I nod. “I’ll keep earning my place,” I say, my hands wrapped around my cup because I have to hold something.
He turns, the wind lifting his hair, the kind of man people turn to watch and I pretend not to notice. “You have one…with me.”
But for how long?The voice is sly, pitiless.You only have eleven months and change with him.
The reminder loops a wire around my ribs. I breathe around it and nod. “I know.”
He lifts a hand as if to touch my wrist, then lowers it again, and that small restraint does something wildly tender to me. I hold my breath on it and let it go.
We sleep in a room with a humming ceiling fan and a lemon tree tapping at the shutters. He pulls me in and for once the quiet doesn’t have teeth. I wake to sunlight falling in clean bars and his arm slung heavy over my waist, and for one foolish minute I believe in mornings that only require coffee and a kiss.
The next day is simplicity itself in the ways I like best.
We keep it ordinary and sacred, no sign of the self-made millionaire or the blue-blooded princess he married for convenience.
His mother sends us to the market for tomatoes and a block of feta “that doesn’t crumble like bad decisions.” And when we return, we eat spanakopita from paper napkins, then wander down a handful of streets to the church with the blue dome where women pin prayers to a board and men mutter them into their knuckles.
Vasso surprises me by kicking off his loafers and diving into the water lapping the jetty. I stay dry with my feet in the water and my dress hitched to my thighs and watch him cut through the Aegean like he was made for it.
We nap. We help peel potatoes. We drink something cold and bitter at a café where the owner pretends not to know he’s giving us the good table.
And the most perfect day draws to a close with the three of us on the roof, watching stars drop pennies into the black. His mother tells a story about Vasso at seven making a raft out of olive crates. Then she reminds me about stealing my grandfather’s car at twelve and only getting as far as the drive and the collision with a prized fountain.
The laughter has softer corners and we navigate them without bleeding.
So of course it stands to reason that I’m at my mellowest the following evening—the pink hour, the caress before dark—when the world reaches in with a dirty hand.
17
NAOMI
The call vibrates in my pocket as I’m drying my hands on a linen towel in the bathroom.
Unknown number.
I stare at the screen like it’s going to leap up and bite me.
And I know before I swipe. Some things you just know.
“Congratulations, Princess,” he says, the endearment curled in contempt. “Or should I say Mrs. Temporary?”
The towel slips off the rail and falls to the floor, unheeded.
“Harrison.”
“There was a time when you called me Dad.”
Before you proved you weren’t worthy of the title.
“Where…how are you?”
“Bored. And waiting for you to thank me for the congrats.”
“Thank you,” I respond, loathing the coldness seeping into my bones. The lack of affection that makes me wonder if I’m flawed. “But how did you know…you saw the photos,” I say, and it isn’t a question. “So you must be out of rehab?”
“Oh, I saw.” His voice is ice against my ear and he doesn’t answer my question. “Our Naomi, marrying the housekeeper’sson. How…American.And how very treacherous, considering which island he stole from us.”
My fingers tightened on the phone. “It was barely ours and he didn’t steal it,” I say calmly, the only calm left available.
