Page 53 of Willow in the Wind

Finally, she pressed the green button and pulled the phone to her ear. “James.” Her voice was soft and focused.

“Stella.”

Stella’s heart pumped. She thought she might faint. “I didn’t think you would call me back.”

“I wasn’t sure I would, either.”

Stella tried to picture him somewhere—in an office building, in a library, in a music shop. “I’m still in the city.”

“I hoped you were,” James said.

Stella blinked back tears. “Did you want to meet up?” She didn’t want to assume anything.

“I would like that very much,” James said. “But I don’t think we should meet in public.”

“Right.” Stella laughed. “I’ve never been famous before. I don’t know if I like it.”

“Me neither,” James said.

Stella tilted her head. She’d always envisioned that James would become a famous musician one day. He loved attention—or hehadloved attention. He could talk to anyone.

Maybe that had changed, too.

“I would invite you to my place, but…” James trailed off.

“Let’s meet at my hotel,” Stella said.

I wouldn’t want him to come to my house in Nantucket, either.It was too intimate, the past and present coming together.

“Sounds great.”

Stella told him which hotel it was, and they agreed on seven that evening. That was four hours from now. Stella’s heart pounded with fear.

Chapter Twenty

Greece - Late September 2001

The dark clouds rolling in on the southern horizon were ominous. The little sailboatStellawas no match for them; neither was the real-life Stella who’d called the sailboat home for two months. She touched James’ shoulder and gave him a meek and frightened smile. “Maybe we should stay in a hotel tonight?”

They hadn’t bothered with a hotel in over two weeks. They’d showered in free outdoor showers at beaches; they’d cooked their own food or bought cheap dinners at tavernas; they’d grown their hair long and swum in the sea and given themselves over to the hardships and the glory of being totally in nature.

But Stella had dreams about their sailboat sinking. A storm like this terrified her.

They sailed the boat to a dock off the coast of Crete. It was hard to believe they were already at the southernmost part of the Greek islands—a massive place with its own dialect and way of living that felt separate from the rest of Greece. Still, that blue and white flag flapped overhead as they gathered their thingsfrom the sailboat and hurried to a hotel off a side street near the docks. The hotelier greeted them with a smile when James spoke to him immediately in Greek. He led them to what he called “the honeymoon suite” but only charged them twelve dollars a night. Stella hoped they could stay two or three nights. She craved dry land. She craved a real bed.

Stella showered and sat at the edge of the bed to pull a brush through her hair. James was writing a song on his guitar, his brow furrowed. They hadn’t said anything to one another in more than two hours. Stella bit her tongue to keep herself from asking him,What are we going to do when the weather gets worse? Where are we going to go? Why don’t we have a plan?

Summer didn’t last forever. Not even in Greece.

But Stella’s love for James had grown deeper, so much so that it often shocked her. They were hardly ever apart. He was like an extension of her.

Stella still hadn’t mentioned to James that her parents had expected her at home many weeks ago. She’d sent them postcards to keep them in the loop and let them know she was still alive. But she knew she needed to call them. It was what a good, kind-hearted daughter would do.

Stella left James in the hotel room to call her mother from the payphone outside the hotel. The clouds were spitting rain, but she hid beneath an overhang and pressed the phone to her ear.

It was strange to call America right now. Two weeks ago, there had been a terrorist attack in New York City, and the country was in turmoil. James and Stella had read about it in every newspaper they could find and talked about it at length with many Grecians. It felt as though the entire world was in shock.

“Hello?” Her mother’s voice sounded tinny.

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