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him?”
    â€œ When it suited her. She’s here now with her boyfriend. On vacation .” Her tone was bitter.
    â€œ Is he the boy’s Father?”
    â€œ What do you want from me?” the old woman yelled. “The boy had no father. Or he had many fathers. You pick. My daughter was a whore.”
    She felt her way to the back of the house as if blind-folded. “I did the best I could for him. He had a nice room, clothes.” She pointed to a small, whitewashed space off the kitchen. “Go see for yourself.”
    Unlike the rest of the house, the furniture in this room was new, Scandinavian, as were the brightly colored curtains at the windows. The boy’s clothes were copies of popular brands, clumsily reworked in cheap cotton. There was a box of new Timberlands sitting on his bed, the shoes still wrapped in paper.
    â€œ A gift from his mother,” the old woman told him. “She bought them in Athens.”
    There was something desperate about the posters of American movie stars taped to the wall, the pictures cut out of magazines. The boy’s blanket had been crocheted by his grandmother, Patronas guessed, and she’d probably made most of his clothes as well. He had a cheap stereo set up next to his bed and Greek CDs were spread out on the floor. In the armoire, Patronas found school books and winter clothing neatly stored in taped plastic bags. It held nothing else of interest, only a small box of toy cars and trucks, some photographs of his grandparents and a woman he assumed was the mother. There was also a book bag, embossed with cartoon figures, forgotten in one corner. Patronas turned the bag upside down and shook it on the bed. Inside was a small gold bull.
    The priest did not seem surprised. “Minoan,” he said when Patronas showed it to him. “The bull was sacred to them.”
    Patronas turned the bull over in his hand. “I’ve gone over every inch of the dig site and there’s nothing like this there.” Less than two centimeters long, it was a beautiful thing with tiny ivory horns and turquoise eyes. “Where did it come from?”
    â€œ Perhaps it was a gift from Eleni.” The priest stood at the window, looking out. Without turning around, he added, “Eleni liked to give people expensive presents.”
    â€œ She is an archeologist. She wouldn’t give something like this to a kid.”
    â€œ Maybe it’s a copy.”
    â€œ Maybe.” He was sure now the priest was lying. If it were a gift from Eleni, why would Petros hide it? To keep peace with his grandmother? No, it didn’t make sense. Especially if it were gold and he wanted money. Patronas carefully bagged the bull. Between the mattress and the bed frame, he found a piece of paper with a childish drawing on it, a round circle with pictures in squares. It looked familiar, but Patronas couldn’t place it. The drawing was erased in places, and he thought the boy might have copied it out of a book. There was no sign of the laptop the priest said Eleni Argentis had bought him. “Where’s his computer?”
    â€œ He often took it with him to the dig site. Perhaps it was there when ….” The old man’s voice trailed off.
    Petros’ grandmother came to the door. “Where is he now?” she asked.
    As Chios had no morgue, they’d sent the boy’s body directly to the funeral home. “Stelios.”
    â€œ I must go sit with him,” she said. “He shouldn’t be alone.”
    â€œ Do you want us to take you there?”
    â€œ No. I’m an old woman and that’s one of the things you learn.” She began to cry again. “You learn the way to Stelios.”
    â€œ Why did she say that about her daughter, about her being a whore?” the priest asked Patronas on their way back to Profitis Ilias.
    â€œ An old wound. That’s what happens with something like this. All the old wounds, they