Blood Waters 1 : The Boy From The Sea Read Online Free Page B

this. "In the poorer parts of the Yucatan, children don't go to school very long," she'd said. Any word-association games they'd tried ended in awkward silences-Tomas either didn't know what she was talking about and was too ashamed to admit it, or the answer he gave was so bizarre Mila couldn't understand how it related to him. His response to "Banana," for example, was "The soul needs only to be pure." Neither of them could understand where this scrap of his past, a disjointed fragment of who he was, came from. There wasn't much time, in any case, to understand him. After he'd fixed up the courtyard, George drafted him to help fix up the other bedrooms, grout the bathrooms, plant trees in front of their door, and reinforce the roof. Tomas was eager to help; and there were days when Mila worried that her parents asked too much of him. One instance, she found him collapsed, asleep on the kitchen floor during after-dinner drinks.
     
    "You're not our slave," she told him on these nights. "If you are too tired, say so."
     
    "You don't understand," he told her one night. He'd been living with them for almost three months now, and it was getting to the end of the tourist season and the beginning of the hurricane one. "This is the only way I can find out who I am."
     
    She blinked, confused. "You're right," she said. "I don't understand."
     
    They were in the kitchen-all of these conversations took place in the kitchen, while her parents were doing their accounting for the day or having drinks with the guests-wiping down the counters, putting away the dried dishes, sweeping the floors. Mila could detect the faintest whiff of ozone over the artificial lemon scent of the cleaner. A storm was coming.
     
    "You have a lifetime of memories," he said. "I have only these..." he counted on his fingers, "seven weeks. If I never recover my memory, then who I am is-this." He waved around him, gesturing to the house, the roof, the courtyard.
     
    "Tomas, you are more than the work you do," Mila protested.
     
    Tomas shook his head. "You are very kind, Mila," he said. "But I know. I am just your- handyman , right? In English? You see more in me because you will be more someday. One day you will leave for the city and university, and you will find a boyfriend, return to the United States and get a good job and never come back. But I am not you. I cannot write, I can barely read. There is nothing for me out there. This is my life now. This is who I am."
     
    "That's not true," Mila said, though she couldn't find fault in his words. "I couldn't-like-" not love, Mila dearest, she thought, frantically, "-you so much if you were only the sum of your work."
     
    "So, we are friends?" Tomas asked, after a moment.
     
    Mila gave him a weary smile. "Why do you think I join you in the kitchen every night?" she asked playfully, tapping him on the arm with her fist.
     
    "Because it's mango season," he said, tossing her a mango he fished from a tray. She gasped in surprise, but managed to catch the perfectly ripe fruit before it splattered on the newly-cleaned floor.
     
    "I don't like them that much," she retorted, tossing it back to him. And just like that, the moment-the window where she could have told him how she truly felt about him, her opportunity to plant a kiss on his lips, her chance to take his hand and hold it-passed and, once again, they were two young people stuck together under one roof, making the best of things.
     
    For the most part, Mila was grateful that these moments passed. As much as she liked joining him in the kitchen at the end of the day, a part of her still held on to the fantasy of getting on a plane and going back to Boston and just resuming her life there. Even after two years, she still wasn't over Boston, or Tre Davis, the guy whom she might have gone out-and fallen in love-with, had her parents not packed up and headed south. He was two years older than she was, and walked with just enough of a swagger to let other