Pipe Burst Guest novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Photograph

My father's house had been shut for ten years, and the key was still on my ring.

I opened the front door at eleven that night, and the smell of lemon oil and cold ashes came out to meet me.

Aurelio came in behind me, leaning on Nico's arm, with a blanket over his shoulders.

Nico stopped in the hall.

"I'll wait here," he said.

"You can come."

"This one is yours," he said, and put a hand on my back for just a moment.

The study was at the end of the corridor, with my father's leather chair behind the desk and his books to the ceiling.

I turned on the lamp and stood in the doorway.

"Where is it?"

Aurelio did not answer.

He crossed the room slowly and stopped beside the door, and put his hand on the wall behind it.

"Here."

I came and stood next to him.

Behind the open door, on the narrow wall that nobody could see from the desk, hung a small framed photograph.

I had been in this room ten thousand times, and I had never once shut the door.

The picture showed two men on a dock, laughing, with their arms around each other's shoulders.

One was my father, in his forties, with his hat pushed back.

The other was a thin, dark-haired man with a wide smile and a boy's ears.

"Orsatti," Aurelio said. "He was your father's captain, and his closest friend."

"Orsatti," I said.

I said it again, quietly.

"Ines's father."

"Yes."

I stared at the dock, and at the second man's eyes.

They were hazel, and I knew them.

I had looked into them across a kitchen table every Wednesday for ten years.

"She never told me," I said.

"Maybe she didn't want you to know."

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