“Are they following us?” Flora whispered.
“No,” said Lee. There were no headlights behind them. Not yet. “I won’t leave tonight,” said Lee. Neither Flora nor Isabelle responded. The driver headed toward Plaka, the streets of Athens blurring past: neon pharmacy crosses, Orthodox churches with golden domes, walls covered in ancient and modern graffiti. Flora’s breathing slowed. The pills were still in Lee’s purse, but whenDepression said,They’re better with you gone,Lee knew that this was wrong.
You hurt everyone you touch,said Depression.
Yet there was Lee—Auntie Lee—safe, alight, moving within the luminous currents of a city she had come to love. Isabelle rested her head on Lee’s shoulder, heavy and warm. Lee found Flora’s hand in the dark. Flora opened her damp palm, and Lee held on.
Epilogue
ONE YEAR LATER
Ikaria Island, Greece
Lee stood on the stoneterrace of Paros’s home, watching her family in the courtyard below. Charlotte was adjusting Paros’s linen shirt, laughing at something he’d whispered as he tended the dying embers of the Easter fire. Flora sat on a woven mat with her laptop, but she kept looking up, checking that everyone was still there.
(They were all still there.)
Isabelle leaned against an ancient olive tree, no phone in sight. (Anastasia spent every Easter on the Boosalises’ private island; she and Isabelle had flown to Greece from Brooklyn, where they shared an apartment in a doorman building in Bushwick.) Cord and Giovanni lounged on a wooden bench, both of them drowsy from the warmth of the Mediterranean sun. And Regan—Regan was sketching something in a small notebook, her movements assured, capturing the Byzantine church’s bell tower in the distance.
It is, in a way, a miracle they are all here,Lee thought, and not just because uniting the Perkins family for Easter on Ikaria Island seemed insane, expensive, and possibly disastrous. Every one ofthem had almost vanished—Charlotte into her lonely Triscuit dinners, Cord into work and booze, Regan into a fantasy that almost swallowed her whole. Isabelle had been shrinking toward an image of starved perfection; Flora tried her best to disappear.
Lee had been the closest to gone. All those pills saved up, her plans to exit somewhere over the Atlantic. Now she slipped her feet from her sandals to feel warm stone underneath her. Her medication made her hands shake slightly. She felt duller, less sparkly, than when she was manic. But this was the price of being here, breathing in the scents of herbs and sea salt.
Lee’s phone buzzed in her pocket—surely it was Francine, pestering her about the awards campaign for her star turn inMad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know. Lee silenced it without looking. Whatever Lee decided about returning to Los Angeles, it could wait.
Lee had messaged Markos to let him know she was coming to Greece for Easter. They had stayed in touch after Lee couldn’t stop worrying about Yassus—she’d asked Markos to check on him. Markos had not only found the big dog—he had brought Yassus home and adopted him. When Markos asked if Lee wanted to visit Yassus and have a home-cooked dinner before she caught her flight back to Los Angeles, Lee said yes.
Below her, Charlotte caught Lee’s eye and raised her glass in a toast. Paros had his arm around her mother’s shoulders, and Charlotte looked older and fragile but calmer somehow—maybe she was finally (at eighty-three years old) herself. Lee descended the stone steps. She pulled up a chair next to Flora, who leaned against her. “Did you take your—” said Lee.
“Yes,” said Flora. “Did you take your…”
“Yes,” said Lee. They took the same prescriptions in different doses.
“Γει?σου,” Paros said, raising his glass.
“Yassou,” they echoed. Lee had lost her drink, and when Regan held her glass out, smiling, Lee took a sip of her sister’s wine. Growing quiet, they gazed at the darkening sky.
“I have an announcement,” said Giovanni, breaking the silence. Cord stood up next to Gio.
“Mark your calendars, everyone,” said Cord. Lee could barely recognize this gleeful, tanned version of her brother.
“Next summer…” said Giovanni.
“On the beautifulFlying Starsailing ship…” interjected Paros.
“They’re getting married!” cried Charlotte, unable to cede the spotlight.
“Finally,” said Cord. “And we hope you’ll all join us, and Gio’s family, too. It’s going to be the wedding of the summer.”
“Of thecentury,honey!” said Giovanni.
“Oh, Cord,” said Lee, moving to embrace her brother, “you deserve this.”
“I know,” he answered, whispering, “So do you, Lee Lee.”
“Hug me, too,” said Giovanni. Lee’s nieces and sister piled on. Charlotte stood aloof, but smiled. In the midst of her dysfunctional family, Lee closed her eyes, allowing happiness…and with it, the terror of having happiness taken away.
When Lee came back to herself, opening her eyes, Regan was standing before her. They’d barely spoken in the past year. Lee had told herself they were just busy. She mourned knowing her sister all the same. Regan was holding something—a small collage, maybe twelve inches square. “I made this for you,” Regan said, not meeting Lee’s eyes.
