“I love that one,” said Kiko, reemerging with a platter of warm bread and cucumber-and-cheese salad. “What a wise person.”
“Yes,” said Cord. “He was. But tortured, as well.”
Kiko looked at Cord. “So I’ve read,” he said. “He had depression. A disease we don’t talk about here.”
“We don’t talk about it much, either,” said Lee. She looked pointedly at Charlotte.
“I’m not depressed!” said Charlotte.
“No one said you were,” said Lee.
“Then why are you looking at me?” said Charlotte, feeling annoyed. Leave it to her children to ruin a sunny picnic! Before Lee could answer, she said, “I always say,Look on the bright side.It’s a much better way to live,” she said. “Don’t you think, Kiko?”
“Not everyone can be bright, Mom,” said Lee.
“I don’t have any idea what you’re going on about,” said Charlotte, though of course she probably knew more about depression than any of them. After Winston’s suicide, she’d read many, many books—trying to understand, seeking a way to forgive herself. The books said it was a disease, that Charlotte couldn’t have saved Winston no matter what she’d done. Charlotte wanted to believe what she read. But she had never stopped blaming herself.
“Let’s take the food to the garden?” said Kiko.
“Yes, let’s!” cried Charlotte. The patio was shaded, somehow cool in the middle of the day. Kiko set a table with linen napkins and put out chilled bottles of pink Gellewza wine. “It tastes like strawberries,” he said. “Come, Charlotte,” he added, handing her a long-stemmed glass.
She sipped. It was sweet and just the right amount of rancid. She tried to focus on the taste of the wine, to yank her brain from thoughts of Winston, how his face had looked almost peaceful in death, how terror had caused Lee’s limbs to tremble for days. How, when Charlotte found her in the bathroom, Lee’s lips were pulled back in a silent scream, exposing both rows of her even teeth. She’d been fourteen. The muscles in her swimmer’s arms had bulged as she held his body off the ground, but no strength could change what Winston had done.
Kiko brought pastries, rabbit stew, beef with olives, and fresh stonefish seared with herbs and served with lemon. They feasted, surrounded by Aleppo pine trees.
At one point, Charlotte watched as Lee emerged from Kiko’s tiny bathroom, drying her hands. Lee looked so young as she gazed around at the garden. She looked like the girl she’d been a million years ago, a happy toddler who danced ahead of Charlotte when they went for walks in Forsyth Park.
Charlotte felt a wave of concern and love for her firstborn. When Kiko came to Lee’s side, pointing out a bird called a “wall creeper,” Charlotte was surprised to see Lee step away from him politely but firmly.
Despite Lee’s newly demure persona (or perhaps because of it), Kiko seemed utterly smitten. Lee did look lovely without all her makeup and hairspray, her curves hidden beneath a gauche cruise-ship T-shirt.
Regan, on the other hand, acted as if she were a graduate student prepping for an exam. She asked a lot of questions about the various occupiers of Malta, and Kiko answered animatedly. Charlotte’s head spun: Malta had been occupied by the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Vandals, the Goths, Romans redux, the Arabs, the Normans…at this point in history, Charlotte spaced out, but when she started listening again, Kiko was talking about the Knights of Malta. “The Turks forced them out of Rhodes, and so they came here,” he said.
“Rhodes!” cried Charlotte. “We were just there.” It gave her immense pleasure to utter this statement. “Ah, Rhodes,” she added, a wistful aside she hoped to repeat frequently.
“I love Rhodes,” said Kiko. “Did you visit the Palace of the Grand Master?”
“No…” admitted Charlotte.
“The Acropolis of Lindos?”
“Um…” said Charlotte.
“Did you go to the beach?” asked Kiko, smiling.
“It was an awesome beach,” said Lee.
Kiko laughed. “You’ll have to return,” he said. “Sometimes you need to stand in the footsteps of history, and sometimes, a day at the beach.”
Regan was holding a pencil and a little notebook she must have bought somewhere. “And after the Knights of Malta?” she queried.
“Apologies. Okay. Then France was in charge,” said Kiko, “and then Great Britain, until 1964, when we became independent. So you see, we’re a very important place.”
“Amazing,” said Regan.
“We have three hundred and sixty churches,” said Kiko. “How about it? Would you like to see one? St. John’s Co-Cathedral has two Caravaggio paintings! A quick trip, and then I return you to the port?”
Charlotte picked up her glass, but thought of Father Thomas. How could she tell him she’d chosen pink wine over a famous cathedral? He had made her promise to invite him over for lunch and show him every one of her pictures. “You could make a slide show,” he’d suggested, his large hands gesturing. “I bet I could find one of those slide-wheel projectors in the basement. We could make European-themed hors d’oeuvres!”
