Dinner is served out on the deck, with our family sitting at a long, low table and the villa’s staff bringing us bowls of food: heaping piles of potato salad, sharp vinegary slaw, fish cooked with garlic and Scotch bonnets, and a bowl of dark, fragrant curry full of lumps of simmering meat.
I try to turn as the bowls are passed to me to smile at the villa staff, but no one will meet my eyes. The staff is a blur of dark faces and hands, the gleam of a coral-and-gold bracelet as a hand retracts the salad bowl I’m done eating from. “Thanks,” I say, but there is no response.
Phillip is forking up curry like it’s going out of style. “What is this?” he says abruptly, spearing a chunk of meat on his fork and shoving it in his mouth.
The tallest of the cooks, a woman with a sharp-boned face and a white kerchief tied around her hair, says, “It is goat curry, sir.”
Phillip spits the meat back onto his plate and grabs for a napkin, staring at the cook with accusing eyes.
I look down at the table, trying not to laugh.
The next day the heat is stunning, like a drug. I lie out on a lounger by the pool, the straps of my blue suit pushed down over my arms to avoid tan lines. My mom won’t let me buy a bikini. Phillip is sitting over in the shade reading a book called Empire of Blue Water. Evan is sitting with his feet in the pool, staring into space.
I attempt to catch his eye, but he won’t look at me, so I go back to my book. I try to read, but the words dance on the page like the sunlight dances over the pool water. This kind of weather makes everything dance.
Finally I put the book down and wander into the kitchen to get a Coke. The woman from last night, the tall cook who told Phillip he was eating goat, is standing by the sink washing up our dishes from breakfast. Today her headscarf is bright red, the color of a tropical bird.
She turns when she sees me. “What can I help you with, miss?” Her accent is as soft as flower petals.
“I just wanted a Coke.” I get the feeling I shouldn’t be in here, that the kitchen is the domain of the staff, even if all I want is a can of soda. Sure enough, instead of directing me toward the fridge, she retrieves the bottle herself, pops it open, and pours it into a glass for me.
“Thanks.” I take it, the cool glass feeling good against my fingers. “What’s your name?”
“My name?” She raises her dark eyebrows. They’re perfect arches, like she plucks them every day. “I am Damaris.”
“Damaris and Damon,” I say, and then wish I hadn’t; I sound like a moron. Maybe she doesn’t even know Damon well.
“He is my brother,” she says, and glances out the window, a crease appearing between her brows. “Your brother has gone down to the beach, I see. You should tell him to stay away from the other houses along the road. Most of them are private, and not all of them are safe.”
Not safe? I think. As in guarded by vicious dogs or trigger-happy security guards? But Damaris’s lovely, blank face gives away nothing. I set the empty glass on the sideboard. “Evan is my stepbrother,” I say as if it’s important; somehow I want her to know. “Not my brother.”
She says nothing.
“I’ll tell him to be careful,” I say.
The path that leads down to the water is sandy, fringed by rocks and scrubby grass. The beach arcs away to the south, lined with small, brightly painted houses in tropical colors: hot pink, acid green, frog-belly yellow. Ours is the last house, backed up against stone cliffs pocked with dark holes like raisins in a pale custard. I think the holes must be caves.
Evan is nowhere on the beach. In fact, no one is on the beach. It’s a pale swatch of inviting sand that’s somehow totally empty. I’m surprised not to see anyone out sunbathing, but as I follow the curve of the sand along the water, I see that most of the other houses are shut and bolted up. Some have heavy padlocks on their gates. They seem dusty, disused. The only one that looks like it might be inhabited is a hot-pink house, the color of a rose blossom, one of the closest houses to the villa. Its huge yard stretches down to the sand, surrounded by a wall covered in mosaic tiles that depict waves and sea creatures. The top of the wall is lined with bits of glass—not small jagged bits of glass meant to discourage intruders but big chunks of square and rectangular glass reflecting back the sea and sky. I glance through the gate and see a riotous garden of brightly colored flowers, but the door to the house is shut, the window curtains pulled across.
I’m surprised by the lack of activity. We can’t be the only people staying in this area, can we? Travel brochures are always advertising “deserted beaches” as if it’s something really desirable, but in reality it’s kind of creepy. There are footsteps in the sand, so someone must have been walking here at some point, but there’s no one visible.
