Page 36 of Footprints in the Sand
When she got there, she perused the market stalls, assessing the chicken and lamb, the kebabs and vegetables, the hummus and tzatziki. She filled her plate and paid a whopping six euros for the entire thing—a steal, she thought—and then bought a glass of wine for less than three euros. Sitting at a table near the church, she ate slowly, decadently, and watched the tourists and Greek locals mill through the stalls, haggling for honey and gifts.
In her mind, she pretended that Jean-Paul was her husband, that they were here, as they always were, selling his art and making a living, together. He needed her, because of her social media expertise and her calming presence, and she needed him—why? Well, maybe that was a more difficult question to answer. After all, Eva had come to Greece to convince herself she didn’t need anyone. Least of all Finn.
That’s when she spotted someone in the crowd she recognized but couldn’t fully place.
It was a man, hunched over, slightly, with broad shoulders and a long nose and thick, curly black hair. He milled through the edge of the crowd, then paused at a stall to whisper into the ears of a few of the men selling things. A few of the men looked cross at him and shook their heads, but a few others passed him something from under the table, something Eva couldn’t see.
There was something sinister about the entire operation.
But how did she know that guy? Her head began to pound, and she drank the rest of her wine and traced his path through the rest of the crowd until he disappeared through a small wooden door on the opposite side of the square. She trashed her plate and found herself following him, sneaking along the edge of the crowd and bursting into the passageway that served as the ancient street between buildings. The buildings had been built in such a way as to block out the intense sunlight and, maybe in ancient times, provide defense against pirates. Jean-Paul hadsuggested that there had been plenty of pirates in the Aegean, hundreds of years ago.
Eva wondered if pirates still existed. She suspected that evil lurked in every corner of the world.
How did she know this man?
Eva followed him for about five minutes, noting how strange and sinister he was, how he ducked in and out of little shops, his black eyes furtive. Fear bubbled in her stomach. She wanted to follow him long enough to place him. Was he someone she’d met on Paros? Someone she’d seen on the ferry? Someone she’d met in Jean-Paul’s workshop?
Right before she abandoned the mission, she managed to snap a half-blurry photograph of the guy, coming out of a little bodega just down the road from the warehouse. Maybe memory of who he was would come to her soon. Maybe she’d put the pieces together.
Or maybe she was just a superstitious and frightened little American, too far from home.
Chapter Seventeen
Martha’s Vineyard - July 2025
Acouple of days after the Fourth of July party at Roland and Estelle’s, Dimitra still felt like she was floating. All these hours later, she could still feel Harry’s hand on her shoulder, his gentle whispers as he asked her if she needed another drink or something to eat. She could still hear the Colemans doting on the puppy dog Cash, still hear how joyful they all were to welcome this strange man from South Carolina, a stranger she’d “picked up at the docks,” as he referred to it, as though he, like Cash, were just a stray dog who needed a home. When the fireworks had exploded over the Nantucket Sound, Harry had held her from beyond and kissed her neck in a way that sent shock waves down her spine.
In the kitchen of Estelle’s place, Meghan had cornered her and asked, “What about William Cottrill? Oriana said you two had something going.”
What could Dimitra have said? That she didn’t believe true love should be something that involved money. That she’dalready had a marriage of money complications and wasn’t sure she wanted to drop herself into William Cottrill’s world of prestige and millions upon millions of dollars, of needing to impress people with all they had and all they could possibly own. Besides, William Cottrill had made no grand suggestions about what they were to one another. He was the type of person who wanted to “own” his artists, she thought. If she wanted him to keep buying, she had to give him the illusion that buying her art meant buying her, sort of. But she could only take that so far.
Now, Dimitra was back in the studio, and, as the English expression went, she was cooking with gas, getting experimental with how her paint curled and wove across the canvas, how she used the flat knives against the softly-drying paint to destroy what she’d made and give it more texture. Just today, Dimitra had been painting for nearly seven hours, forgetting to eat, to drink water. She hadn’t even looked at her phone. Mostly what she saw when she picked it up was Eva’s social media work, messages coming in fast as ever, messages that Dimitra knew Eva would take care of when she could. It was a relief to know Eva was halfway around the world, sleeping in Dimitra’s “new” bed, and managing the complications of her newly online life.
Dimitra wondered if she could ever do half as much for Eva.
Suddenly, there was a knock on the door.
So surprised, Dimitra nearly leaped out of her skin, then hurried down the hall to open it. On the stoop was Harry and Cash, golden and beautiful in the sunlight, both gazing at her as though they’d never seen anyone half as wonderful. Dimitra suddenly couldn’t remember the last time Kostos had made her feel that way. Early on in their marriage, maybe. Before the money problems had begun.
There had been so many money problems. So many fights.
“Harry!” she said. “I must look like a mess right now. I’m sorry.”
Harry palmed the back of his neck and smiled. “You look beautiful.”
Dimitra snorted and ushered him in. “I didn’t know you were coming by.”
“I called a few times,” Harry said. “And then I decided to just come over. It’s rude, isn’t it? I didn’t think this through.”
“It’s the Greek way,” Dimitra assured him. “I like the feeling that people can drop in on one another any time. I like this community-minded approach.”
Harry laughed nervously and followed her into the kitchen, where she poured them each glasses of chilled lemonade and filled a big bowl of ice water for Cash. It was piping-hot outside, and she guessed they got little relief on the sailboat.
When she turned to hand Harry a glass, she was filled with the memory of the night of the Fourth of July, when she’d toyed with spending the night with him on the sailboat but had, instead, slept over at Estelle and Roland’s place. She hadn’t wanted to jump into things too quickly. She’d seen how sorrowful he was at her “no” and had wanted to take away that confusion, that heartache.But I’m a woman on my way out the door already, she’d wanted to say. People were capable of hurting one another in all sorts of ways. She should know.
“I wanted to thank you for a beautiful Fourth of July,” Harry said, still looking nervous, shifting his weight.
Dimitra gestured for him to sit down. “It was so funny how it all happened,” she said nervously. “I was glad to have you there. I’m a little overwhelmed by Eva’s family. I’m sure she’s just as overwhelmed by mine.”
