Page 11 of Footprints in the Sand
“My sister, she is almost to your home,” Athena said, gesturing for Eva to open the passenger door and get in.
“I know. My mother and brother are going to meet her.”
“And what do they think about your house swap?” Athena asked.
“I think they’re surprised by it,” Eva said. “My brother thinks it’s great.”
“I do not think we are ever meant to be far from our families and homes,” Athena stated.
Eva’s stomach churned with a mix of leftover seasickness and fear of this formidable woman. What had she gotten herself into?
The drive from Parikia to Aliki was about twenty minutes. Athena didn’t seem keen on talking, which gave Eva plenty oftime to gaze out the window and try to figure out where she’d ended up. Greek drivers seemed especially reckless, whipping around them at a million miles an hour, but Athena wasn’t fazed.
“Here is Aliki,” Athen said as they entered the little village, population no more than three hundred. “It is where my father’s family is from, going back generations. Where you are staying used to belong to our grandmother when she was a girl. It is a very important house in our family.”
Eva was suddenly even more frightened. What if she messed up the house in some way? She had no allegiance to the house where Dimitra was staying in Martha’s Vineyard. It was only a rental filled with bad memories. But this was an ancestral Greek home!
But when Athena parked in front of a quaint two-bedroom white stucco house on the hill, Eva forced herself to breathe easier. The place wasn’t pretentious in the least. It was instead homey and quaint, with beautiful furnishings and pieces of very cool art on the walls. Athena explained that Dimitra had made all the art herself.
“I think she thinks she will be inspired in your Martha’s Vineyard,” Athena said as she snapped on the lights and showed her around. “She has not wanted to make very much art since her husband passed away. It has been very difficult for her.”
Eva nodded. Rachelle had mentioned that Dimitra lost her husband, which felt like a much more staggering loss than Eva’s own. Finn was still in the world. He was just the worst, sort of. (Of course, 80 percent of Eva’s heart still ached for him.)
The bedroom Eva was staying in, Athena explained, was the guest bedroom, and it was also where Dimitra had been sleeping since Kostos’s death. It was shaded and cool, which provided a welcome relief from the unrelenting sun. Eva left her suitcase here and clasped her hands as Athena walked her through what else she needed to know: the better restaurants in the village,where the grocery store was, and who to call if something bad happened.
“And we want to invite you tonight to a family party,” Athena said, almost begrudgingly. “Dimitra wants you to meet everyone so you can feel at home.”
Eva nearly groaned with fatigue. A family party? She wanted to go about as much as Athena wanted her to, which wasn’t very much. But Athena had to ask, and Eva had to say yes. It was the game they were forced to play.
“What time should I come?” Eva asked.
“We start at nine,” Athena said. “In Greece, we eat late and stay out later. It’s just our way.” Athena wrote down the address for the family party and said she had to go prepare. It looked like she was glad to be free of Eva, a complication she hadn’t asked for.
After Athena left, Eva collapsed on the guest bed and curled into a ball, listening to her heart pound. She’d been far away from home before, but Finn had always been with her. She felt like a fish out of water. She knew that was the point.
Chapter Seven
Martha’s Vineyard - June 2025
The woman who picked Dimitra up from the ferry spoke a mile a minute. Frantic, her eyes glossy with tears that she kept blinking away, Meghan was talking about her daughter’s spontaneous decision to leave Martha’s Vineyard and “run off to Greece.” She said it like it was the craziest thing anyone had ever done, as though Dimitra herself hadn’t just done the same thing, but opposite.
“I mean, I can’t fathom why she thought this was a good idea. No offense,” Meghan said, looking so innocent and flustered that Dimitra didn’t know what to say. “I miss her so much, you know? I mean”—Meghan sniffed—“a couple of years ago, I stopped talking to her and her brother, my son Theo, and it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever gone through. It was also one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done. It wasn’t their fault, what happened. It was just like, they wanted to protect me, and I couldn’t handle that. I don’t know if I can ever fully forgivemyself for what I did to them. I’m their mother. I’m supposed to forgive them for everything. You know?”
It felt a little bit like Dimitra had come into Meghan’s life at a difficult time, and that Meghan didn’t know how to handle it beyond saying everything on her mind. To Dimitra, it was endearing and slightly confusing.Were all Americans this way?she wondered.
Dimitra also wondered why Meghan had stopped talking to her children, but she knew better than to ask it outright. Meghan seemed like a loose cannon. She wanted to tread with care.
But, maybe because she couldn’t stop talking or was too frightened of the silence that might exist after the fact, Meghan told her without Dimitra needing to ask that she’d discovered her husband had once, years ago, been engaged to someone she’d never even heard of before, and that that woman had turned out to be missing ever since their engagement had fallen through.
“My mind went all over the place. At first, I was afraid that my husband was someone I didn’t know, you know? My wonderful husband, Hugo, who’s only ever been so kind and loving to me,” Meghan said.
She went on to explain that Eva and Theo had known about this other woman. They’d discovered love letters from her addressed to their father, but they’d never told Meghan about it. It was a scandal. But the story had turned out to be nothing more than two brokenhearted people trying to move on.
“Listen to me, carrying on like this,” Meghan said. “How was your flight? Are you feeling okay?”
So immersed in Meghan’s story, it felt strange to be given the floor to speak. Dimitra admitted she was groggy. “I couldn’t sleep very well on the plane, and the hotel bed last night was so soft,” she said with a laugh. “I’m used to our Greek beds. They’re stiff as boards. I think it’s healthier, but what do I know?”
What do I know?It was an English expression that Dimitra had learned on a television show. She hated how thick her Greek accent sounded at times and hoped that her time in the United States would even it out a little.
