“That was beginner’s luck,” he says sourly.
“You’re a sore loser.”
“That’s what you think. You’re going down,sukar.”
“Sukar?”
He looks surprised to have said it himself. “It’s Arabic. For sugar.” His cheeks redden. “Like a…nickname.”
Over the edge of my laptop I watch the blur of cards in his hands—a waterfall, a fan, rising against gravity.
“Are you going to go back to Egypt?” Meret asks, and the cards fly all over the place.
He glances at me sidelong as he begins to gather them together. “I plan to, eventually.”
I don’t realize I’m holding my breath until I hear Meret’s response: “Can I come?”
Wyatt grins. “I’d like that.”
“I want to see the Great Pyramid.”
“No, you don’t,” he insists. “It’s cramped and touristy. I’ll take you to see tombs that haven’t seen the light of day in thousands of years—”
“But the Great Pyramid is the one where they found that new inner burial chamber by using muons.”
“Usingwhat?” I ask.
They both turn to me. “Muons,” Meret repeats. “They’re subatomic particles. Kind of like electrons, but with more mass. They hit Earth all the time and they can go through stone and solid matter, but then they peter out. Physicists used them in the Great Pyramid to see places where they were zipping through empty space.”
“A Japanese and French team carried out the tomography in Giza. But,” Wyatt argues, “it didn’t really tell us anything. Rather than being a new burial chamber, it’s likely to be an architectural feature, taking the weight off the Grand Gallery of the pyramid.”
Meret shrugs. “Still, you have to admit it’s a really cool tool, using natural radiation for mapping.”
“And bloody expensive,” he counters.
I watch them argue amiably. Wyatt’s eyes are dancing as he matches his daughter’s verbal parries.
I let myself imagine it. Maybe we three will go to Giza, and shuffle into the cramped tunnel of the Great Pyramid, breathing in sweat and stale air until we stand in the center of the Grand Gallery, surrounded by history.
Glancing down at my screen, I open an email from Abigail Trembley. The subject line isWIN.
Before I left for England to find Thane, I had called my social worker friend. Although Win had absolved me of my duties, I didn’t feel right leaving her and Felix without someone to watch over them. Then I had emailed Abigail from Egypt, but I hadn’t heard back.
I click on the message, waiting for it to load, expecting the worst.
Wyatt is dealing a new hand. Out of the blue, Meret asks, “What should I call you?”
Don’t sayDad, I think silently.She isn’t ready for that.
“Mighty is the Ma’at of Re, Chosen of Re?” Wyatt suggests, giving the translation of Ramesses II’s Egyptian name.
Meret’s lips twitch. “I was thinkingWyatt.”
“That works, too,” he says.
The body of the email loads.
Dear Dawn,
