“Michalis?” Katerina’s blood turned to stone. “Your cousin Michalis, my brother-in-law, is going with you?”
“Nai.”
“But he is a— How can he? I don’t understand.”
“He is not so different from me,” Stefanos said. “He wants to play his part in this war, as his father did twenty-five years before him.”
“Leni will be broken by this,” Katerina said. “She will blame you.”
“I know,” he said simply. “And I am sorry for it.”
“I cannot leave her, not when Baba and Mama are away. But after they return, I will come to find you. I will fight alongside you, and—”
Her next words were taken by his kiss, and for a moment, as she melted away on the tide of sensation, Katerina believed that she had won, that he would stay, that they would remain together, here on Folegandros, and be happy.
Stefanos released her, his lips coming to rest against hers.
“I will write to you,” he said. “Tell you what is happening.”
“When will you come back?”
“As soon as I can.”
“I will worry,” she told him. “Even as I sleep.”
He kissed her again, over and over, not only her lips but her cheeks and throat, the soft dip behind each ear, the closed lids of her eyes as she fought to hold back the tears.
“Do not worry,” he said. “Fears are like oil on the water of your dreams,katsikáki—they will always rise to the top if you let them.”
“What should I do to stop them?” she asked, clinging to him.
“Do as the people who came to this cave did when they wrote their names on its walls. Do as we did when we added our own.”
There was no need to ask him what he meant because Katerina already knew the answer.
All she needed to do was believe.
Thirteen
If Skye had to choose one word to sum up her first week on Folegandros, it wouldn’t have been something idyllic, such aspeacefulorsun-soaked, but ratherchaotic. Despite the gentle pulse ticking over at the heart of the island, life for its newest residents was anything but serene. When she opened her eyes each morning, the patched air bed lumpy beneath her, Skye was met not with birdsong and the purring breeze but growling engines, a whirring cement mixer, and the thud of Andreas’s heavy fist against her front door.
His was the first face she saw, he the first person she spoke to, and more often than not, the last, too.Kaliméra(good morning) andkalinýchta(good night) were among the first entries on her slowly growing list of Greek words.
As promised, Andreas had made her house a priority, and in the days since their drive out to Chora, he had fitted steel support beams in the attic and stripped one bedroom of rotten floorboards. For the past two nights, Skye had bunked down in the main living area, but that, too, was about to become off-limits. The downstairsfloors had to be leveled before the terra-cotta tiles could be laid—a process that involved spreading fresh cement.
“It will take around forty-eight hours to dry,” he told her. They had stepped outside to escape the noise of Stamatis’s hammering, though Skye could still hear it, low and monotonous.
“Does that mean I won’t be able to get in or out?” she asked. Andreas rubbed his chin in the way he always did when turning a problem over in his mind.
“We can set planks across from the front door to the stairs,” he said. “But it is better if you stay somewhere else for a few nights. There are some nice hotels in Chora, and—”
“I don’t want to stay in a hotel,” she said. Hotels meant credit cards and names kept on file. “I’ll just be very careful not to step on the floor.”
“It is your decision, of course.” He paused, his jaw shifting as if working against him. There was plaster dust in his hair, a crease deepening between his brows. “Although”—she’d known there would be a caveat—“if there is any damage, we will need to begin again.”
Just then, Joy’s halo of copper curls appeared around the side of Andreas’s truck, framing a smile that widened when she caught sight of them.
“G’day,” she said, long red skirt swirling as she made her way over. “How are we doing today, folks?”
