Free Lily and the Lost Boy by Paula Fox

Hemmings frowned for a moment, then went on.
    â€œWe had to take care of our residency requirements, of course, so we went to Istanbul last month.”
    â€œWe went just across the Yugoslav border to take care of ours,” Mr. Corey said.
    â€œYou should have spent some time there; you should have gone to Skopje, at least, not to mention the Adriatic coast. Terrible bureaucracy here,” Mr. Hemmings continued. “Have you ever tried to have anything sent through the mail? A chap in Berlin sent me some pipe tobacco, and the postal taxes were just too expensive. It was a matter of principle with me not to pay them, so I left the tobacco in the post office. Let them smoke it—I wish them joy of it. So you children have met before? And where was that?”
    The two boys were mute. “Up near the acropolis,” said Lily in a low voice.
    â€œAh, well, Jack goes everywhere. He’s damned marvelous! He takes care of himself—the best thing, of course. Jack’s been an independent fellow since he was four, haven’t you?” He stared intently at his son.
    â€œI guess so,” muttered Jack.
    Mr. Hemmings stood. “We’d best push on. Drop by and see us in Panagia,” he said. Lily didn’t listen to what her father said in reply. She was watching Paul and Jack. Paul was whispering something in his ear, and Jack nodded several times and whispered back. Mrs. Corey said, “Goodbye,” in a loud voice, the only word she’d spoken since the Hemmingses had sat down.
    The Coreys watched them thread their way around tables and disappear among the people on the quay.
    â€œI’m trying to remember what he said,” Mrs. Corey remarked in a puzzled voice. “‘Drop by’—what on earth does he mean? I’ve known people like that man. They tell you everything, you think, then when they’ve gone, you realize they’ve told you nothing.”
    â€œHe lets Jack go anywhere—by himself,” Paul said.
    Mrs. Corey looked at him reflectively as though he had asked a question. All she said was, “Perhaps Jack doesn’t have much choice.”
    There was a great deal of noise around them, most of it pleasant, animated talking and children laughing, the clatter of cutlery and plates, the soft wash of waves against the quay. But Lily felt a kind of waiting silence at their table. She recalled other such moments when, it seemed to her, each person in her family had drawn away to a secret place. Once it had happened when she and Paul had been shouting and fighting in the back seat of the car, for hours, she guessed, during a summer trip to Maine. Mr. Corey had pulled over to the side of the road. Neither of her parents had turned around. She and Paul had gradually quieted, and they sat there for some time, no one speaking. Another time, her mother had stood up abruptly from the dinner table and gone to the kitchen, from which Lily had heard the sound of a glass breaking. It was right after Granny Corey, who was visiting, had complained that the children’s clothes really needed ironing—they looked like laundry sacks, she’d said. After her mother returned, they’d finished supper as though their lives depended on not making a single sound.
    This time it must have been something about Mr. Hemmings and Jack that had made everything feel strange, unfamiliar.
    But the feeling passed as they strolled along the waterfront toward the small hotel where they had first stayed, where Lily had seen the shepherd leaning on his crook, standing in the middle of his flock of sheep. On their way back Lily ran to a small tourist shop in whose cluttered window a tiny alabaster goat stood on an embroidered wool bag. Every week she asked the price of it, and Mr. Panakos, the owner, would exclaim, “Ah me! It costs the same as it always does,” as though the price had nothing to do with him.
    Not far from the shop was Giorgi’s taverna.