Page 10 of Footprints in the Sand
Eva took a deep breath and closed her eyes as another wave of nausea took over her.
Eva had waited till the very last minute to tell her mother about her plan to leave Martha’s Vineyard and go to Greece for the summer. Her mother hadn’t let up on her nagging since. Theo said she hadn’t stopped crying.
Of course, Eva had been very sparse in detailing what had happened between her and Finn. She didn’t want her motherto know quite how much money had been lost. The staggering amount was embarrassing. It made Eva worry about her own future, so she couldn’t imagine how her mother would feel.
Eva wanted to tell her mother that all this nagging was part of the reason she needed to get away. She didn’t want to spend her summer talking about Finn and her money situation and her breakup. She wanted to go somewhere she could pretend she was somebody else for a little while. Was that too much to ask?
Just then, the boat surged to the right and cast her off her chair. She bruised her knee in the fall and felt more sorrowful than ever. Nobody looked at her when she fell, and nobody came to her aid. Why did it feel like everyone else on this boat was immune to the turbulence of the high seas?
It was three in the afternoon, which meant eight in the morning on Martha’s Vineyard. Theo usually woke up around then, she was pretty sure, so she called him and got a groggy and slightly grumpy version of her brother.
“Did you make it?” he asked.
“I’m on the ferry, and I’m sick to my stomach,” she said. “And Mom won’t stop messaging me.”
“Turn off your phone,” Theo grunted.
Eva filled her lungs. “Can you make sure Mom actually goes to get Dimitra from the ferry? I’m worried that she’ll pretend this isn’t happening and forget her.”
“What time does she get in today?” Theo asked.
“Around eleven, I think,” Eva said. She was anxious for Dimitra to meet her mother, anxious for her mother to meet Dimitra, and anxious for Dimitra to enter into the life she’d abandoned. What would Dimitra make of it? Would Dimitra want to run back to Greece?
“Oh, I wanted to tell you,” Theo said. “Marty ran into Finn the other day. In Boston.”
Eva’s heart shattered. It felt incredible that Finn was out in Boston, living a normal life, going to the grocery store, going on runs, cooking food, and working, just as he had been doing alongside her in Martha’s Vineyard for the past eight-plus years. But what did she want him to be doing? Mourning her? Staying inside? Crying?
“Oh,” Eva managed to say.
“Apparently, he looked terrible,” Theo said.
Eva wasn’t sure if that was what she wanted to hear either. “Okay. I hope he’s taking care of himself.”
“But you look great, Eva,” Theo said, which was what he’d been telling her for a few days now. “You’re going to have a crazy Greek fling this summer. You’re going to live in the way you haven’t in years and years because you’ve been strapped to that creep.”
Finn? A creep? She wasn’t sure she liked the description. She wasn’t sure she liked to think of herself as someone who’d dated a creep for eight years.
Yet she knew Theo was trying to help.
“Make sure Dimitra’s welcomed,” she urged. “She’s being so kind to me.”
“All right, all right,” Theo said. “Get there safe. Love you.”
“Love you.”
When they got off the phone, Eva continued to surge with seasickness and a surprise jolt of fear. What if Finn was already dating someone else in Boston? What if the only way to get over his guilt was to distract himself with a fresh love?
She was a fool.
The island of Paros appeared on the glinting waters, a beautiful dark green and brown island dotted with gorgeous white square homes with blue shutters. It looked like something out of a dream. Along with the other tourists, Eva hurried down to retrieve her suitcase and head into the sunlight, which feltfar brighter and more penetrating than what they had back in Massachusetts. Sweat bubbled on her upper lip. As she paraded down the ramp with her suitcase, she scanned the crowd, looking for some sign of Dimitra’s sister, Athena. But the crowd near the port was made almost exclusively of tourists, hurrying around an old windmill like chickens with their heads cut off. Eva veered off to the side, hovering over her suitcase and searching through her phone for Athena’s contact.
It was then a busted-up white car pulled up and honked its horn. The window rolled down to reveal a Greek woman in her fifties with penetrating and dark eyes. She spoke English with a very harsh accent. “You are Eva?”
Eva wondered what gave her away. Did she look that clueless?
“Hi!” Eva said, giving her best American smile. “Athena?”
Athena got out of the car and opened the trunk so Eva could drop her suitcase into it. Athena watched her ruefully, in a way that suggested that she was about as keen on this situation as Eva’s mother was.
