Picture Me Gone Read Free Page B

him with Suzanne. He’s got his arm round her shoulders and is already a few inches taller. The room has been tidied and dusted, but a set of keys, a birthday card and a bowl of coins still sit on the dresser as if he will come along any minute to claim them.
    Gil clocks the direction of my gaze. Come and have breakfast when you’re ready, he says. Did you sleep well?
    I nod. Did you?
    He shrugs. Honey appears round the corner, silent as a ghost. I put out my hand and she licks it.
    No news? I ask, and he shakes his head.
    Are we going to look for him?
    I have to think, Gil says. Possibly.
    I want to say, What if he’s been murdered? Or jumped in front of a train? But I don’t. Gil would have thought of that, anyway. He must think it hasn’t happened. I suppose he might be keeping up appearances, pretending he thinks his friend is still alive so as not to upset me, but I doubt it. My father’s faults involve excessive honesty. And absentmindedness, of course.
    Where do you think he went? What if we can’t find him? Will he let us know he’s OK?
    Perguntador.
My father pronounces the word with a slight smile. It is Portuguese for someone who asks too many questions, and he’s used the word as a nickname for me for as long as I can remember. First things first, he says. Drink your coffee. Have a shower. Get dressed. Come down to breakfast—he looks at his watch—lunch. We’ll talk to Suzanne and make a plan. OK?
    OK. I dig clean clothes out of my suitcase and take the towel from beside my bed. Honey watches me gravely. She is like a lost dog only she’s not the one who’s lost.
    I take out my phone, snap a picture and text it to Catlin. Lots of trees in New York.
    And she texts back: Shd be tall buildings. Sure ur in the right place?
    It’s called upstate I tell her.
    There’s a pause, then another bleep.
    Got my egg yet?
    Not yet I text back.
    ok .
    I put my phone down on a shelf in the shower room, which is black slate—walls, ceiling and floor. Once I figure out how it works, I want to stand under the hot water all day. The soap Suzanne put out for me is also black, and smells of coconut. I make a thick lather and watch it slide down the drain. When I turn the water off, the room is so full of steam it’s like standing in a cloud. I wrap myself in the dark-green towel, pine green, the same color as the trees outside the house. Despite the seriousness of our mission, I am, for this moment, perfectly content.
    There is toast for breakfast, and no sign of Suzanne. Gil says she’s gone to work for an hour or so, and we can make ourselves at home till she comes back. Gabriel’s babysitter has taken him to playgroup.
    What do you think? he asks, looking at me carefully.
    Sometimes I observe things I can’t interpret. Like two people smiling and holding hands when actually they hate each other. This confuses me, and Gil says that’s because it is, in actual fact, confusing. It’s the same with being a translator. Some things can’t be translated because the words don’t exist in the other language, or the meaning is so entirely specific to one place or one way of speaking that it disappears in translation.
    But sometimes there are clues.
    The house, I say a little tentatively, is beautiful.
    And?
    I take a deep breath. Suzanne is a very tidy person. All her things and Gabriel’s are put away. But she hasn’t touched
his
things. Look . . .
    Gil looks.
    A sweater crumpled on the floor. Muddy boots, shoved in a corner. A pile of mail, stacked on a table. It’s almost—
    He waits.
    —as if they live in two separate houses that don’t touch. Like . . . only one of them is vegetarian, I say, pointing to the shelf of cookbooks.
    That’s not uncommon.
    I look at him, not knowing whether it’s common or uncommon. I just know what a family in which everyone gets along feels like, with all the edges of things blurred and overlapping. What I feel in this house is containment. Suzanne containing her things