Chapter 18

Margot missed her flight the same way she missed her dad’s call: on purpose.

She waited for the little red notification to pop up after he’d left a voicemail to slide her phone out of her pocket. All too chipper, he said, “Good morning, Gogo. Or afternoon, for you. I hope you’ve gotten this out of your system. You’ll be onto the next thing soon enough anyway. It’s closing day for the Goodwin house, but I’ll meet you at the airport around midnight.”

His words chafed against her ear. Onto the next thing soon enough. Like what? Doing taxes? Cooking Hamburger Helper for dinner? Leaving PTO meetings early for the fourth open house of the week?

What he didn’t say was even louder than what he did. She was just another task on his to-do list to take care of. Less a daughter and more an agenda item.

She put her phone on airplane mode anyway. It felt appropriate.

Margot and Van reconvened with the class moments before they filed out of the museum, so she’d used Van’s back like a desk, scribbling frenzied sentences into the blank spaces of her copy of the worksheet. She handed it to Rex, who passed it to Topher, who gave it to Calvin, who nudged it into Dr. Hunt’s hands as the class joined a walking tour through the city center. With Suki covering for them, it was like they’d never left.

As they walked, Margot could barely focus on the way ancient Rome drifted past, instead preoccupied with how her heart hammered behind her rib cage. Every face in the crowd looked like Enzo. She saw his high cheekbones, his tanned skin, his dark hair everywhere she looked, like a phantom she couldn’t shake. But it was never actually him with his hands shoved in his black hoodie, and one strap of her yellow backpack over his shoulder.

By the time they made it back to the hotel, an establishment that had things like complimentary robes and silver-plattered room service, her whole body ached, and her nerves had worked themselves into knots.

“I can’t spend all night in my room,” she said as she and Van filed into the elevator.

The thought of wasting the whole evening cooped up watching reality show reruns with Suki and fielding evil glares from Astrid made her skin itch. They couldn’t just sit around. She had to do something or she was going to lose Van and the Vase in the same fell swoop.

She jabbed the top button on the elevator panel with her thumb. They emerged onto the hotel’s rooftop patio, a small square with a handful of umbrellaed bistro tables and overgrown shrubs. A few tables held ice buckets with bottles of wine, the glasses flipped upside down on carefully folded napkins.

Margot walked straight to the patio’s railing, gripping onto the swirling metal fence. She could almost taste the city, sparkling like a LaCroix on a hot summer day. The air was rich: thick with gasoline, stale cigarette smoke, and something distinctly floral from bursting red blooms that trailed down the limestone buildings.

“How are the vibes?” Van asked, coming to stand next to her. The words sounded so unnatural leaving his lips that Margot laughed so hard she might’ve pulled a muscle.

“The vibes are great. I mean, this is . . .” she said, her voice fading out. When she finally found the word, she finished: “Amazing.”

There was a reason they called Rome the City Eternal. The metropolis stretched out before them, sprawled beneath the last drips of a sorbet sunset. From here, Margot spotted the skeleton of the Colosseum and evergreens dotting the Roman Forum. Modernity didn’t wipe out the history—it molded around it.

“I spent so much time worrying about what we’d find underneath these ancient cities. Sometimes it’s nice to get a little perspective.” Van’s fingers drummed against the iron banister. He turned back to the nearest table and swiped a bottle of red and a wine opener.

“We can’t drink that,” Margot chastised.

“Who’s going to stop us?” Then, Van lifted himself up and over to the other side. “Come on.”

“Here is fine,” Margot said. “Here has chairs.”

“When has Margot Rhodes ever turned down an adventure?” Van asked, extending his hand.

She took it. Every other time they’d touched, it had been for survival. This was something sweeter. When her feet landed on the other side of the fence, his fingers slipped out of hers, and she knew he only flexed his hands because he was slowly turning back to stone, but she wanted to pretend that maybe, just a little bit, he was testing out the feeling of her palm on his.

They followed the curve of the shingles to a quiet corner where the roofline flattened and sank to the clay tiles. Van wound the silver spiral opener into the bottle’s cork like a certified sommelier. It released with a pop. He swigged straight from the bottle. When he was finished, he wiped the back of his hand over his lips in a way that would make Miss Penelope drop dead.

Holding the wine out to Margot, the bottle slipped from his grasp. Margot caught it with two hands, a splash of red dripping to the tiles. With a laugh, she said, “Thank god for my Spider-Man-like reflexes.”

But her eyes didn’t move from Van’s fingers. When he’d dropped Relics of the Heart into the sewer, it had been the same stiff grasp that fumbled it. It was happening faster this time.

Before she could think better of it, she drank down a big gulp. It tasted like spoiled grape juice. It basically was spoiled grape juice. Underage drinking was not an extracurricular she’d intended to pursue, but warmth flooded Margot’s body. She could make an exception for Italy.

“Are you sure there’s nothing else we can be doing right now?” Margot asked. “The Vase is just . . . out there. Shouldn’t we be, I don’t know, plotting? Planning?”

“I have a plan,” Van said. “And the plan doesn’t start until the class gets on the train tomorrow.”

Margot’s words curled inward like night petals shy against the morning sun. “Promise me you’ll be okay until then?”

Van nodded once, firm enough for her to believe him.

Quiet settled between them, as heady and indulgent as the red wine they shared.

“Why did you come here?” she asked when the silence grew too thick. “In 1932, I mean.”

Van blew out a stiff breath. His gaze slid sidelong but not really focusing, like he was riffling through the indexes of his mind. Finally, he settled on: “Money.”

“Noble pursuit,” Margot said.

His eyes flicked toward her. “It is when you’ve spent the last two years selling papers up and down Manhattan making chump change.”

“Did you have to wear one of those silly little hats like they do in Newsies?”

Van’s eyebrows lowered. “Ivy caps are not silly.”

Which was code for he totally had.

He took another swig. “I didn’t have anyone or anything. I was a ghost, practically invisible. No one knew me. No one would miss me. All I wanted was to be seen.”

“Is that how you met Atlas?” Margot asked.

A small laugh lifted Van’s lips. “In a way. I stole his compass. He wanted it back. We made a deal—I’d help him on his excavation, and he’d keep a roof over my head.”

“And you kept the compass.”

“Collateral,” Van said, eyes bright.

Margot thought of the grayscale image tucked between the pages of his journal, where his arm looped around Atlas’s shoulders and his smile cut through the photo like a knife. “What happened? Between you and Atlas?”

He tensed at the question. A caged look flattened his features.

Margot shifted toward him, a compass toward the north star. “You don’t have to tell me. But you don’t have to hide either.”

Van cleared his throat. “Different ideas of loyalty.”

“He betrayed you?” Margot asked. She sipped again from the wine, letting it make her brave. (Vaguely, she wondered if drinking from the same bottle counted as kissing someone. Not that she was thinking about kissing Van. Not at all.)

Van absently touched the crook in his nose where it had clearly been broken, and she wondered how many times Van thought with his fists. Maybe Atlas did, too. Had they fought like brothers or like enemies?

“It’s why I don’t do partners anymore.”

“What am I, chopped liver?” Margot asked, featherlight.

A reluctant grin flashed across his face. “Fair enough, kid. What about you?”

“Oh, I’d look incredibly cute in a newsboy hat.”

There was that look again. It was like Van was excavating her—digging into the deepest parts of her, the ones she didn’t even want to see.

“You know that’s not what I meant. You read my journal, so you already know everything there is to know about me,” he said. He leaned closer, closer, closer. Close enough that Margot’s nervous system was going to need a hard reboot. Close enough to kiss her. Instead, he plucked the bottle out of her hand. “Maybe I want to know you.”

A hopeful thing fluttered in her belly. To be known. But the words settled heavy in her chest, refusing to come out. What was worse: not being understood, or being understood and still not being enough?

“You’re different than your writings made you seem,” she said.

“You’re deflecting.”

So, Margot took a deep breath and prayed for courage. “All my life, I’ve been defined by things I quit—I quit ballet, I quit tae kwon do, I quit playing guitar. I stopped painting and got bored with field hockey. I got kicked out of etiquette classes—”

Van scoffed and downed another drink. “What’d you do? Forget to tuck your napkin into your shirt? Use the salad fork as the dinner fork?”

Margot winced at the memory. “Worse, I started a food fight in the middle of our afternoon tea because one of the girls called me a problem child. So, I decided to show her one.”

Van barked out a laugh.

“Shut up,” Margot said, but she couldn’t stop her spill of laughter. “Whatever. The point is that I can’t quit this. I—”

Van’s fingers found hers resting on the tile roof and squeezed. Patient and prompting. A soft touch that she realized was probably difficult for him.

“My mom left when I was twelve. Decided she didn’t want to be with my dad anymore, didn’t want to be with me anymore, and definitely didn’t want to be in Dogwood Hollow, Georgia, anymore.” Predictable tears rimmed her eyes. “Without her, I didn’t know who I was supposed to be.”

She’d tried everything. She tried to fit into a box—any box she could find. Summer theater, history club, math club. She’d given them her everything . . . until her everything inevitably wasn’t good enough. Quitting was easier than admitting she was worthless at something. Being wrong.

She could still hear the way her dad would sigh every time she told him she wanted to try something new. Could feel the heat rising to her cheeks like she was standing in their sage-green living room with the pilled carpet beneath her feet. Could see the frustrated way he wrapped his fingers against his stubbled jaw when she sobbed or shouted, like she was a wild thing he had no idea how to tame.

Eventually, it seemed like every conversation they had was rife with stomping and slammed doors and cold shoulders and, eventually, bleary-eyed apologies after she was done lashing out.

No version of herself had been able to outrun the ache in her chest from the inescapable question: Why hadn’t she been enough? Enough to hold her family together, enough to make her dad proud, enough for her classmates to like her. Smart enough, nice enough, strong enough.

“It’s just been me and my dad since then, but he doesn’t get it. Get me. He’s always so busy with work, and I kept thinking I’d find the thing that made him understand me, but—if I find the Vase, it’ll be enough to make him love me.”

Maybe it was the wine in her system. Maybe it was Van watching her, searing and inquisitive at the same time. But saying it out loud, admitting it to someone—even if that someone was Van Keane—made her feel exposed. Like she’d said too much again. Been too much.

She yanked her hand back from his, cradling it instead in her lap. Even staring at her cuticles, she could feel the way he looked at her. Like she was a riddle to unravel, a problem to solve.

Finally, he cleared his throat. “That’s not how that works.”

“I know, I know. You think the Vase gives you treasure, but—”

“No, Margot. You’re you. That’s plenty.”

Van’s words were a tidal wave crash that left Margot stunned in the wreckage, battering down all her strongest-built walls. She brushed a curl behind her ear, shaking her head. “I thought I was a troublemaking girl with a brain full of bad ideas.”

Van’s brow crinkled. That same analytical gaze sank into his eyes. “You held your own in the Nymphaeum.”

“I had a panic attack.”

“And you solved the Aura trial.”

“After getting thrown forty feet into the air.”

“You’re brave, Margot.” His voice was tender, quiet. It had lost all patented snark. “It takes courage to let people see you for who you really are.”

He sounded like Van from the journal. Her Van.

Although lately, all of him felt more and more like her Van. She liked his jagged corners and sharp lines. He was everything she wasn’t—logical and precise and detail oriented. They were two sides of a scale, keeping the other in perfect balance.

She wanted to believe what he’d said about her. She might have let herself, but a figure below pulled on the threads of her attention. More specifically: a backpack with one strap. The person wove through the crowd, his head covered by a hood. But Margot knew her disgraced Fj?llr?ven when she saw it.

“Is that . . . Enzo?” She lurched upright so fast, her foot slipped out from beneath her.

Van rose, steadying her with an arm against her back. “Let’s go.”

They hopped over the patio railing, and Margot dropped the half-empty bottle of wine back off in the ice bucket on their way out.

The elevator doors wouldn’t close fast enough, no matter how many times Margot jammed her finger against the first-floor button. When they did close, trapping a confused-looking businessman in with them, smooth jazz filtered over the speakers. She’d never hated a sound more.

“Come on, come on, come on,” she begged.

She and Van squeezed out the doors before they’d even fully opened.

“Is he close?” Margot asked as the lobby’s revolving door spat them out onto the street. She lifted onto her toes. Searching, searching. “Do you feel any less statue-y?”

Van shook his head. Even from his six-foot-something perspective, it must have been impossible to spot Enzo in a crowd this thick. “No? Maybe. I can’t tell.”

“There!” Margot said, spying her yellow backpack in the fray. She reached for Van’s hand, and he threaded his fingers between hers as they ran.

Margot leaped around a street vendor selling single-stem roses to blushing couples. She dodged a painter’s wooden easel but accidentally knocked over a cup of brushes, sending them rolling. Someone’s arms flew up to defend themselves, but the timing of it meant that Margot got a face full of cannoli. The orange-flavored cream stuck to her eyelashes and slid down her face. Some dripped onto her lips. At least it was delicious.

Ahead, a green door opened, and Enzo darted inside beneath its weathered awning. Margot and Van surged toward him. The door closed behind them, softening the din of the city. Enzo barged between white-clothed tables, knocking over crystal glasses and steaming plates of cacio e pepe.

Margot and Van tailed him through a pair of saloon-style, silver doors into the kitchen. Here, chefs in tall, white toques swung trays in a synchronized dance. Margot ducked beneath a platter of sfogliatella. Someone yelled after them, but Enzo was already sneaking out the windowed back door.

By the time they made it through the door and into the squashed alleyway, Margot had been dashed with powdered sugar, and Van had a linguine noodle sliding down his cheek.

“Did you see where he went?” Van asked.

“No,” Margot said, chest heaving. “Did you?”

Van rolled the tension out of his neck. “No.”

They could try to get a better vantage point, another bird’s-eye view, but by then it would be too late. It already was. Enzo had vanished into the city center, the shards vanishing with him.