Wyatt never cared about the location and placement of inscriptions before, in relation to the entirety of the tomb. It’s another reminder that now, he’s signed on to my theories.

I touch the tip of the digital pencil to the iPad screen and watch a black line materialize. When it’s too thick, I can redo it with the touch of a button. I enlarge the photographs to the point of graininess, and begin to etch pixel by pixel.

The first few hieroglyphs are rough. But then, instinct takes over. I find my fingers moving of their own accord, like the planchette of a Ouija board, demarking the beak of a cormorant and the ears of the Hr face. The language pours through me, water in a rusty pipe, coming clearer.

I lean back, rubbing the bones of my wrist, aching and electrified.

It is painstaking.

It is glorious.

I remember my mother telling me that when she was a girl, she dreamed in Irish. She would imagine herself under the sea with kelpies and merrows, and their silent conversations winged from mind to mind in the same ancient language that her grandmother used to speak. I thought she was lying until, during my last season at the Dig House, I began to dream in Middle Egyptian. I was always walking through the desert at night desperate for the sun to rise, my eyes straining to see the person in front of me. Don’t turn around, I would say, in the ancient tongue. Trust me. I’m still here. But he never heard. Or he did not speak the language.

When my fingers cramp, when I lose feeling in my foot and need to shift my weight, I peek down the hole of the tomb shaft. I watch Wyatt, part of the parade moving rock and sand. I listen to his quiet orders. I see how he commands respect; how authority sits on his shoulders the same way the sun tangles in his hair, as if that’s exactly where it belongs.

* * *

—

DURING THE SEASON, Professor Dumphries’s wife would come stay at the Dig House for a week. We called it the Conjugal Visit, and it was a time of celebration. Bette Dumphries brought with her a case of French champagne and boxes of HoHos and sugared American cereal. When she was here, Dumphries was as happy-go-lucky as a demanding, mercurial genius professor could be. For the duration of Bette’s visit, we put a plastic tablecloth on the scarred wooden table where we took our meals. We fought to sit next to her so that she could tell us incriminating stories about Dumphries—the time he was afraid of a bat that got into the bedroom; the way he once started a fire in a microwave and shorted out an entire apartment building.

On Bette’s last night at the Dig House in 2003, Dumphries set a record player up on the roof of the Dig House, and we all drank Taittinger and watched him whisk his wife through a fox-trot. It felt gloriously old world, as if we had spiraled back to the 1930s, and we were no longer students but expats in Egypt, re-creating a slice of home beneath the stars.

It was after midnight. The other graduate students had slowly drifted down to their bedrooms. The unwritten rule to all this celebrating was that you could stay out as late as you wanted, but you were still expected to be up at 4:30 A.M. to work. That left Dumphries and his wife, still dancing to tinny Big Band music, and Wyatt and me.

There was no way I was leaving before he did. Even when you didn’t think you were being tested as a student of Dumphries, you were being tested—and I didn’t want to look like a quitter. Plus, Dumphries had a habit of expounding on everything when he’d finished a bottle or two of wine. What if, in a moment of weakness, he revealed a new idea he had for publication and invited Wyatt to be part of the research? If I wasn’t there, I couldn’t reap the same benefits.

I poured Wyatt another glass of champagne. “You’re empty,” I said.

He narrowed his eyes. “Since when are you the consummate hostess?”

I shrugged. “Since the booze is free.”

Wyatt must have decided that his suspicion wasn’t worth the trouble, because he flopped down on an orange satin pillow and pointed up at the night sky. “Lepus,” he said. “The rabbit.”

“There is no rabbit constellation,” I insisted.

“Of course there is. It’s what Orion’s shooting at.” He looked at me as if I were an utter idiot. “Why do you think it’s called the Hare nome?”

I faltered, because I didn’t really have an answer to that. I was a little tired and a lot drunk and I didn’t want to show any vulnerability in front of Wyatt or Dumphries—who was dipping Bette gracefully.

Suddenly Wyatt was on his feet, his hand extended. “Come on, Olive. Let’s show them how it’s done.”

I blinked at him. “I don’t dance.”

“I’ll do all the work,” he said. “As usual.”

He grabbed my wrist and yanked me up so fast that I had to clutch on to his shoulders or else smack directly into him. One hand bracketed my hip, one caught my fingers, and I was a phrase caught between those parentheses. When Wyatt started to move to the melody, I stumbled, and he immediately tugged me so close that I didn’t have the space to falter. I had never danced with someone who was so good at it—strong, commanding. I couldn’t not follow him. I spun where he spun. I stepped into the spot he vacated. He pulled me in his wake like a tide.

When the last strains of music hung in the hot air, the ghosts of the notes still vibrating in the dark, Dumphries bent over Bette’s hand. He kissed it and she laughed, curling her fingers around his and squeezing in the kind of silent communication that comes with longevity in relationships. “To the young, we leave the night,” Dumphries said, sliding an arm around his wife’s waist. “And the remainder of the champagne.”

They disappeared down the staircase that led inside the Dig House. “Well,” I said. “We should go to bed, too.”

Wyatt grabbed the last champagne bottle and popped the cork. “Why, Olive,” he said, pretending to be affronted. “I’m not that kind of guy.” He lifted the bottle to his mouth and took a long swallow, then held it out to me. “We could go to bed…or we could enjoy this fine vintage.”

It was a challenge, and I was not going to back down from a gauntlet thrown by Wyatt, so I settled on the floor again. I took a long drink of champagne. “Where did you learn to dance?”

“The lovely Eleanora DeBussy,” he sighed, looking up from beneath his lashes. “She taught me everything from body rise to the Carolina Shag.” I rolled my eyes, and Wyatt laughed. “Eleanora DeBussy was seventy-five and smelled like tinned sardines.”

“Why didn’t you just say that?”

“Because it’s much more entertaining to ruffle your feathers.”

“I’m completely unruffled,” I insisted. “I don’t care what rises or who you shag.”

Wyatt reached for the bottle and took another drink. “Just think. Right now, Dumphries is probably doing a slow striptease for the missus.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. “I can’t unsee that.”

“Just goes to show you, there truly is a lid for every pot.” He leaned back on the floor, staring up at the night sky. “Do you think they role-play? You be Isis, and I’ll be Osiris.”

“Ew,” I muttered. “Stop. Talk about literally anything else.”

Wyatt passed me the bottle. “Poor Olive. So easily shocked.”

“Piss off.”

He rolled over, bracing his head on his crossed arms. “Make me.”

I couldn’t help it; I laughed. “You definitely bring out the kindergartner in me.”

“Then let’s play a game,” he suggested. “Truth or dare.”

The evening was pleasantly fuzzy, the stars burning holes in the blanket of the night. I could imagine at least ten dares I could give Wyatt, all in varying degrees of humiliation. “Deal,” I said, passing him the bottle again. “Truth.”

“What was your first impression of me?” Wyatt said.

“I thought you were an arrogant asshole. That was my second impression, too.” I leaned back on my elbows. “Truth or dare?”

“Truth,” he said. I passed him the bottle again.

“Craziest thing you’ve ever done while you were drunk?” I asked.

Wyatt was silent. Either he had passed out or he was going to forfeit. But just as I was about to tell him he had to spend the night sleeping next to George, the mummy, in the magazine, he said, “I brought a new car into Eton—which is forbidden—and crashed it into the burning bush.”

“The what?”

“It’s a lamppost. I convinced the head man it had been done by a bloke I hated. He got sacked and I never got caught.” His teeth gleamed white in the darkness. “Truth or dare?”

“Truth.”

“Last time you looked at porn online?” he said.

“Never.”

Wyatt sat up. “My God, Olive. You’re missing out.”

“Maybe you’re the one missing out, if you need to get off via computer. Truth or dare?”

He laughed. “Truth.”

“How many relationships have you ended?” I asked.

“All of them. Because then I can’t be left behind.”

He seemed to realize, at the same time I did, that he had not meant to say the second part out loud. He ducked his head, running his thumbnail through a groove in the wooden floor, bright spots of color on his cheeks. “Truth or dare,” he said.

“Truth.”

“What’s your deepest, darkest secret?”