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He sets his bag down. "Where's your mother?" "In Lydia's room." Nath pauses. "She's been in there all day."
他放下书包。“你妈妈在哪里？”“在莉迪亚的房间。”纳停顿了一下。“她一整天都在里面。”
Under his son's eye, James feels a sharp prickle between his shoulder blades, as if Nath is blaming him.
在儿子眼皮底下，詹姆斯感到肩胛骨之间有一种尖锐的刺痛，似乎纳在责备他。
"For your information," he says, "my summer course comes with a great deal of responsibility. And I have conferences. Meetings." His face flushes at the memory of that afternoon—
“告诉你吧，”他说，“我的暑期课程有许多任务。我有会议。”一想起那天下午，他的脸就红了——
Louisa kneeling before his chair, then slowly unzipping his fly—and this makes him angry.
路易莎跪在他的椅子前，然后慢慢地拉开他的拉链——这让他很生气。
Nath stares, lips slightly pursed, as if he wants to frame a question but can't get past the W—, and suddenly, James is furious.
纳盯着看，嘴唇微微噘起，就好像想要提出一个问题，但又说不出口，突然，詹姆斯勃然大怒。
For as long as he has been a father, James has believed that Lydia looked like her mother — beautiful, blue-eyed, poised—and that Nath looked like him: dark, hesitating in midspeech, preparing to stumble over his own words.
自从做了父亲，詹姆斯就一直认为莉迪亚长得像她的母亲——漂亮、蓝眼睛、泰然自若——而纳长得也像他：皮肤黝黑，在演讲中途犹豫，准备继续自己的话。
He forgets, most of the time, that Lydia and Nath resemble each other, too.
大多数时候，他都忘了莉迪亚和纳也长得很像。
Now, in Nath's face, James suddenly sees a flash of his daughter, wide-eyed and silent, and the pain of this makes him cruel.
现在，在纳的脸上，詹姆斯突然看到了女儿的身影，睁大眼睛，沉默不语，这种痛苦让他变得残忍。
"You're just home all day. Do you have any friends at all?" His father has said things like this for years, but at this moment Nath feels something snap, like an overstretched wire.
“你整天都在家。你有朋友吗？”他的父亲多年来一直说这样的话，但此刻，纳感到有什么东西断裂了，就像一根拉得过长的电线。
"None. I'm not like you. No conferences. No—meetings." He wrinkles his nose. "You smell like perfume. From your meetings, I guess?"
“没有。我不像你。我没有会议。”他皱起鼻子。“你闻起来像有香水味。我才这来自你的会议。”
James grabs him by the shoulder, so hard his knuckles crack. "Don't you talk to me that way," he says. "Don't you question me. You don't know anything about my life."
詹姆斯抓住他的肩膀，他的指关节都快裂开了。“别那样跟我说话，”他说。“别问我。你对我的生活一无所知。”
Then, before he even realizes the words are forming, they shoot from his mouth like spit. "Just like you didn't know anything about your sister's."
然后，在他意识到这些话之前，这些话就像唾沫一样从他嘴里喷了出来。“就像你对你妹妹的事情一无所知一样。”
Nath's expression doesn't change, but his whole face stiffens, like a mask.
纳的表情没有变化，但整张脸都僵硬了，就像一个面具。
James wants to snatch the words back out of the air, like moths, but they've already crawled into his son's ears: he can see it in Nath's eyes, which have gone shiny and hard as glass.
詹姆斯想像抓飞蛾一样把这句话从空中抓回来，但它们已经爬进了他儿子的耳朵：他可以从纳的眼睛里看出来，他的眼睛变得像玻璃一样又亮又硬。
He wants to reach out and touch his son—his hand, his shoulder, anywhere—and tell him he didn't mean it. That none of this is his fault.
他想伸出手去摸他的儿子，抚摸他的手，他的肩膀，任何地方，告诉他他不是那个意思。这一切都不是他的错。
Then Nath punches the countertop so hard it leaves a crack in the old, worn laminate.
然后，纳狠狠一拳打在厨房的工作台面上，磨损的旧层板上留下了一道裂缝。
He runs out of the room, footsteps thundering up the stairs, and James lets his bag fall to the floor and slumps back against the counter.
他跑出房间，楼梯上响起了雷鸣般的脚步声，詹姆斯的包掉在地板上，他瘫倒在柜台上。
His hand touches something cold and wet: the crushed remains of the hard-boiled egg, shards of shell driven deep into the tender white.
他的手摸到了一件又冷又湿的东西：煮熟的鸡蛋碎了，蛋壳的碎片深深地扎进蛋白里。
All night he thinks about this, his son's frozen face, and the next morning he rises early.
整个晚上，他都在想着这件事，想着儿子那张僵硬的脸。第二天早上，他起得很早。
Retrieving the newspaper from the front porch, he sees the date black and stark in the corner: July 3. Two months to the day since Lydia disappeared.
他从前廊拿回报纸，看到角落里黑乎乎的日期：7月3日。莉迪亚已经失踪两个月了。
It doesn't seem possible that just two months ago he had sat in his office grading papers, that he had been embarrassed to pluck a ladybug from Louisa's hair.
就在两个月前，他还坐在办公室里批改卷子，不可能因为从路易莎的头发上扯下一只瓢虫而感到难堪。
Until two months ago, July 3 had been a happy date, secretly treasured for ten years—the day of Marilyn's miraculous return. How everything has changed.
直到两个月前，7月3日还是一个快乐的日子，被秘密珍藏了十年之久——那是玛丽莲奇迹般回归的日子。一切都变了。
In the kitchen, James slides the rubber band from the newspaper and unrolls it. There, below the fold, he sees a small headline: Teachers and Classmates Remember Departed Girl.
在厨房里，詹姆斯从报纸上取下橡皮筋，把它展开。在折页下面，他看到了一个小标题：老师和同学们怀念逝去的女孩。
The articles about Lydia have grown shorter and sparser. Soon they would stop entirely, and everyone would forget about her. James cups the paper toward him.
关于莉迪亚的文章越来越短，越来越少。很快他们就会完全停止，所有人都会忘记她。詹姆斯把纸朝他扔去。
The day is cloudy, but he leaves the light off, as if the dimness will soften what he's about to read.
虽然天很阴，但他还是把灯关掉了，好像昏暗的灯光会让他要读的东西变得柔和些。
From Karen Adler: She seemed lonely. She didn't really hang out with anyone. From Pam Saunders: She didn't have a lot of friends, or even a boyfriend.
凯伦·阿德勒：她看起来很孤独。她没有和任何人一起出去玩。帕姆·桑德斯：她没有很多朋友，甚至没有男朋友。
I don't think the boys even noticed her.
我想男孩子们根本没注意到她。
At the bottom: Lee's physics teacher, Donald Kelly, remembered her as the lone sophomore in a class of juniors, noting, "She worked hard, but of course she stood out."
底部：李的物理老师唐纳德·凯利记得她是三年级班上唯一的二年级学生，他说，“她很努力，她当然出类拔萃。”
Beside the article, a sidebar: Children of Mixed Backgrounds Often Struggle to Find Their Place.
在这篇文章的旁边，有一条边栏：不同背景的孩子常常很难找到自己的位置。
