“Earthquakes?” Skye repeated faintly, and Andreas turned to her.
“Do not worry. It is rare to feel more than a little shaking. As soon as you realize it is happening, it will have ended.”
As if in reply, a robust gust of wind buffeted the house, slamming back the shutters and making the windows rattle. Skye was becoming slowly accustomed to the constant sound of it, sometimes a whisper, occasionally a roar. Though Folegandros may have been a quiet island, it was not a silent one.
“Where do you live?” she asked as they moved from the small kitchen toward the stairs. It was a bold question, though given how well acquainted he was with her own living arrangements, it felt fair, and Andreas did not seem to mind.
“Karavostasis,” he said. “I prefer to be near the water, away from so much wind.”
“That’s where the main port is,” Skye said, and he nodded.
“I do not have a garden. Instead, I have a beach.”
“And have you always lived there?”
“No,” he said, “not always. I grew up in Athens and lived there until I was twenty-one, so I have been here now for fourteen years, although I travel often for work, over to the other islands or back to the mainland.”
Skye did the math. He was thirty-five—a year older than she was.
“Why Folegandros?” she asked as they reached the landing.
A fleeting smile passed across his face.
“Mygiagiá—that is the Greek word for ‘grandmother’—she was born here. When I was a young boy, she would tell me stories about the island, describe it to me. As soon as I was old enough to travel by myself, I came here to see it, and after that, it became…How do I say this?” He put a hand to his chest. “It became a part of me, and I a part of it.”
“And your grandmother?” she pressed as they went into the room she’d been sleeping in, with its desultory air bed and open suitcase. “Does she live here, too?”
Andreas appeared momentarily stricken.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “She has not been back to the island since she was very young, not once.”
Skye wanted to ask more, but Andreas had become distracted. He knelt to examine the split wooden boards, applying pressure that was answered with creaks and groans.
“Rotten,” he said, confirming what she had been expecting to hear. “We will need to rip all these out and begin again.”
It was the same in a second, smaller upstairs room, though Andreas surprised her when they climbed the ladder to the attic.
“The floor here is OK,” he said, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “We can lay boards across without having to replace anything. There are perhaps some places on the roof that will require attention, but we can do that from the outside.”
Skye stepped cautiously around to where she’d discovered theKengraving and beckoned for him to join her.
“Do you know anything about the family who used to live here?” she asked.
Andreas steadied himself on the raised boards.
“No,” he said, “but there may be a way to find out. In Greece, it is usual for the church to hold such records. If you want, I can make a visit to the one here, in Ano Meria, and speak to the priest?”
Skye could tell from his rapt expression that he was intrigued, drawn in, as she was, by the lure of a mystery.
“There is also a Greek national archive,” he went on. “But the office is on the mainland, in Athens.”
Leaving the island was not an option. Skye closed her eyes briefly as disappointment flared.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to trouble anyone, least of all you. Maybe the question of who this ‘K’ person is, or was, is one mystery that isn’t meant to be solved.”
Andreas did not look convinced.
“Somebody somewhere will know the truth,” he said. “All we must do is locate the right person.”
