“But the Fountain of Youth?” She couldn’t help herself.
“It’s here,” Charlie’s father concluded. “I know it is. I just have to f igure out where.”
“Careful, Frank.” Emma’s father laughed. “Wouldn’t want a Calusa to put a poison arrow in your leg.” This, they all knew, was how Juan Ponce de León had actually died. A poison arrow, care of the local Indians, the very ones that had supposedly spawned Frank Ryan down the ancestral line.
“Hell, they’re my own people,” Frank Ryan conf irmed, and poured a glass of whiskey. “I’m not worried.” He toasted the tribe that, according to his own legend of himself, had given him and Charlie their sharp, broad cheekbones. He held his glass high. “Here’s to eternal life!”
He winked at Emma. She pretended she didn’t see. Life—and the shortness of it, in particular—was no joke these days; there’d been a polio epidemic the previous summer. Lots of people had died. The threat still hung in the hot, humid air. It was like the smell of salt: always present, f illing the adults’ conversation when they thought the little ones weren’t listening.
Now, his face f lushed with more whiskey, Frank Ryan was smiling at Emma’s mother, the way he had in the past. Even with little Simon bouncing on her knee.
Next to her, Charlie f idgeted, tapping his foot on the f loor, looking peeved.
“Juan Ponce de León actually sailed here in a giant teacup,” Emma whispered, trying to distract him.
But just as she was about to add, “Es verdad,” Charlie tightened his hand around hers.
“C’mon,” he said. “They won’t even notice we’re gone.”
She stayed in her seat—she hadn’t even f inished her cake yet—but he tugged her hand again and announced loudly, “Emma and I are going for a walk.”
He said it as though daring someone to tell him no.
“Me, too,” said Charlie’s sister Katie.
“And me,” said his brother Hugh.
“It’s Emma’s birthday,” her sister Lucy added. Her brother Jamie was too busy eating cake.
“Just me and Emma,” Charlie said, and then they were gone, and her life changed.
At f irst she f igured he was going to show her something about the birds, because that’s where his conversation usually went. And all this under-the-table hand-holding, and those words he whispered to her . . . well, if Charlie meant anything serious, he had yet to let her know.
“This way,” Charlie said. He led her down the path under the trees, hand resting gently on the small of her back, the scent of the ocean and bougainvillea and their own sweaty skin mingling in the heavy air.
“I missed dessert,” she said.
Not that she cared. It felt nice to be walking, to be alone with this boy, to be away from the suffocating commotion of so many people in one tiny kitchen. Charlie shrugged, so quick she barely saw, but said nothing. Instead, he guided her toward the dock that looked out on the tiny island where Emma’s dad had found so many of the gators for the museum. He was so close she could feel his breath warm against her neck.
Now she couldn’t even pretend to be annoyed anymore.
They slipped off their shoes and settled themselves on the edge of the dock, shoulder to shoulder, feet dangling over the side. She shivered, not from cold, but from the tingle of having him so close. She looked up, hoping he hadn’t noticed.
He hadn’t. The night was clear and the sky was studded with bright stars. It was the one thing she never tired of, this difference between the home in Brooklyn that was starting to fade from memory and the Florida swamp: the night sky was so clear and close it felt like you could fall right into space itself. No wonder Charlie was always looking toward the sky.
“That one’s Orion,” he said, pointing. She knew he was showing off but couldn’t care less; she loved how he knew so much about the sky and its constellations. “And there”—he gently reached out and tilted her chin so she could follow his gaze—“Gemini. The twins. Half-brothers in the myth. Castor and Pollux. Remember that story, Emma?”
She did remember, particularly the part about Pollux, that he had been conceived when Zeus appeared to Leda in the form of a swan. Greek myths had always been a little hard to swallow—even more than the Fountain of Youth—but that one had struck her as more absurd than most. Why would people believe something like that? Then again, why would people believe anything,