Page 106 of The Hundred Loves of Juliet
Hours later, I collapse on a bench at one of the island’s many scenic lookout points. The winding walkway along the dark cliff is mostly empty now. The shops and restaurants have been closed for a while, and the tourists are all back at their hotels.
I have found no evidence of Helene. The curse drapes itself over my shoulders like a boa constrictor, heavy, slippery, cunning.
Where did you go, Helene? It’s not like you to just disappear.
Other than that one morning in Amsterdam when she snuck out to get a pregnancy test.
And how she left her ex-husband, filing for divorce and leaving him the same day.
The night sky seems to close in around me.
What if she left me?
I rack my brain for anything I did wrong lately. Ihavebeen a little stifling in protecting her and the baby. For instance, I asked the waitress tonight four times if there was anything raw or unpasteurized in our meal. But Helene has tolerated my attentiveness with her usual kindness, understanding that I need to feel like I have some control, some way to keep her safe, if I’m to stay sane. The closest she comes to pushing back on my protectiveness is when she teases me, like when she nicknamed me Mama Hen Montague for all my fussing.
And there really hasn’t been anything else. Helene and I are complements to each other. She can’t cook, but she enjoys washing dishes, which I loathe. She needs absolute quiet when she’s writing; I am taciturn and utterly comfortable in silence. The centuries have worn me down into a fatalist, whereas Helene balances me out by being an unrelenting optimist. We have always been like this, Juliet and I. Yin and yang.
My bones ache again with the knowledge that something’s wrong. That tonight didn’t turn out the way Helene intended.
I kneel in the dirt at the cliff’s edge, squeeze my eyes closed, and begin to pray for her and the baby’s safety, and for our reunion. I pray to Hera, goddess of women, family, and childbirth. To Aphrodite, goddess of love. To Hygeia for health, Soteria for safety, and to every other Greek god and goddess I can recall.
These are not my gods. But desperate times have a way of making even the most rational people falter.
And so I pray, focusing especially on the most important prayer: Please don’t let this be the curse.
HELENE
The flight from Santorini toAthens passed in a blink as I fretted over what had happened. Now, in Athens for a layover, I continue to stew in my own thoughts. The airport is crowded in that way where people don’t make eye contact, in an attempt to carve out mental space for themselves where physical space doesn’t exist. I’m grateful because it means no one looks at the sad pregnant woman huddled in a pleather seat by herself, sweating through the pretty sundress she wore to a dinner from which she was forced to go AWOL.
How did I end up here? I found the courage to leave Merrick, and then fate led me to Alaska, to the soulmate I’ve dreamed of since I was in eighth grade.
And then fate lets Merrick drag me back to where I started? I bury my face in my hands.
The woman next to me vacates her seat, and a man in a grimy tank top drops into it, immediately stretching out his legs and bumping into both me and the child on his left. He reeks of stale cigarette smoke and who knows how long without a shower, which is gross in and of itself but made worse in the middle of summer. I try to bear it, because I don’t want to give up my seat. But then he unwraps an oily fish sandwich and I can’t stay anymore. I flee before I throw up for the second time in a matter of hours.
I want to borrow someone’s cell and call Sebastien. But leave it to me to fall for the only man in the modern world without a cellphone. There’s no phone on the boat either, and no one at the harbor office at this hour of night. I have no way to reach him. Sebastien must be out of his mind by now, too, worrying about what happened to me.
Without a place to sit, I pace along the corridor. The flight from Santorini to Athens was a short puddle jumper, but now I have a little time before my red-eye from Athens to Los Angeles leaves.
As I walk past the gates, a departures board flashes with theflights that are leaving soon. With nothing else to do, I read it, as if somehow I could get on a different plane that would take all my problems away.
Lisbon: departing in fifty-five minutes.
Morocco: departing in forty minutes.
Beijing: boarding to begin soon.
Geneva: now boarding.
My hand flies to my mouth.Geneva.That’s where the Julius A. Weiskopf Group is based. Maybe they could help us. If they had the resources to dispatch a patrol to Sebastien’s house all the way in the Alaskan boonies, and if he’s trusted them for so long, they might be able to stop Merrick and Aaron.
But would they listen to me? I’m not technically a client, even though they’ve been helping with my divorce case. They’re doing that for Sebastien.
Still, I have to try. I can’t just give up and let Merrick destroy Sebastien and ruin this new life I’ve worked so hard to build. I have time…Merrick won’t know anything’s gone wrong until I don’t show up in L.A.
The flight to Geneva departs in thirty minutes. I sprint to the customer service booth and jitter impatiently while the two people in line in front of me are taken care of.
Finally, with fifteen minutes left before departure and the plane’s door probably closing any moment now, it’s my turn. I practically slam into the counter.
