Free The Stowaway by Robert Hough Page B

was the real reason she had come. I asked her what it could be.
    Elena, she said, I am worried. I haven’t heard from Petre since his last note from Spain and I’m sick with worry. So I told her that there must be some explanation, that he must be very busy getting settled in New York City or that perhaps the mail is slow, and she kept shaking her head and saying, No, no, no, Elena, something has happened with him. I have a feeling in my bones.
    Of course I told her again that everything must be all right and that she would hear from him soon, but all the while I was really thinking that her husband had probably met up with some American girl and hadn’t worked up the courage to tell poor Maria that he wouldn’t be sending her money for a ticket to America after all. After awhile, Maria left, and I was struck by an even worse thought, that maybe something had happened to Petre, though what that could be I refuse to even think. (Dani, if I asked you to come home, would it help? No, no, I promised myself I wouldn’t …)
    Well, I must go now. There are a million things to be done here and I tell you I can’t wait till the day when I can say goodbye forever to the goats and sheep and doing laundry by hand. I see your mother most days and she misses you terribly but at the same time I can see she is happy for you.
    One million kisses and hugs and other things besides,
    Your love Elena
       P.S. Maria told me one other thing you might find useful. In one of his letters from Algeciras, Petre said they were staying at a place called El Faro. He said it was free and clean and that they are known for helping out travellers in trouble and that many Romanians stay there. One thing, though—it is a religious place so you have to act that way too.
       P.P.S. Oh my love. Come home.
    Daniel is propped on his elbows, his fingers beginning to tingle, his toes pressed against a slender, creased mattress. When he goes to put the letter back in the envelope, he hears the sound of something shifting inside. He holds his penlight to the envelope, and sure enough he sees a thin, square impression. Inverting the envelope, he shakes it, and she lands on his pillow smiling. The photomust have been taken at last year’s Easter celebration, for she is in traditional dress—white long-sleeved blouse, brocade vest, black ankle-length skirt. Her light brown hair is piled atop her head, accentuating both the roundness of her eyes and the way that her long, pale neck widens, ever so slightly, as it meets the underside of her jaw. Her eyes are a deep, luminous blue, and her teeth are as white as the snow-capped peaks in the back of the photo. Yet it is the self-conscious way her fingers hold the hem of her skirt, showing off its embroidery, that causes him to wish, above all else, he was in a place imbued with the scent, and the laughter, of women.
    He slides the photo back in the envelope, places it under his pillow, and drifts back into a light slumber. When he comes to, the room is bathed in a creamy half-light. Some of the men are already awake and padding off to the toilets. Around him, he hears coughing, and whispers, and noses being blown.
    He goes to the mess trailer, where he eats eggs and toast and sausage with the other construction workers, all of whom are illegals from Eastern Europe—Romanians mostly, along with a handful of Albanians, Bulgarians, Ukrainians, Moldovans, Belarussians, and a lonely Azerbaijani with a reddish tint to his skin. They are barely awake and unshaven, sitting in pockets of twos and threes at the long table, the men mostly keeping their heads down while they eat. When Daniel is partway through his breakfast, Gheorghe comes and sits beside him, nodding cheerlessly before tucking into the food on his tray. By seven, all of the men have eaten and are tramping from the trailers to the giant house frame on the hill. The sun is a thick, white haze, and already there are insects, whirring over dandelion