“No, I don’t think so.”
“If you’re here to donate something—”
“It’s nothing like that.” The woman looked shyly at her feet. “I’m his daughter.”
***
Dan had known Louise long enough to understand her body language. He didn’t need to be an expert to know something was wrong from the paleness of her skin and the way her lips were puckered. “Lou, what’s wrong?”
She stepped aside to let a young woman into the office. Dan nearly fell out of the chair at the sight of her. “Isis?” he asked with disbelief. She looked exactly the same as the wife he’d lost almost twenty-two years earlier, right down to the slight hook of her nose and the eyebrows that were a little too thick for conventional tastes.
“No, Dr. Dreyfus. My name is Eileen. Isis was my mother.”
He didn’t need to have a PhD to figure this girl was in her early twenties and then to do the math. “You think I’m your father?”
“I do not think. I know. My mother told me.”
He saw Louise fidget to the side of the girl and stood up. “I think we should discuss this somewhere private. Lou, can you watch things while I’m gone?”
Louise only nodded in response. Dan resisted the urge to put a hand on Eileen’s arm to lead her from the office. He longed for the old, slow elevator that would have given him time to think of something to say, but this elevator dropped them off on the first floor seconds later. “There shouldn’t be anyone in the cafeteria,” he said. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”
“That would be fine. Two sugars and one cream, please.”
“Yes, of course,” he said. Isis had liked her coffee the same way. He found it almost impossible to add the sugars and cream to hers from the way his hands shook. A daughter! A beautiful twenty-one-year-old who looked just like her mother. Her mother the woman he’d thought was dead, a pile of ashes left in the cellar. Could she really have survived and given birth to a child—their child? Or maybe this was an elaborate hoax to get her hands on his family’s money.
He forced his hands not to shake long enough to get the coffee to her safely. He took a cautious sip of his; the liquid tasted extremely bitter despite the three sugars he’d added to it. “Your mother, is she still alive?”
“No, I’m afraid she passed last year. Cervical cancer.”
“They have treatments for that.”
“Not in Libya.”
“Libya? Why were you there?”
“When my mother disappeared from your house, she was delivered to some men who trafficked in human lives. Sex slaves is the term I think you would use.”
“What? Who kidnapped Isis?”
“Agents of Don Vendetta. They thought the wife of someone like you would fetch a good price. And she did.” Tears came to Eileen’s eyes. “She was sold to a sheikh in Saudi Arabia. He did terrible things to her.”
Dan handed some napkins to her and wished he could do more than that. “But she was already pregnant with you, wasn’t she?”
“Yes. When the man found out, he beat her terribly. There were some in the palace who were kind to her, who helped her escape to Libya. That’s where she gave birth to me.”
“Why didn’t she contact me? I could have brought her home.”
“She was ashamed. She did not even tell me about you until she was on her deathbed. She thought you would think she was a whore.”
“I’d never think that about her. I loved her.”
“I’m sure you did.”
Dan stared at the girl who claimed to be his daughter as she dabbed at her eyes. One thing didn’t make sense to him about this narrative. “You don’t talk like someone from Libya. Where did you go to school?”
“Mother saved up her money so I could go to boarding school in Switzerland, as she did.” Eileen began to sob. “She thought I was ashamed of her as well.”
“It’s going to be all right now. I promise.” He smiled at her and hoped to stem her tears. “Do you have a place to stay?”
“I am renting a room at the Red Carpet Inn on Summit Street.”
Dan didn’t know the place personally, but he knew it was in the Trenches, no place for an attractive single woman unless she wanted to end up like her mother. “How about you stay at my house? There’s plenty of room. You can tell me more about your mother.”
She lunged across the table and almost knocked over both coffees, to wrap him in an embrace. “Thank you, Dr. Dreyfus. This means so much to me. I thought you might be skeptical or even angry with me.”
“I’m not angry. I’m glad,” he said. “And call me Dan. No, call me Dad.”
“Thank you…Dad.” Her face reddened at this and he could feel his own cheeks turn warm. He had hugged Louise on a few occasions when she was small, but that hadn’t felt like this. This was his own flesh and blood. His daughter. A piece of him and Isis, the only piece of them that remained.
“Come on, I’ll show you around the museum.” He took her hand to lead her out of the cafeteria for the most important guided tour of his life.
***
Though this morning she was supposed to go over the latest expenditures on the renovation, Emma instead searched for any information on the Book of Isis. One thing that hadn’t changed in twenty years was the relative uselessness of Internet searches and the prevalence of pornography on the network. She had to sift through two screens of sites dedicated to a porn star named Isis before she got to anything relevant.
From what she could tell, no one had heard of the Book of Isis before. There were sites dedicated to the Book of the Dead, but that wasn’t the same thing. Emma had read the Book of the Dead when she was in grade school; she knew it wouldn’t provide any help on the book her daughter had found in the desert. There were mentions of the goddess Isis, but most of these had to do with a series of video games and a movie about killer mummies.
She leaned back in her chair and sighed. Maybe she should stop being a coward and offer her heart to the book. She still worried about what would happen if that didn’t work. Then the book would still be here and Louise would have lost her mother for nothing.
Right on cue the door to her office banged open and there stood Louise, her face as red as the Scarlet Knight’s armor. “What did you do with the book?”
“The book?”
“The book I found in the desert. You checked it out of the vault.”
“I wanted to show it to some of the donors. I thought it might encourage their generosity.” Emma tried to lean forward and tent her fingers like the previous director had done to unnerve Emma.
This didn’t seem to have any effect on Louise, who slammed the door shut and then leaned forward to hiss, “I want the book back. We haven’t gotten a chance to study it yet.”
“I should remind you that I’m the director of this museum. You should treat me as such.”
“Gee, I’m sorry, Director Earl, but that book is vital to our research.”
“I’ll give it back to you when I’m done with it. Shouldn’t be more than a day or two.”
“Mom, please—”
“What did I just say, Dr. Earl?”
“I’m sorry. I forgot you don’t care about science anymore. All you care about is making money for this stupid renovation.”
“Without the donors you and Dr. Dreyfus wouldn’t be able to go on those digs to Egypt to find artifacts like that.”
Louise sagged into a chair and brushed a tress of tangled hair away from her face. “Dr. Dreyfus and I would like to present some of our findings at a conference in DC. We think that could really drum up some support for the museum.”
“What sort of findings?”
“Our initial carbon dating indicates the statue we found could be five thousand years old. The craftsmanship of the idol seems far too advanced for that time period.”
“I assume you’re running more tests before you bandy this about.”
“Yes, Dr. Earl. I’ve already got the lab going on it
. If you’ll approve it I’ll have some outside experts come in to verify it as well.”
“If you put the forms on my desk I’m sure I’ll approve them.”
“Sure. I’ll type them up when I get back.”
“Good.” Emma resisted the urge to reach out and take her daughter’s arm. As she had said, there was professional protocol to think of, even when they were alone. “Look, when I was your age I thought all this administrative stuff was annoying too. I still do. But when you get to be an old lady like me, you’ll see it’s important.”
“I understand.” Louise smiled a little. “You’re not so old.”
“Thank you.” As Louise stood up and headed for the door, Emma said, “Could you ask Dr. Dreyfus to see me if he’s not too busy?”
“That could be a problem.” Louise looked down at her feet. “He had to go home for the day. He wasn’t feeling well. I think it was that baklava I gave him.”
“Oh. Well, I guess it can wait,” Emma said. After Louise left, Emma brought up her search results again. She was running out of time.
Chapter 13
Eileen peered into the sarcophagus of Karlak II, on loan again to the museum after a brief tour around the world. “This is where they keep the body?” she asked.
“That’s right. They put his mummified body in there.”
“My mother was cremated. I have the ashes in my room.” She looked down at the floor. “I thought perhaps we could find someplace to put them together.”
“Yes, of course. I’m sure we can think of someplace to put her.”
“Or maybe we can keep her in the house like one of your mummies.”
He stared at her, not sure if she was serious or not. When she smiled slightly, he realized she had made a joke. He laughed harder than he intended. “I don’t think she’d like that.”
“No, I suppose not.”
He finished his tour of the ancient Egypt exhibit and then took her to the elevator. “We have a lot of other interesting things upstairs—”
“If you don’t mind, I’d rather go to your house. I feel quite overwhelmed.”
“Sure. No problem.” He took her arm to lead her to the parking garage, where he kept his car. He opened the passenger’s side door for her so she could climb inside. After he put the car on autodrive, he turned to Eileen. “I suppose this is your first time in the city. I could give you a little tour if you want.”
“I have seen some of the city from my walk here.”
“Walk? You walked all the way from the Trenches to here?” He estimated that must have been at least five miles. “You could have called me. I would have been happy to pick you up anyplace you wanted.”
“I didn’t think you would believe me.”
“Why shouldn’t I believe you?”
“I thought you might be angry with Mother for disappearing.”
“No, I wasn’t angry with her.” He had been angry at the Scarlet Knight, who he thought had killed Isis. That in turn had led him to Becky, the other woman to disappear from his life. He thought of how badly Becky had wanted a daughter like Emma’s and Aggie’s, but she couldn’t, not after what had happened. Maybe it wasn’t too late.
He pulled up to the gate of the family estate and watched with some small amount of satisfaction as Eileen’s jaw went slack. “Your house is so big!”
“It’s my family’s house—which includes you now.”
“You are so very kind. I am practically a stranger and already you are welcoming me into your family.”
He touched her arm, glad she didn’t pull away. “You’re not a stranger. I can see it in your eyes. You’re just like her.”
“That’s very nice of you to say. I’m afraid my mother and I disagreed on many things.”
“What sorts of things?”
“She thought I should not get married.”
“You’re married?” He looked at her slim fingers but didn’t see a ring on any of them.
“We are not officially engaged yet. Engaged to be engaged is how I think you would put it,” she said with a shy smile.
“Oh, I see.” The car stopped at the front steps of the house. He hurried around the front of the car to open the door for her. He hadn’t felt this nervous around a girl since his first date with Becky. He led her into the foyer, where she stopped to gape in awe at the house.
“It’s so beautiful,” she said.
“It is.” He gave her a tour of the house similar to the one around the museum and related to her the history of the house and the Egyptian artifacts his stepmother had bought. “Not all of these are really artifacts. Some are what I guess you’d call replicas.” Most of his stepmother’s items fell into that category, but Eileen gushed over them anyway.
She picked up a statue of Ra made from plaster instead of gold. “This is gorgeous.”
“It’s just gold plating, but it looks nice.”
“Your stepmother had such taste.”
“She did. She’s the one who got me interested in studying ancient Egypt.”
“That is what you do at the museum with that young girl?”
“Yes, Louise and I just got back from a dig there.”
“How wonderful. To think we were only a thousand kilometers apart.”
Dan nodded, ashamed to think he’d been that close to Isis and not realized it. Then again he was just as close to Becky and he was afraid to see her too. “It is a shame I didn’t know you and your mom were there.”
“Yes, a shame.” Eileen looked down at her feet again. “You and this Louise, are you merely coworkers?”
“What?”
“Are you and her…intimate?”
“No!” He felt his face turn warm from embarrassment. “Louise is my friend’s daughter. I’ve known her since she was a baby. I guess you could say she’s my unofficial niece.”
“I’m sorry. You must think I’m terrible to ask that.”
“Don’t be silly, you didn’t know.” He led her into what originally had been a conservatory, but which he had turned into a miniature museum of some items he’d brought from Egypt and bought from the Plaine Museum. Chief among these was a statue of Isis, the goddess who looked so much like Eileen and her mother. He had kept this to remind himself of the wife who had been taken from him. “This is Isis.”
“Like my mother?”
“Yes, that’s who she was named after.” He ran his hand along the side of Isis’s head until he touched Eileen’s.
“You loved my mother very much?”
“Yes.”
“I only hope you will love me so much, though not in the same way.”
“Of course I will. You’re my daughter.” He sensed it was too early to kiss her on the cheek, so he squeezed her hand. She smiled at him the way Isis always had. He cleared his throat and then said, “If you think this is beautiful, I should show you what Louise and I found in the desert. Well, it was mostly Louise.”
“What did you find?”
“A statue of Isis even older than this one. It’s smaller, but still impressive. The level of detail was beyond anything else in the world at that time. We found some other really interesting things too, including a sacrificial dagger and a book.”
“A book? What kind of book?”
“We’re not sure; we haven’t been able to get it open to read it.”
“I didn’t know they had books back then.”
“Oh yes, the Egyptians were the first to use paper, though it was a little different from what we use today.”
“Yes, I suppose so. I would like to see this book. I am studying literature at the university.”
“What university is that?”
“University of Zurich.”
“I see. Are you going to keep studying there or are you planning to transfer?”
“I think I would like to transfer to America. If that’s possible.”
“I’m sure we can make it possible.”
“I would be very grateful then.”
“We can look into it tomorrow. And I can show you the book. Dr. Earl has it at the museum.”
“Oh, I see. Thank you so much.”
He showed her out of the room, into the dining room. “What would you like for lunch? I can have the cook make something. Or we can order out.”
“Anything would be fine. So long as we are eating together.”
“That I think we can arrange.”
***
Mom still hadn’t turned over the book by the end of the day, but Louise thought better than to bring it up on the ride home. She didn’t get a chance to bring up anything as Mom fell asleep about thirty seconds after she closed the car door. Louise looked over at her mother to make sure she was still breathing.
They would have to have a talk soon. Mom had always worked herself hard, a trait Louise had inherited, but now it had clearly become too much for her. Maybe she could push more down to her assistants to let them handle more of the load. And they would have to talk to Dr. Pavelski about her mother’s health, though Louise would rather get a second opinion.
They didn’t go home. Instead, Louise told the car to take them to Aggie’s house, which was about three miles away. As usual, Aggie and Renee waited for them when the car stopped at the curb. Louise leaned over to give her mother a gentle shake. “Mom, we’re here.”
“Oh, already?”
“You’ve been asleep for a half-hour.”
“I’m sorry. I guess I’m not a very good traveling companion.”
Louise didn’t laugh at first, never quite sure when her mother made a joke. She decided this was one of those times and snickered. “I had your snoring to keep me company.”
“I don’t snore!”
“So you think.” Louise winked at her and then got out of the car. From the look of it, Renee hadn’t been punished too much for last night. While Mom would never raise a hand in anger, Aggie had always been old school about that; she sometimes used a heavy leather belt to give Renee a few licks.
For the first time, Louise noticed her friend was taller than Aggie now. Renee leaned forward to give Louise a hug. “Guess what? Aggie said we can take the car tonight.”
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis Page 77
