient Egyptian that says the gods made magic so that people could ward off misfortune. And yet, although you might be able to diminish something bad, you still couldn’t prevent it from happening.
I look at Wyatt’s hand, scarred from working in the field. I look at mine, still wearing a wedding band. “Where do we go from here?”
I am well aware that although we boarded a plane together and although Wyatt wants to meet his daughter, we haven’t really discussed our own future. We haven’t talked about Anya. In a way, I don’t mind. I’m afraid to hear what Wyatt wants.
I’m afraid to hear whatIwant.
“As far from this hospital as humanly possible. Hopefully sooner rather than later.”
“I meant figuratively.”
“Maybe this is presumptuous,” Wyatt says, “but I hope you’ll go wherever I go.”
“You have a fiancée.”
“You’ll have to excuse me. I’ve been too busy surviving a plane crash to actually call that off.” When I don’t laugh, he brushes a kiss across my lips. “I know we both made commitments to other people. I think we meant to love those people for the rest of our lives. But things don’t always work out the way we’ve planned. We know that better than anyone.”
“I’m scared,” I whisper.
“You’ve a hole in your head,” he murmurs, kissing my bandaged temple. “You’re badass.”
“That’s not the same,” I say. “I have so much to lose.”
“So do I…and I’ve never even met her.”
“I want her to like you.”
“How couldn’t she?” He grins, his usual cocky self. But in his eyes I can see it: that flicker of fear, that discomfort of being thrust into a role he hasn’t prepared for. For two people who are obsessed with history, we are doing a lousy job of confronting our own.
I think of Meret, of her face when she saw mine on her screen, of all the work I have to do to fix what I’ve broken. “I can’t just move overseas.”
“Then I’ll commute.”
“ToEgypt?”
“To bloody Mars, if I have to.” He smiles at me, and light fills all my darkness. “Don’t you get it, Olive?” Wyatt says quietly. “That’s theeasypart.”
