The day is gray and luminous and her father is talking about wooden horses again. He sits legs crossed, ankle to knee, last week’s Sunday crossword folded over his lap. As he speaks, he gathers the air with his hands.

His story concerns Odysseus, who was, at that moment, crouched in the belly of the horse. Outside, the Trojans pressed their ears against the planks. Helen circled below, calling to the Greeks in the voices of their beloved, faraway wives. No one called back. Everyone was holding their breath, holding perfectly still.

Then, her father says, all up and down the beaches the Trojans began to cheer. They clattered their swords and poured wine onto the sand. They spat into one another’s hands, sobbed into their brothers’ necks. Lost in all the clamoring and singing—the carting of the horse into the city, past the famous, impenetrable walls—was the sound of a thousand Greek exhales. That night, the Greeks spilled out from their hiding place.

“Just like that.”

Leo’s father points to a trail of ants dragging their bloated bodies behind them. The ants are all over the hotel, streaming across the patio stones and the ceramic tiles at the edge of the pool. Leo has even seen them marching through the grass with leaves pointed over their backs like fins. Fire ants can support five thousand times their own weight. Leo knows this because her father told her so, the second night in Italy, when he trapped an ant with honey and used a toothpick to break apart the bulbs of its head, thorax, and abdomen—naming each part as he went.

He continues: “Under the cover of darkness, the Greeks moved out of the horse and into the city where all their enemies slept and they slaughtered the Trojans in their beds.”

“Even the women and children?”

“Some of the women and children. They took the others back with them to Greece, along with the gold and armor and jewels. But before they left, they burned the whole city, even the horse.”

“Why?”

“Well.” Her father scratches at the nicotine patch on his arm. He makes a circle on the table with the tip of his pen. “Maybe after ten years they were tired of looking at it.”