In an attempt to soothe me, Stephen suggested a trip. We could get Tara and the others and all go to Spain, Italy, Greece. We’d have to travel with the bodyguards, Graciela, and the whole crew, but we wouldn’t be all that different from other young millionaires. Didn’t the Getty heirs and the Rolling Stones travel the same way? And we could get away from the Darkness, from this island and the obsession with finding Eddie, which was making Florence crazy. There were private detectives all over Great Britain looking for clues about her younger son, and, of course, the police were looking for him too. I pictured the sun on the ocean and the white houses of Cadaqués and I said yes immediately, and I was so happy I almost started packing right then. I had to buy a bikini, nicer sunglasses, sandals for walking around Rome. I would take my books, too. I was going to be the first Argentine woman with a doctorate from Cambridge, and it made me ridiculously proud. Someone had to be happy about it, because aside from Juan, no one else cared. I needed to review Purity and Danger by Mary Douglas, and Les structures by Lévi-Strauss. That could take me a month. Laura agreed to come too: she had hardly ever left England. It took some work to convince Juan, but not too much. He was worried about Eddie. He thought Eddie was a loose end, and he was convinced that as long as he was missing, we wouldn’t be safe.

Eddie’s escape had been extremely violent. He’d done it in the morning, and no one heard the attack on his guards, though there’s no doubt that they screamed, because Eddie ate their eyes with his sharpened teeth, the teeth that had been filed into a saw when he was a child. He had managed to paralyze them or put them to sleep, no one really knew; the men didn’t remember what had happened, they woke up from their trance blind and mad with pain. Eddie had taken clothes and money, clear signs that he wasn’t as crazy as people thought. I was sorry I had never spoken to him. Florence would have let me. Stephen said that a relationship with Eddie always ended the same way, and he listed all the animals he had abused, the classmates he’d driven to suicide, the various caretakers who’d ended up dead or mutilated. Juan listened. They have to find him, he said over and over. Why did they let him live?

They let you live, too, Stephen answered once.

And maybe that’s a mistake, Juan said in a low voice.