Chapter 6: The Photograph

The old man saw me on the stairs and did not turn the phone off.

He let it play to the end.

"Pop, it's me. I need to talk to you about the Gulf boats. Call me when you're off the water."

The dog thumped its tail once against the boards.

"Sit down, Miss Mavrakis," Aris said. "You are letting the cold in."

I shut the door behind me and did not sit.

I looked at the room instead, because I had not let myself look at the wall before.

The photograph hung on the far wall in its plain frame.

I crossed to it.

Two men stood on the deck of a work boat, laughing, in wetsuits unzipped to the waist.

The younger one had dark curly hair and the old man's grey eyes.

He had one arm slung around the neck of the other.

The other man was thin and fair, with a diver's squint, and a shy grin.

I knew the grin.

I had seen it once, in the cathedral hall.

It had been over the head of a baby in a white gown.

My mouth went dry.

"That's him," I said.

The old man did not answer.

"The man at the font," I said. "The one my father wanted put down. He's in your picture."

I said it flat, to the glass.

Nobody had asked me.

Behind me the chair creaked.

"I have been waiting a week for you to say it," Aris said quietly.

"You knew."

"I have known since the night after Christmas," he said. "Dimitri's partner was the only other man in the water when my boy died."

I turned around.

His face was very still.

"The dock said he drowned," I said.

"The dock said what it was told," he said. "There was a service for him. His mother lit a candle."