Page 70 of A Princess, Stolen
I woke up again and looked around. Something was wrong. Something…was missing…yes. I had been aware of it subconsciously the whole time, but it hadn’t penetrated my consciousness. I frantically pulled up the sleeve of my sweater and stared at my wrist.
Tears welled up in my eyes.
I had noticed it when I was changing, but in my shock, I hadn’t understood.
Nathan’s bracelet was gone, and with it, my mom’s wedding ring.
The ring had snagged on the threads of the net and Nathan had certainly destroyed the bracelet to free me. He certainly hadn’t had time to fish the band or the ring out of the water. And if he had, he would have at least returned the ring immediately, that I was certain of.
Both were probably lying on the ocean floor in Mom’s eternal, dark grave.
The ring is with Mom now, I thought. With the little bird on the sea floor where it should have always been. My last memento of her, which I had originally wanted to reject, was lost forever. Just like her.
I swallowed several times and wiped the tears from my eyes, but it was useless. There were too many and they continued to stream down my cheeks.
Over the next few hours, I drifted between sleep and wakefulness. I kept waking up, half awake, seeing blue pearls sinking to the bottom of the sea, kicking my legs against an invisible trawling net, and thrashing around wildly. Once, I found Mom’s ring in some fine golden coral that reminded me of Penelope’s hair, but when I tried to grab it, it turned into Isaac, who looked like Sparta.
At some point, when I woke up, I didn’t remember the dream, but Nathan was there. For a moment, I lay there with my eyes open, peering over the thick duvet.
In front of the dresser with his back to me, he removed a jet-black sweater from the drawer and placed it on the shelf. Then, he pulled his wet sweater over his head.
Now he was only wearing dark pants, which he had apparently changed into. I blinked several times as I stared at his back, transfixed. It wasn’t his broad shoulders or the sinewy muscles that bulged in the light of the bare bulb with every movement, nor was it his wild black hair, which was still damp.
No. His whole back was covered in words. Full of dark, artistic lettering tattoos in pairs, or so it seemed. I blinked again, concentrating, trying to focus my eyes so I could read some of it. The room was tiny and he was standing nearby. My gaze finally settled on two words that were written a little larger than the rest. They were written just above his left shoulder blade.
Lea McCormack
McCormack. A beautiful last name. Underneath was a number.
292119.2N 911638.2W
For a split second, I wondered if the numbers represented her birthday and the day she died, however, if so, they were strangely coded. 292119.2N 911638.2W. The sequence of numbers was etched into my memory like a seal. Despite my passion for painting, I had an almost photographic memory for numbers, and math was as natural and easy for me as breathing. Dad, on the other hand, couldn’t remember numbers at all and always joked that he even had the code to his safe stored on his PC. Despite his success, generating millions of dollars in sales every year, his talent lay more in the area of rhetoric. He was good at talking.
I was trying to decipher another name when Nathan abruptly turned as if he had sensed that I was watching him.
He said nothing but fixed me with that dark look that paralyzed everything inside me. Then, without saying a word, he pulled on the sweatshirt he had placed on the dresser.
I sat up. “What does that mean?” I asked, brushing a sweaty strand of hair from my face that had come loose from one of the braids. He knew I had seen his back, so I could ask.
He replied with silence and the silence filled the small room until it seemed burdensome.
Tous ceux qu’il aime meurent, a tiny voice whispered inside me. “Nathan, who are those names?” I tried not to sound too curious.
He merely raised his eyebrows. “Don’t you have completely different problems right now? Sparta wanted to kill you! You almost drowned!”
I closed my eyes for a moment. “I don’t want to think about it.”
He turned his back to me again and stared out the tiny porthole at the sea. “These are the names of dead people,” he finally said, harshly and darkly.
“The names of dead people?” Frost crept up my spine and into my neck. “So many?”
“Yes, you parrot,” he whispered, slightly resigned.
His back was a graveyard. My heart clenched and I climbed out of bed even though my legs still felt like jelly. Why on earth would someone have the names of dead people tattooed on their back?
Like an obituary!
It was completely abnormal, almost insane.
