“What the hell was that for?” he asked, massaging his shoulder with the opposite hand.
“What the hell? What thehell?” she growled back at him. “Did you not hear me? Everyone thinks you’re fuckingdead, Theo. Capital D-E-A-D, dead! Yet apparently, you’re…living in Greece?” she said, waving her arms at their surroundings.
“Okay,” he said, trying to stop her, “I’m not over here on vacation or something.”
“Oh really? You’ve been missing for overa year.”
Shit.Had it been that long?
But she didn’t stop there.
“The boat you were allegedly sailing on was found capsized. The papers all reported that you were presumed dead. You may not be on vacation, but you didn’t think to, oh, I don’t know, maybe call your parents to let them know you’re alive? They’ve been worriedsickabout you. We all have.”
“It’s not what you think,” he tried to explain, but she put her hand up to his face to stop him from talking, clearly not having it.
“We had a fuckingfuneralfor you, Theo. There’s a gravestone for you in Cedar Memorial Cemetery that says something like, ‘Dr. Theo Galanis, lost at sea but never lost in our hearts.’ Your mom was devastated.Isdevastated. They even moved away from Grand Rapids a few months ago because they said they don’t want to be in a place that reminds them of you.”
His stomach roiled.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” he said, leaning over and resting his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.
This was worse than he ever imagined. Of course he’d seen the newspaper article about himself that Louis left sitting in the bathroom, and he imagined his family would be concerned. But in his desperation for escape, he’d never let himself consider the full extent of that pain. They’d moved from their home? From the place his parents had immigrated to over thirty years ago? And a funeral? It pained him to picture his mom and dad dressed in all black, standing over a headstone with an empty grave underneath.
“Good!” she snapped. “You should be. If everyone knew you were over here galivanting around Greece and doing Lord knows what with those shady-ass men over at Knossos—”
Her words snapped him back to reality. Maurice and Louis. He took her hands in his to stop her from talking.
“Listen, we need to get going.”
“Going where?”
“To the US consulate,” he said, standing and attempting to pull her up by her hand. But Dani resisted.
“Theo, you need to tell me what’s going on.”
“We can talk about it at the consulate.”
She folded her arms and sneered at him. “No. I’m done with being left in the dark with you. I want you to tell me now. I want you to tell me to my face.”
He blew out his breath. God, she always was stubborn. “We don’t have time for that.”
She threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, this is unbelievable. You’ve been gone for a year with no communication whatsoever, but you don’t have five minutes to spare to tell me what the fuck is going on? Who are you and what did you do with Theo?”
“Look, Juicy—”
“Don’t call me that.”
The anger in her voice couldn’t be masked. Sure, the nickname was silly, but he’d called her that for years. Once the initial annoyance of the nickname had worn off back when they were teenagers, she hadn’t seemed to mind. It was so second nature that sometimes he wondered if she even remembered its origin. Not that he could ever forget Operation Juicy-Gate. Clearly, things had changed between them.
Hence why he up and ran away to Greece in the first place.
But they didn’t have time for explanations.
“Fine. Look, I get that you are mad. And confused. And probably a whole slew of other emotions right now, but I need you to trust me. When have I ever let you down?”
“Um, well, for starters, how about the last time you were home?”
The punch she’d given him in the arm a few moments earlier was no match for the figurative punch in the gut he felt now.
