In all fairness, they were quite similar.
“The obituary you wrote in theYale Alumni Magazinewas perfect,” I tell him.
Wyatt studies me. “So the alumni association was able to track you down.”
I hear all the words he is not saying:Hecouldn’t. Or maybe he never tried.
Lightening my tone, I shrug. “I think Yale would call out the CIA to find alums, just for the capital giving campaigns.” Then I look up at him. “It must have been hard for you. When Dumphries died.”
“I spent a lot of nights wishing for his position,” Wyatt admits. “But I’ve spent more nights wishing that I’d had several more years to learn from him first. I was thirty-six when I took over as the head of the department. It’s been seven years and there’s a good percentage of the Egyptology community that thinks I’m still cutting my teeth in the field.”
“Publishing the new tomb should shut them all up.”
Wyatt raises a brow. “Such loyalty.”
“I’m trying to impress my new boss.”
He laughs. “You know, there was a time when you would have gotten on the first plane rather than let me give you orders.”
He has no idea how close to the bone his words strike. I force myself to meet his gaze. “I know you went out of your way for this. For me.” I hesitate. Now is the moment of reckoning; now is when I need to tell Wyatt why I am here. But it feels like the truth is at the top of a mountain, and I am standing at the bottom.
I am saved by the arrival of a waiter, who approaches us impatiently, as if we are the ones who kepthimwaiting. Wyatt asks for a Coke, and the waiter turns to me. “Can I have bottled water?” I ask.
The waiter shrugs dispassionately. “Why not.” He walks to a cooler and takes out a bottle, hands it to me. As Wyatt orders baba ghanoush and hummus, I twist the cap and accidentally spill water all over the waiter. He drops his pen, looks at me sourly, and heads back to the kitchen to place—and probably cook—our order.
Wyatt mops up the table with a paper towel. “An Egyptian would say if you spill water on someone, you won’t speak to them again.”
“I’m ninety-nine percent sure that waiter didn’t want to speak to me again anyway.”
“Are you still superstitious?” he asks. “Like your mom?”
Surprised, I glance at him. “I can’t believe you remember that.”
“I remember everything.” His voice is low, soft. It pulls at me. “Dawn. Ghosts don’t reappear after fifteen years. What’s going on?”
People do not get to rewind their lives, to rewrite the outcome. We make our beds, and we lie in them. Literally, in my case.
I have had a good life. I have loved, and have been loved. I have helped people. I’ve found a career—maybe not the one I intended, but one that has been rewarding all the same. If I die today, I would be able to say with honesty that I left this world a tiny bit better than how I found it.
I have had a good life. But, maybe, I could have had a great one.
How do I tell the man I left behind that I think I might have made a mistake?
“I’m not here to finish my dissertation,” I confess.
Wyatt nods, his eyes never leaving my face. “Then why come to Egypt?”
Because,I think.You’re here.
Because I didn’t get to see how this might have turned out. HowImight have turned out.
Because if there is a garden of maybes, you are the invasive plant I can’t ever get rid of.
But instead, I shake my head. “I don’t know. My life is chaos.”
Wyatt is silent for so long that I think I’ve offended him. Maybe I seem like a whiny woman in the throes of a midlife crisis, or a bored housewife. Then Wyatt idly picks up the pen that the waiter left behind. “Does he know you’re here?”
I know who he is talking about. I shake my head.
