He shakes his head. “They cut off my funding years ago. We’ve got a private benefactor now. Rich as fuck,” he admits, “but that’s sort of the way it’s always been, all the way back to Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon.”
We walk out of the tent into the heat; it feels like stepping into someone else’s mouth. “Aren’t you sort of Lord Carnarvon in this equation?”
“Not if you’re going by a bank statement,” he admits. “The one thing that the Athertons have excelled at is gradually squandering the family fortune.”
“Good thing you have Dailey,” I say. The benefactor’s name. When Wyatt looks at me in surprise, I shrug. “Joe talks a lot.”
He sees one of the workers flagging him down, and his eyes flicker over my iPad. “Back to it, then.”
I watch him disappear into a knot of workers, crouching down to look at something in a sieve. Instead of heading into the tomb, I double back, walking into thewadi. In the desert, this is the best you can do for privacy when you need to use the bathroom. I shimmy my borrowed pants down my legs, squat, and finish. I’m pulling them back up when my phone falls out of my pocket.
I pick it up and notice that, in this vast wasteland, there is a faint roaming signal.
I think of all the times I’ve told Meret to stop texting at the dinner table. I imagine her phone vibrating beside a bowl of mashed potatoes and her water glass.
Home soon,I type.I love you.
Tell dad I will be back soon.
I start toward the tomb, hesitating in the last shadow of thewadi. I think of what I’ve been tracing all morning. The last message left by a nobleman, who is now no more than dust.
I add:Forgive me.
—
THE DAY AFTERWyatt kissed me was a Friday, and the reason I remember this is because we always had Fridays off. Dumphries was taking Bette to the airport in Cairo, and the other graduate students were driving to Tell el-Amarna to see the tombs of Akhenaton and Nefertiti. Normally, I would have gone with them—part of the joy of a dig season was using our few moments of freedom to explore other parts of Egypt—but Wyatt had announced at breakfast that he had to catch up on work. And no matter how much I wanted to see Amarna, I wanted to talk to Wyatt more. I wanted to tell him that whatever last night had been, it was never going to happen again.
He worked alone in his room all morning. I sat at the table in the common area, trying to figure out the three blank spots on a crossword someone else had already attempted, but mostly just waiting for Wyatt. When he did emerge from his room, it was shortly before noon, and he completely bypassed the common room. Instead, he banged out the front door.
By the time I got to the front steps of the Dig House, he was gone. I walked down the path that led to the Nile, passing small raised patches of barley and broad beans, but there was no sign of him. The other direction headed west into the desert, where we went when we were working. I frowned—he wasn’t allowed to visit the site alone, on a day off—but jogged lightly into the ripple of sand and heat.
By the time I got a glimpse of Wyatt’s white shirt in the distance, I was sweating and red-faced, cursing the fact that I hadn’t grabbed a hat. I called his name, but the syllables were snatched by the wind.
“Hey,” I yelled, as he tracked into a dry valley east of the necropolis.“Hey!”
Wyatt whipped around to face me. His eyes darkened, as if I were the last person he had hoped to see. “What are you doing here?” he asked.
“What areyoudoing here?”
“Taking a walk,” Wyatt said. “I wasn’t being productive.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He smirked. “As charming as your faith is in my efficiency, I was falling asleep over the text. I needed some fresh air.”
It was high noon in the desert; this was not fresh air. “I want to talk about last night,” I said.
“Well, I don’t.” Wyatt spun on his heel and started off into thewadiagain.
“I don’t want you touching me again,” I called out.
“Perfect.” Wyatt tossed back over his shoulder. “Since I don’t want to touch you.”
I stood, watching him stride deeper into the desert. “Where are you going?”
“Wherever you aren’t,” Wyatt said.
His words set a fire in me; I immediately remembered what an arrogant dick he was. I didn’t have to worry about what had happened between us last night because I was never going to get close enough to him for it to happen again.
