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“I just know, sweetie. I will be back.”

Elena didn’t know it that day, but apparently, everyone knew that her mother spent her days with another man. A man that she’d fallen in love with. He owned several grocery stores in the city, and Arabel knew just where to go.

Arabel entered the store, and the woman and man were laughing, having tea and sandwiches as if nothing in the world had gone wrong. She wanted to hate the woman, wanted to be angry with her, but her own marriage had fallen apart because she preferred sand to romantic evenings alone.

“Arabel! What are you doing here? Is Elena alright?”

“I’m glad you were at least concerned,” she said, frowning at the woman. She looked at the man, but he didn’t move, didn’t give them privacy.

“I don’t need your judgment. Where is my daughter?”

“She’s waiting for her father to be pulled out of a collapsed tunnel,” said the young woman. “Maybe you might find it in your heart to leave your lover and go to her.” Arabel turned and left the woman standing in shock.

By the time she made it to the dig site, it was confirmed that there would be no survivors. In fact, it would most likely be months before bodies could be recovered, perhaps not even then.

Elena was inconsolable.

There was a small service held for the men and one woman trapped in the tunnels, but no bodies to weep over. Not yet.

For Elena, that wasn’t even the worst of it.

“We’ll be living with Ahmad now,” said her mother, holding the other man’s hand. She might be only eleven, but she knew that having another man only weeks after your father died was not normal.

“No. No, I won’t. I want to live in our house,” she said.

“Elena, our house will be sold. We’ll be living with Ahmad. You’ll go back to boarding school in the fall but come home in the summers, just as you’ve always done.”

“I hate you!” she screamed at her mother. Others turned to stare at the little girl. “I will never forgive you for this!”

She ran out of the small grocery store and down the street. With all of her savings in her small young lady purse, as her mother called it, she hailed a taxi and directed him to Efram’s house. When she knocked on the door, he knew and grabbed her in his arms.

“Please let me live with you,” she cried.

His wife cried with the little girl, holding her until she fell asleep. Efram called the grocery store and told her mother and her new husband that the child was alright. He would bring her home in a day or two when she was settled.

Her mother didn’t even care.

“Thank you, Efram,” she said. “She’s so headstrong, and she’s just being unreasonable.”

“All due respect, she is hurting. Her mother introduces her to the man in her life just a few weeks after her father’s death. You can’t expect her to be happy about that.”

“Well, she needs to be happy about it. This is our life now.”

“No,” he said calmly. “It’s your life. Elena’s will always be sand and dirt and digging.”

Elena eventually had to go home. She never apologized to her mother or her stepfather, but she was more than happy to return to England. Refusing to come home on holidays or summer break, she found other things to do with her time.

When she was in college, she spent her summer traveling the world as an assistant at dig sites.

Ultimately, she knew that she needed to forgive her mother. She was happy. Happier than she’d ever seen her with her father.

Returning to Egypt to work on the dig sites was a dream for Elena. She would be able to complete her father’s life’s work and, perhaps, find her own as well. When her friend and colleague May and Thomas Bradshaw called her to help out some friends, she was more than happy to do so.

“It’s wonderful to hear your voice, May,” she said, smiling at the image on the screen.

“Yours too, Elena. Thomas and I would very much like it if you’d come and work with us here. The incident with Roderick was appalling,” she said to the woman.

“I know. I’ve learned my lesson. Never trust a senior archaeologist who tells you that he’s giving you your big break,” she frowned.

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