Page 25 of Footprints in the Sand
Immediately, Jean-Paul’s face transformed. “You’re living in Dimitra’s house?” He sat up straighter.
“Yes?” Eva noticed a swift change in mood. “Why?”
Jean-Paul rubbed his cheek nervously. “Dimitra is living in your house? In America?”
“Yes.” Eva couldn’t fathom what his expression meant, but it was frightening her.
“It’s just funny,” Jean-Paul said. “We were just talking about corporate greed, about how greed is going to ruin us all. And now suddenly we’re talking about Dimitra, who was married to one of the greediest men I’ve ever known.”
Eva’s eyes widened. “You mean Kostos?”
Jean-Paul looked uncomfortable, like he didn’t want to talk about this. Eva crossed her arms.
“I don’t know if Dimitra ever knew the real him,” Jean-Paul went on darkly.
“How is that possible?” Eva asked. “Weren’t they married for like twenty years?” She’d heard this from Rachelle but didn’t know it for sure.
“Just because you’re married, doesn’t mean you ever really know each other,” Jean-Paul said.
Eva’s mouth was dry. She couldn’t fathom what Jean-Paul meant.
But before she could beg him for more details, Aphrodite’s little beat-up car appeared, and she was honking the horn excitedly, smiling from behind the steering wheel. When she parked, she called out, “Eva! Jean-Paul! Party on the beach! Let’s go!”
But Jean-Paul didn’t want to go to any party. “I’m a little bit of a loner,” Jean-Paul said as Eva gathered her things and thanked him for the workshop.
Aphrodite tried twice more to get him to come, but Jean-Paul wouldn’t leave his workshop, nor his cats and dogs. As Eva and Aphrodite sped away, dust burst out from behind the wheels. Aphrodite threw her head back in laughter.
“He’s a trip, isn’t he?” Aphrodite asked.
“He’s unlike anyone I’ve ever met,” Eva agreed, rubbing her chest. And then she asked, “Aphrodite, what was Dimitra’s husband, Kostos, like?”
Aphrodite’s face relaxed slightly. “Kostos was the best. Everyone loved him. He was the funniest person in every room, always there to help you when you needed him. He was a brilliant cook and a wonderful dancer. He was the best thing to ever happen to Dimitra. When he passed away…” She trailed off. “He took so much of Dimitra’s heart with him. It was a tragedy.”
Eva was quiet, studying the Aegean out the window. As Aphrodite waxed poetic about Kostos, she couldn’t help but think something about her description was overdone.
Why did she think that Aphrodite was lying and that Jean-Paul was telling the truth?
Chapter Thirteen
Manhattan - June 2025
It’d been more than a week since Estelle’s reading, more than a week and a half since Dimitra left Greece, and Dimitra found herself in the front seat of Oriana’s SUV, slamming to a stop on Fifth Avenue as Oriana and Meghan squabbled about something Dimitra couldn’t follow. (She knew the dynamic of sisterhood and knew that it was often difficult to understand if you were on the outside. She and Athena were certainly incomprehensible to most of their peers.)
Dimitra hadn’t been to Manhattan in many years, not since she’d been an entirely different person during the early days of her marriage to Kostos, but she thought the smells were the same: grease and hot concrete and hot dog trucks, exhaust and too many people and so much life. After island life, it was a wild rush.
Oriana pulled into the hotel they’d decided on—The Wallace—and handed the keys over to a sharply dressed valet. Dimitra wasn’t accustomed to such luxury. She got out and opened theback of the SUV, where ten of her paintings had been stored gently and wrapped in cloth. She didn’t want to leave them in the SUV by themselves. Oriana understood immediately and asked three bellhops to take the paintings carefully to their suites upstairs.
The fact that Oriana had immediately booked them suites rather than regular hotel rooms still boggled Dimitra’s mind. But Oriana had explained many times that it was because she assumed she and Dimitra would sell most, if not all, of the paintings that weekend. “Let’s splurge a little bit to get in the mood for our big win,” Oriana said.
Dimitra, who’d never really had money before, couldn’t fathom it. But she knew better than to protest.Give yourself over to it, she thought.
Upstairs, Oriana, Meghan, and Dimitra parted ways for a little while, saying they’d meet in an hour to go shopping, grab a drink, and prepare for the party tonight.
The suite had a mind-boggling view of Manhattan and Central Park, one that stopped Dimitra in her tracks. For a moment, she had a strange urge to call Kostos and tell him what she was seeing.You’ll never believe it,she imagined saying. But Kostos was gone, lost in the Aegean Sea. Her heart cracked.
Instead, she called her sister. Athena answered on the second ring.
“There you are. My long-lost sister,” Athena said, sounding grumpy.
