Thief Eyes - Janni Lee Simner [3]
The stone wall to our right dropped away as we reached a grassy outcrop. The wind let up, and Dad stopped at the base of a walkway that led to an overlook. Some tourists stood on the walkway, huddled beneath umbrellas, listening to a tour guide in jeans and a T-shirt. The guide was soaked, but he didn’t seem to mind.
“Here?” I asked. Dad nodded.
Even without the wind, I felt cold. “So what’d you two fight about?” My voice came out too loud, with a squeak at the end. So much for sounding casual.
Dad leaned down, picked up a black stone, and turned it over in his hand. “Obsidian,” he said. “It’s funny how the names of rocks translate in Icelandic. Obsidian is literally raven flint, while lignite—brown coal—has something to do with the fire giants, out of Norse mythology—”
“Dad!”
He dropped the stone but didn’t meet my eyes. “No, Haley.”
“No what?”
“No, I’m not going to answer your question. Some things are none of your concern.”
It’s my concern more than anyone’s! Dad never answered, no matter how often I asked. I dug my nails deeper into my palms, felt the familiar pinch of nails breaking skin. I whirled away and stomped up the wet walkway, past the tourists. Mom would have run after me, but Dad just let me go. I reached the overlook and leaned on a railing, staring out at the river. A goose made its way into the water, followed by two fuzzy goslings. I watched them sail by. There should have been squirrels here, too, chipmunks, something—but Iceland wasn’t big on native land mammals. A few arctic foxes, the occasional stranded polar bear—that was it.
My palms began to sting. Behind me the guide talked cheerfully about all the old stories that were supposed to have happened at Thingvellir. Mostly they sounded like a long list of who killed who, though at least one guy managed to fall in love, get married, and take his wife east with him. That didn’t sound so bad—except that years later, when he was battling enemies, his so-called true love refused her husband two locks of her long hair, which he needed to replace his severed bowstring. “Gunnar died, of course,” the guide said.
Of course. The rain dripped down my hood and into my face. No happy endings here. No endings at all, just a polite letter from Iceland’s Logreglan—their police—concluding that there was no sign of where my mother went but no evidence of foul play, either. The story stopped there.
It stopped here. Mom had come to Iceland with Dad last summer, the first summer of Dad’s three-year research grant. They’d visited Thingvellir to do some sightseeing, and they’d gotten into a fight. Nothing strange about that—Mom and Dad did fight sometimes. Whose parents don’t? Well, okay, my boyfriend Jared’s, but that was beside the point. They were mostly stupid fights, anyway, about stuff like Dad spending too much time on campus, or Mom bringing home yet another stray cat to foster, or whose turn it was to cook or pay the bills.
As I stared out at the river, I could almost picture them here: Mom in her slacks and blouse, blond hair loose around her shoulders—she only pulled it back for work at her vet clinic; Dad in his rumpled T-shirt and jeans, his mad-scientist hair sticking out in all directions. Mom would do all the yelling, of course. Dad got really quiet when they fought. But then it would be over and life would go on. Except this time, Mom had been so mad that instead of making up with Dad like she was supposed to, she’d run away. Dad had waited for Mom to cool down and come back. She never did.
Dad had let me read the police report, but he wouldn’t tell me what he and Mom had fought about. So I gave up asking and started begging him to take me to Iceland with him instead. I’d figured once we were here he’d have to explain.
So much for that theory. I stared at the wet wooden slats beneath my feet. What could make Mom so angry she’d decide not to come home? How well could she hide in a country smaller than Arizona? How could she