Jagger shifted Tyler into his left arm. For all of the trauma that limb had suffered, his biceps were as powerful as ever. In fact, given the metal prehensor, carbon fiber socket, and nylon harness that crossed his back and anchored around his other arm, the “disabled” arm was stronger than his real one.
He reached out, bypassed the lunchbox, and slipped his fingers around Beth’s wrist. He pulled her close, said, “This?” and kissed her.
She smiled up at him. “Actually, I brought two.” Her lips found his again.
Tyler made kissing noises.
Jagger dropped Tyler onto his feet, and the boy started for the excavation. Jagger snagged the back of his collar with his hook.
“Just to the fence, Dad. Promise.”
Jagger released him, and Tyler climbed onto the fence’s top rail to sit and watch the workers milling around the dig.
[12]
Jagger turned back to Beth. “School out already?”
She homeschooled Tyler in their tiny apartment in the monastery’s visitors quarters. After learning that Jagger had brought his family, Gheronda, the monastery’s abbot, had graciously offered it. Only Oliver had secured another room in the monastery. Everyone else hiked to the village’s one hotel.
“We’re meeting Gheronda in the library later,” Beth said. “He’s going to show us some illustrated manuscripts and explain how he classifies and catalogs them.”
“Ah, the old AMREMM supplement to the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules,” Jagger said with an air of professorial authority. He smiled at Beth’s surprise. “Father Gheronda cornered me on my rounds and gave me an earful. You’d think he built the library himself.”
The monastery boasted an impressive collection of early codices and manuscripts, second only to the Vatican in quantity and importance.
Beth laughed. “You know it’s just ‘Gheronda’?”
“I’m not going to call a guy I barely know by just his last name. He’s been nice to us. I’ll call him President Gheronda, if he wants.”
“Gheronda means elder. The monks bestowed it on him out of respect, to honor him.”
Jagger turned away, then looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “Yeah, I knew that.”
She slapped his shoulder, and they watched Tyler assume a wobbling standing position on the top rail. “This is a great experience for him.” She pushed herself into Jagger’s side and put an arm around him. “For me too. I’m glad we came.”
Jagger nodded.
“Dad,” Tyler said. “Which hole is Ollie in?”
“Annabelle. Addison’s with him.”
The boy jumped down, grinning. “Let’s go!”
Beth whispered, “He likes her British accent.”
“He likes everything about her,” Jagger said. He almost added, But not as much as I like everything about you — and it was true-but that he didn’t have to say it was one of the things he loved about her. Beth was more comfortable in her own skin than anyone he’d ever met. It wasn’t that she thought she had it all together; she was simply okay with not being all together.
She opened the lunchbox, handed him a paper cup, and uncapped a thermos. She poured out a white liquid, thick as motor oil. Made from spices and salep flour-ground orchid tubers-sahlab was a favorite Egyptian drink. The locals, however, served it hot. Beth’s brilliance was in icing it.
“So,” she said, “did you have a crush on someone when you were his age?”
“Of course. My fourth-grade teacher, Ms. Duncan.” He blinked, furled his brow in thought. “I think.”
Since the crash he’d suffered from long-term memory fragmentation-not amnesia, but a sort of fracturing of memories, so they were often recalled with no context: swimming in a lake as a boy with no memory of getting there or with whom or the events surrounding the swim; driving a car for the first time, but not knowing the make or model or where he’d been. He remembered his parents had died in a plane crash, but couldn’t conjure being told of their deaths. And the faces of the foster families who’d taken him in, but not how many there were or the age he was with each one. Sometimes two unrelated pieces of memory would butt up against each other, making him believe-at least until he did the math-that they were part of the same event. He distinctly recalled coming home from delivering newspapers on a cold, wintry day to find his mom making him a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup. But by the time he’d acquired his first paper route, his parents had been dead for years.
Worst, his memories would sometimes pull images from things he’d never done-swashbuckling on a pirate ship, hugging a rifle in a foxhole-only seen in movies or heard from someone else; yet they were as vivid and real to him as watching Beth walk up the aisle toward him in her white gown or holding his newborn son. Confabulation, the doctors had called it.
It all had something to do with damage to his parahippocampal gyrus, where the brain stored its photo albums and home movies. But CAT scans had revealed no trauma there, so the doctors scratched their heads and wondered if his problem was psychological.
Just another jab from the Man Upstairs, he thought. In case losing my arm, my best friend, and my best friend’s family didn’t knock me down enough notches.
“Or maybe she was the one I didn’t like,” he said. “But that alien that abducted me when I was ten sure was cute.”
Beth didn’t laugh, just smiled sympathetically and rubbed his shoulder.
They watched Tyler climb over the fence and pick something up out of the dirt, brushing at it and blowing away the dust.
“I wish we’d met as little kids,” she said. “Wouldn’t that be wonderful, to have known your soul mate for your entire life?”
“You wouldn’t have liked me.”
She slapped his arm. “Don’t say that. How could I not?”
“I’d have pulled your hair and called you names.”
She made a smug face. “That’d just mean you liked me.”
Jagger nodded and tugged her closer. “You’re really glad we came?”
“We needed this.”
“What about your writing? Do you miss it?”
“I’m writing,” she said. “Just not articles. I’m making notes for my book.”
“This would be a good setting for a murder mystery.”
“It’s nonfiction. Stories of the people who’ve come here throughout history.”
“I know. Will we have our own chapter?”
“Nah, too boring.”
“Dad!” Tyler called. He had edged halfway to the line of tents. “Come on!”
“When do you need him back?” Jagger asked her.
“Gheronda’s expecting us at two.”
He raised his arm to look at his watch, then realized he’d raised the wrong one. He closed his eyes and sighed. He didn’t know which was worse, that after more than a year he still hadn’t mastered the change in his body or that he’d suffered the involuntary change in the first place.
Beth squeezed his shoulder. He forced a smile and checked the time. “By two,” he said. “No problem.”
She returned the thermos to the lunchbox and handed it to him. “There are some extra cups in there for Ollie and Addison. And a sandwich for you.”
He took it, kissed her again, and watched her walk toward the monastery until she turned to smile back at him and wave. Then he watched a little longer.
Tyler had returned and now tugged at his hook. “Come on, come on, come on.”
