Page 22 of Love on the Rocks
“Don’t you meanprovocation?” I continued strumming the chorus.
“Yes, definitely provocation.” She gathered up the plates then turned on the heel of her burgundy boots and strutted off to the kitchen.
When I turned back to Panos, he was grinning at me like he’d just discovered my biggest secret. “What?” I demanded.
“I see how it is.”
“You don’t see anything,malaka. You refuse to wear your glasses.”
“I don’t need to wear glasses to see you’ve got it bad.” He laughed and I shoved his shoulder.
“Like hell, I do.”
“Hey, I don’t blame you. I’d marry her myself if she cooked like that for me every day.” He settled back in his chair and scratched at his auburn beard.
I rubbed a hand over his bald head. “You’d have to move out of your parents’ house first.”
“Fuck off!” He huffed.
“Niko!” Takis cried from the patio, pointing to an auburn-haired woman in a white T-shirt and worn jeans.
“Not another one!” mumbled Panos as I stood to meet them.
“Diana Russo?” Damn, I’d already forgotten our meeting. What was that blonde witch doing to my brain?
“Dr. Laskaris, nice to meet you.” She held out her hand.
“Please, call me Nikos.” She had a worn copy of my grandfather’s book in her other hand. I stared at it, amazed thatanyone outside our island had read it. Not many copies of the book existed—and this one was in bad shape. The edges were water stained, and the purple cover so worn I could only just make out the sketch of Orpheus sitting on the rocks playing his lyre for a dancing sea nymph.
“Come, sit. Would you like a drink?” I led her out to the terrace and felt Callie’s eyes on me, but my full attention was now on Diana Russo and the plastic bag she pulled out of her backpack. “I’m sorry to hear that your grandfather is no longer with us. I so wanted to meet him, especially since I found this.”
There were fragments of pottery in the bag, nothing but shards really, and caked with dirt. But they were the same shiny dark material as my grandfather’s cup. My heart pounded hard against my ribs. “Where did you find this?”
“Near the cove your grandfather writes about here.” She opened to a page with an illustration that I knew too well of three women swimming in water with a dolphin.
* * *
An hour later my head was still spinning. We were sitting on the terrace finishing our coffee and I held the plastic bag in my hand, studying the miraculous object Diana Russo had found.
As a boy the stories that my grandfather had told me of ancient sea pirates and sirens had captivated me. But as a rational adult, I’d stopped believing they were true. If I’d spent the last year translating my grandfather’s book, it wasn’t because I thought those old legends were accurate, but because they were a part of our culture. And it was my way of paying homage to his life’s work and appeasing the guilt I carried for having abandoned him for so many years while I was busy in med school.
Now, holding these fragments between my fingers and listening to Diana Russo’s hypothesis, I thrilled at the idea that he might have been right. And, more importantly, that his obscure historical tome had led to a discovery that would block The Greystone Group from moving forward with their resort.
Diana, it turns out, was getting her doctorate with Harvard, specializing in Etruscan archaeology. I couldn’t see the link to Greece, let alone Lyra, but as she described her research, it started to make sense. “Herodotus claimed that the Etruscans came from Lydia in Anatolia. And Etruscan writing was found on the island of Lemnos. They had a reputation for being sea pirates, you know.
“When I read the story about the three sisters and the dolphin, it was so similar to what had been discovered in Italy,” Diana explained, tucking a runaway strand of auburn hair behind her ears. “And then this photo . . . Look.” She showed me a photo with a chalice that looked eerily similar to my grandfather’s. “This was in an Etruscan burial site in Northern Italy.”
Diana had spent the past few days roaming around Lyra and had found her pottery fragments not far from the old olive grove. “I’ll take the fragments back to Athens tomorrow. My thesis advisor is there. Reginald Harris.” She said his name almost sheepishly.
“You mean, likeRaiders of the Lost Cities, Reginald Harris?” I’d grown up watching his shows on National Geographic and PBS. He was a legend.
“Yeah, that’s him. The Etruscans are his area of specialty.”
The door opened and Callie stepped outside, again with her phone in her hand, aiming it at the sky like a homing beacon and then stabbing at it. As she stretched her arms up, her golden hair tumbled from her bun, falling over her shoulders in wild waves. Even now, she distracted me. She turned my way and her eyesflicked to Diana and back to me. I couldn’t help but wink at her. If she only knew that I was discussing a way to put a stop to the construction of the hotel.
She rolled her eyes and went back inside.
“If you want, you can take my grandfather’s cup with you. I was always on him to get it authenticated.”
