Page 27 of Our Last Resort

And there was William’s readiness to fight Gabriel this morning—the insults, his fists clinging to Gabriel’s T-shirt. Those things don’t prove anything on their own, but they don’t lookgood.

There could be more. Who knows what housekeeping found in his room? Who could imagine what the staff knows that we don’t?

Gabriel and I look at each other.

Is this really what we’re supposed to do? Go to the pool right after a guy…killed his wife?

“I’m not saying it will be great, but if you would let me speak—”

I turn my head in the direction of the family I spotted in the lobby earlier, the couple and their two young children. Mom is talking to Dad, who is trying to contain a squirming toddler on his lap. Next to them, their little girl clutches her face between her hands, elbows on the table.

“What else do you want to do with them?” the woman stage-whispers to the man. “And I mean—”

She nudges her chin in the direction of the lobby.

He’s been arrested,she seems to say.We can move on now.

Dad shrugs, like,I guess.This vacation’s already such a disaster anyway.

He gets up, toddler on his hip. The woman leads them out of the dining room, holding the girl’s hand.

Other guests follow. Fabio and Lazlo. The influencers. No one looks thrilled, but there are talks of bathing suits and sunscreen.

“Should we…go to the pool, too?” Gabriel asks.

I bite my lip.

What’s the alternative? The hiking trails? Did those yesterday—not in the mood to risk dying of dehydration again. A spa treatment? What kind of psycho gets a facial the day after a death?

“Let’s do it,” I say.

Gabriel nods.

“I’ll bring a book.”

For twelve years, Gabriel has worked as the assistant to Howard Auster, America’s foremost chronicler of the Roman Empire. If Gabriel brings a book, then he won’t really begoing to the pool.He’ll be at work.

And he’ll be with the Romans. His darling Romans, a fascination that started in his early adulthood.

I asked him, back when he got his job: Whatwasit about the Romans?

He shrugged. At first, I thought he wouldn’t be able to explain—that it hadn’t occurred to him that anyone could hear about the Romans and not want to devote their entire intellectual life to them.

“It’s the stories,” he said finally.

“You mean the drama?”

He shook his head.

“The gods. The emperors. They all had families.”

I didn’t understand.

“We never did,” Gabriel added. “We didn’t have any of that.”

It didn’t have to be the Romans. The Russian czars would have been good contenders. And let’s not even get into theBritish monarchs. France, too, had a couple of viable options. But the Romans got to Gabriel’s psyche first, and once they did, they never let go.

I didn’t point out that the families he found so fascinating included sons who killed their fathers, and fathers who ate their sons.

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