Page 59 of Willow in the Wind

“Molly ripped into me. She told me Nancy didn’t have anything. Her visa was running out, and she was going to have to go back to America and face her family. I knew how cruel Nancy’s family was. I started imagining her life in the States, raising our child with her abusive father nearby. It shook me up.

“Nancy and I hadn’t been together very long. We dated maybe three or four months that spring before we parted ways. Mum died in June—a car accident—and after that, I took off and never thought about Nancy or anyone, not really, not when we were sailing around Greece and falling in love with each other.”

Stella’s head throbbed.Falling in love. Was it a fantasy?

“But after that phone call, I went walking through the rain. I thought about my own mother and father. I thought about how much I’d loved my mother and how much I’d hated my father for making my mother miserable. I thought about what kind of father I wanted to be. An absent one? It seemed too cruel.

“That’s when I found you at that taverna, got out of my mind drunk, and chatted with that older gentleman.”

“Angelos,” Stella reminded him.

“Angelos. That’s right. We must have talked for an hour about my mother and about Nancy and about my unborn child,” James said. “I knew what I had to do, but I also knew I was in love with you.” He wet his lips. “I could have wandered through Greece with you forever. But real life was waiting for me in London. And I went back.”

Stella’s heart was in a million pieces. The enormity of James’s story hung in the air between them.

Pregnant. His ex was pregnant.

“And that’s your daughter,” Stella said in a small voice.

“Taylor,” James said. “Yes.”

Stella remembered the TikTok video she’d watched of a beautiful young woman named Taylor Atkinson. The young woman who’d “destroyed” her life by taking James away.

But was it destroyed?

“I wish you would have told me,” Stella said.

“I was too confused. Too weak,” James said. “And I didn’t want you to hate me more than you already did.” He sighed. “But I owed you an explanation.”

“I never hated you,” Stella said. “I never could have hated you. I loved you too much.”

James showed her his crooked smile. Stella waited for her heart to melt. But it didn’t.

“What happened to you after Crete?” James asked. “The book doesn’t go that far.”

Stella sipped her wine and remembered her mother at the airport, her father’s familiar smell of autumn in Nantucket.

“I came home,” Stella said. “My family was angry with me but so glad to see me. Slowly, I built a life. I had a family.”

James nodded. “A beautiful life.”

“It has been,” Stella agreed.It’s getting more complicated by the day.

“I think my love for you changed me,” James said. “I’ve been thinking that ever since I read the book.”

“My love for you changed me, too,” Stella agreed. “I was a completely different person when I went home.”

James reached out to take Stella’s hand. Stella placed it in his palm and closed her eyes. His skin was warm. She could almost imagine they were in their twenties again, holding hands as they slept late on the sea.

“Can I ask you a question?”

Stella opened her eyes to look at James. “Okay?”

She wondered if he was going to ask,Do you think we could ever try again?OrAre you still in love with me?OrWhy did you write this book?

Instead, James asked, “What’s the story with your ex-husband, Matt?”

Stella’s chest felt flush. Immediately, Matt’s face came into her mind’s eye. “He’s my ex-husband. That’s it.” But even as she said it, she felt how untrue it was.

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