Page 8 of Footprints in the Sand
“Then pour me a glass of wine,” Athena ordered. “I want to say a final goodbye to my sister. Imagine me, having an entire summer in Aliki without you! I’ll be miserable.”
They went to the rooftop with a bottle of wine and two glasses and gazed at the fading light of the gorgeous eighty-degree day. Athena was talking about her son Nico, a thirty-year-old fisherman who was going through yet another breakup.
“Would it kill him to settle down and give me a few grandchildren?” Athena asked. “Would it kill him to do what I did? Does he respect me so little?”
Dimitra bristled. “Nico has always wanted to go his own way. He needs to get off this island. He needs to see something other than everything he’s ever known. And being a fisherman? That’s the first step in staying right where you are, waiting for something to happen.”
Athena gave her a dark look. She obviously didn’t want her son to go away. “Don’t you dare tell him that,” she said.
Dimitra promised she wouldn’t and smiled. She and her sister always got under one another’s skin, but this sort of commitment to one another, the commitment to annoy one another and to love one another and to watch out for one another, was a rare thing.
“So you’re going to pick up Eva at the ferry the day after tomorrow?” Dimitra recited.
“I’m going to pick up the strange American girl staying in your house for some reason the day after tomorrow, yes,” Athena said. “And we’re going to invite her to the family party, just like you said we had to.”
“I want her to feel welcomed,” Dimitra said.
“You know how we Greeks are. We can’t help but be welcoming,” Athena said, as though she was exhausted by the very prospect of it.
Not long after that, their mother and father dropped by spontaneously with another bottle of wine and an eagerness to see their Dimitra one final time before she dropped off the face of the earth. Like Athena, Anna was agitated about the arrangement and had to hold herself back from asking too many questions.
But it was Dimitra’s father who said, “Our Dimitra has always been the explorer of the family. You’re like a woman in the old mythology, darling. You go into worlds you don’t know anything about, and you battle the great demons we don’t know anything about.” He sipped his wine, his eyes glassy with drink. “We need to celebrate your bravery and your beauty. And we will wait for your return, so you can tell us everything you’ve learned about the great universe beyond our island.”
Dimitra’s heart swelled with love for her father. Because he supported her, Athena and Anna begrudgingly accepted Dimitra’s “adventurous” spirit and made a toast.
But Dimitra couldn’t tell any of them the truth about what was really going on in her mind: in going to Martha’s Vineyard, she didn’t feel adventurous in the slightest. She felt like a woman on the brink of going insane, who was doing everything in her effort to keep herself in check.
Chapter Five
Martha’s Vineyard - June 2025
Getting Finn out of the house wasn’t as difficult as Eva had expected it to be. After her return to Martha’s Vineyard from The Jessabelle House, where she’d met Rachelle and found herself launched into the most insane plan of her life, a plan of “switching lives,” she’d gone with Theo back to his apartment, where she’d made a little nest for herself on his sofa and pondered what to do next. Theo was irate about Finn’s “thievery,” which was what Finn was calling it, and he thought Eva should call the cops. “He didn’t really do anything illegal,” she had to say over and over again. But Theo’s commitment to her and his sudden hatred for her boyfriend warmed her heart. She had people on her side.
She was terrified to tell her parents, especially her mother. She didn’t want to break her mom’s heart, to show her just how far away from a “wedding and grandchildren” life Eva really was.
From Theo’s sofa on the night after her return, she finally got up the nerve to call Finn. He answered on the third ring, hisvoice shivery and weak. “Eva,” he said, instead of hello. “Are you all right?”
Eva gritted her teeth to keep from sobbing. At the sound of his voice, a million memories raced through her mind’s eye: picnics and sailing adventures and soft kisses and coffee in the morning, rainy-day drives and movie theaters and trips to Italy. Why had he done this to her, to them? What had he thought he wanted to prove?
“I wanted to let you know that I need you out of the house as soon as possible,” Eva explained firmly, because she didn’t want to give him an inch.
“I’m already applying for apartments,” he said. “I know it’s your name on the lease. And my family isn’t here on the island anymore, anyway. It makes sense that you stay.”
Eva was off the sofa and gazing out the window. She could picture Finn at their place, wearing a pair of ratty pajamas, maybe drinking a sad little beer. A part of her wanted to throw the whole Greek trip out the window, hurry home, and burrow herself against him.
But she pushed herself to ask, “Why did you do it?”
Finn stifled a sob. “I’m asking myself that every single day.”
Eva wasn’t sure what to say.
“I’ll be out by the beginning of June,” Finn said.
For the following week, Eva stayed at Theo’s place, still pretending to her parents and friends that she and Finn were right as rain. At dinner with their mother one night, Meghan said it was unfortunate that Finn couldn’t join them, and Eva had to bite her tongue to keep from telling her mother the truth.
“We love him to pieces, you know?” Meghan said to Eva then, her fork heavy with fish and potato. “We don’t want you to rush into anything, of course, but we want to think about venues and money and paying the down payments. We want to make sure everything’s arranged perfectly for the big day. Maybe there’s away to hint to him that you need this soon? You don’t want to get married after thirty, do you?”
Theo swooped in after that, changing the subject to their mother’s best friend’s bookstore and a reading by Estelle Coleman that was scheduled for the following week.
