Finding You

by Jo Watson

  “Jane, can I ask you something?”

  I nodded.

  “What if he doesn’t believe you? What if the private investigator can’t find him and you never get to meet him? What if he doesn’t want to…” He stopped. I could hear that he was choosing his words very carefully.

  “I’m not naive. I know it’s a possibility, but I also know that I have to try. And if he doesn’t, or I can’t find him, at least I’ve gotten to know him in a way that six days ago I didn’t.”

  “You really believe that?” he asked.

  “Yes.” I nodded and inhaled deeply. I breathed it all in. I breathed in all of life’s possibilities. Its beauty and its joys. I held on to Dimitri and closed my eyes. He smelled good and felt warm and I’d never felt so loved and wanted before.

  He kissed my forehead, “Jane, I need to say something to you…”

  “I know,” I whispered, on the verge of giving myself over to sleep, “I think I’m in love with you, too.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  I woke up the next morning to a soft light flooding the room and a very vague recollection of Dimitri carrying me to the bedroom at some point. But the bed next to me was empty and for a moment I wondered if last night had been real. Had Dimitri and I really made love and confessed love to each other? I saw a distinctly blondish brown hair on the pillow next to me and smiled. It had been real. I glanced around the room for him, but he wasn’t there.

  I got up, totally naked, wrapped the sheet around me, and strolled out to the veranda. The sun was barely out. The light was soft and hazy, and in the distance the sea looked quiet with the slightest bit of mist hanging over it. And there he was, sitting on the wall looking at the sea. He looked unreal.

  “Dimitri?” I called out. He turned around and smiled at me and my heart swelled. He walked over and kissed me on the forehead.

  “Ready for your last stop on this adventure?” he asked with a small smile. It seemed slightly sad, and I wondered if he was also wondering about what was going to happen to us when this adventure came to an end.

  We were speeding across the sea again. It looked even more spectacular than it had yesterday. Although I was mainly staring at Dimitri, not the view. It wasn’t long before we came to a small dock on yet another beautiful-looking island. Its only occupants were a few old-looking fishing boats tied to the pier. But before docking, Dimitri slowed the boat and came and sat next to me. He didn’t look at me for the longest time, and a feeling rose in my stomach. This time it wasn’t giddy butterflies, but a sense of dread and foreboding.

  He turned slowly, and when I saw the look emblazoned across his face, I froze. The light in his eyes looked like it had been switched off and a cloud of something serious and dark hung over him. It made me shiver. Overwhelming nerves chewed and gnawed at me. This could only mean one thing.

  “Just say it.” My voice quivered. In my heart, I knew exactly what he was going to say.

  Dimitri continued to look at me. He seemed dumbstruck.

  “I’ll say it then.” I took a big breath and steadied myself. “The private investigator phoned and he says there’s no way of getting hold of my father? That’s what you were trying to warn me about last night.” I felt the sting of salty tears forming in my eyes. “I’ll never meet him.”

  A cold, scratchy feeling clawed its way through my body. I knew I had said that it didn’t really matter—that I’d gotten to know him already. But meeting him would have been the cherry on top to this trip. It was, after all, the reason I was here.

  “Dimitri?” I asked again. He wasn’t speaking, and the silence and absence of words was making the whole thing even worse. “Talk to me,” I begged with a slight hysteria in my voice.

  “Jane…” I’d never heard him say my name with such sadness. I didn’t like it. “There was no investigator.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “No one was looking for your father.”

  “What?” I shrieked as my skin prickled. “But he’s been messaging you, you spoke to him…”

  He shook his head. “No. I never spoke to one.”

  “But you did. You were on the phone the other morning and you were talking to him. I heard you.”

  “I lied. I’m sorry, it wasn’t him.”

  My mind was swimming and spinning and the thoughts were all so messy that I didn’t understand what he was saying. “I don’t get this, at all. At the airport, you said you spoke to an investigator, you told him everything, and he said he could find my father and that’s why I stayed. He was going to look for him while I was here… I don’t understand.”

  He paused for the longest time. It felt like the pause went on forever and that there was never going to be an end to this torturous moment. It felt like every last bit of breath was being sucked out of my body, and my legs began to feel weak underneath me. Luckily I was sitting.

  Dimitri pulled something out of his pocket and handed it over. It was a few of those old photos that had been hanging on his wall. “Turn one over,” he said.

  I turned one over and looked. Some Greek had been scribbled on the back. A name maybe? “I can’t read this. What is this?” I demanded. My voice was shrill and high and bordering on a yell. I looked at the back of the other ones.

  “Xexos Dimitri Constantinides.” He paused. “This is the Dimitri you came looking for.”

  “What?” I turned the picture back around and gazed at it. The photo was of the pool in the rocks that we had just been in yesterday. “I don’t… this makes no sense… I…?” I looked at the next photo: the sunset over Oia. The next was of the open blue seas and the shipwreck we had visited. I kept flipping and more and more familiar images come into focus: winery, ruins, small streets covered in bougainvillea… I had been to all these places. “What is going on?” I was almost in tears now.

  “Your father brought us together.”

  I shook my head. “Stop speaking in Greek fucking philosophical crap. Tell me what is going on. Facts. Explanations. What?”

  “The old woman in our village, the woman that used to tell me all the amazing stories that made me want to travel? She is your grandmother. The stories she told me were about your father.”

  My mouth fell open. I turned one of the pictures over in my hands again and ran my fingertips over his name; it had been written so long ago. “Are you sure? I mean, how can you know. He might not be… it’s too much of a coincidence, it’s—”

  “Fate. Not a coincidence. Fate.” He tried to reach out and touch me but I pulled away. “That day when you were at my house and you told me you were looking for your father, that he was sailing the seas and you told me your mother’s name, I… I wasn’t certain at first. I remember the old woman telling me he had these different-colored eyes. I was young, I thought that he was a pirate, maybe he wore an eye patch, I didn’t really understand properly. And then I went to the photos and turned them over and saw his middle name. And then I saw this…”

  He handed me another photo, and my heart crashed against my chest. Adrenaline surged in my veins, making me feel drunk. A bright-red boat was docked in the water, and my mother’s name was written across it. PHOEBE. The dock looked strangely like this one. I looked up. Our boat had floated closer now and I could make out more details. And then I saw it.

  And when I did, an electric charge shot through my body. For a moment it buzzed and screamed in my ears and burned my skin and evaporated all the moisture in my mouth. I couldn’t breathe. I gasped a few times, trying to get air into my lungs. Through the loud internal buzz I vaguely heard Dimitri say, “Wait. I have to tell you something.” But I didn’t wait. I just flung myself off the boat without even thinking about it.

  “Jane, wait. I need to tell you…” His voice faded out completely as I swam as fast as I could for the shore and the boat. Eventually the water got shallower and I half ran, half swam there. The force of the water felt like nothing and I moved through it as if I was running in a vacuum. I climbed onto the p
ier and ran for the boat, and when I go to it, I came to a complete halt and stared.

  PHOEBE.

  There it was in orange cursive on the side of the red boat. I felt slightly woozy from the frenzied swim, but I had no control over myself anymore. I was acting on complete instinct again and my mind was simply floating along, observing everything that was happening.

  “Whose boat is this?” I heard myself scream at the top of my lungs. “Whose boat is this?” The scream grew louder and more hysterical until someone rushed up to me. An old fisherman appeared out of nowhere. He brought his face close to mine and as he looked at me, he gasped as if he had seen a ghost. Without saying a word he grabbed me by the arm and started dragging me across the pier.

  “Wait! Jane!” Dimitri yelled and I heard a splash, as he must have dived into the water, too.

  I wasn’t going to wait. I couldn’t. Instead I went with this man who was now dragging me up some stairs. They wound their way up and onto the small paved streets of a village. He pulled me down a small street of tightly packed houses and finally came to stop at a small blue door.

  He knocked frantically and called out in Greek. The door finally swung open and I looked straight into a mirror. A young girl stared right back at me with eyes identical to my own. There was a small moment, a pause when the two of us just looked at each other, and then without warning she threw her arms around me and pulled me into a hug.

  She held on to me tightly, and it was only after a few seconds that I realized she was crying. Her body was heaving and shaking in my arms and the strangest feeling came over me. I rubbed her back in a comforting manner and she held on to me even tighter. I knew this girl. Somewhere inside I knew her. Her smell and touch and the sound of her cries were all so familiar to me and I felt an instant connection to her. A deep one that swelled up inside me and made me hug her even tighter. She finally pulled away and looked right at me.

  “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry… I’m so, so sorry…” She continued to repeat the words as if she were a record, stuck in a perpetual loop.

  She called out in Greek and suddenly another, older woman was at the door. Her mother, I presumed. She looked at me and the color drained from her face. She held my gaze and then the tears started streaming down her face, too. This wasn’t exactly the welcome I had expected; I had expected it to be emotional, but this seemed over the top. I turned and looked at the fisherman who’d brought me here; the look on his face was also one of devastation. He looked up at me and shook his head, something flashing in his eyes that I did not recognize.

  My eyes drifted back to the two women in the doorway. They had been joined by more people now. Each of them looked consumed by sadness.

  “Come in,” the older woman finally said in a thick accent. This whole moment was so surreal. As I stepped inside the house I heard Dimitri’s voice and looked back at him. He looked up at me and mouthed something; it looked like “sorry” but I couldn’t be sure. I turned back around and disappeared into the house.

  The older woman guided me toward the couch. Everyone else had left the room, as if they had been told to. The woman lowered herself on the couch next to me, and I could see that her hands were shaking.

  “What is your name?” she asked.

  “Jane,” I whispered. Our words tumbled out into the eerie silence that was now filling the room.

  “I have imagined this moment so many times before,” she said softly. “He has been waiting for you to return for so many years now. He always knew that you would find him one day.”

  My heart skipped a beat. “Dimitri?”

  The woman nodded slowly and looked me straight in my eyes. “You have his eyes.” She smiled up at me. It was the saddest smile I had ever seen, and I wondered what was behind it.

  “Where is he now?” I asked.

  As I said those words, her eyes began to tear up and…

  I just knew. I knew.

  It was written in the solemn tearstained lines of her face. I could feel it in the heaviness that had descended on the room and the pain that was searing my chest.

  “He’s dead?” I asked.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  I looked around the room. The girl with the same eyes as mine was peering at me through a doorway. Her face was ashen and her breath quick. I continued to scan the room, and there, on a mantel, was a picture of him.

  I recognized him immediately. It wasn’t just the eyes, it was everything. I knew it was him like I knew that I lived and breathed. The photo was set in a beautiful gold frame, surrounded by flowers and a solitary burning candle. I stood up and walked over to it. My feet did not touch the floor.

  I touched the photo and ran my hands over the flowers. They were fresh and I could still smell their scent. I gazed at his photo and let my father’s eyes look directly into me for the first time in my entire life.

  “When… When…” My legs wobbled beneath me as I looked from the woman to the girl with the eyes.

  “Nine days ago,” she said.

  I’m not really sure what happened next, but within seconds the world around me lost focus; it shook and it buzzed and suddenly I could see all the atoms that made everything around me; then they pulled apart and the world got fuzzier still until nothing around me existed anymore. And then everything went black.

  It felt like hours had passed. But it was only seconds. The blackness had lasted for a tiny moment as my legs collapsed and my body went limp. I felt two hands come up and catch me under my arms and more hands help me onto the couch. Someone gently placed my head between my knees and someone else stroked my back in large, comforting circles.

  The girl with my eyes came over and gave me a glass of Coke. I took it and looked up at her. She was so beautiful. Her eyes gave her a quality of otherworldliness; her thick dark hair accentuated it even more, and her unusual features blended into one of the most exotically stunning faces I had ever seen. She smiled at me.

  “What’s your name?” I managed.

  “Alexandra.” She was soft spoken and couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old.

  “That’s a beautiful name.”

  I looked over at the woman, clearly her mother, who was sitting next to me again.

  “Kalli,” she said softly.

  Alexandra came and sat on the couch opposite me and the three of us stayed like that in absolute silence. We all looked at one another, each taking turns. It was as if some kind of invisible strings bound us together in some way. I took small sips of the Coke, and with each sip the strange swirling in my head dissipated.

  “How, how…” I finally asked.

  “Heart attack,” Kalli said quietly, wringing her hands together. Her grief was palpable. It was a fresh open wound that hadn’t even been given the chance to start healing yet. There were bags under her eyes, and she looked a little gaunt, as if she had not been eating or sleeping.

  “It was very sudden. He didn’t suffer,” she qualified, as if she had been holding on to that tiny piece of information like a security blanket that somehow made her feel better.

  The shock was so great that I wasn’t ready to process the injustice of it. The sheer cosmic injustice that was this moment. Nine days ago. If I had been here nine days ago I would have had the chance…

  I ran through the days in my head. Nine days ago had been that Wednesday morning when I’d woken up and everything around me had been wrong and felt different. That Wednesday morning was what had led me to this point. But how was that even possible? Was it possible that my father and I had had some strange, intangible connection that I hadn’t even realized?

  “And his mother, uh… my grandmother?” I asked.

  Kalli just shook her head. “Would you like to see his grave?” she asked. Alexandra stood up with her and she held her hand out, inviting me as if I was one of the family. There were so many questions that I wanted to ask them, but this was not the time.

  I gave a faint nod and too
k her hand. We linked arms and she gave me the faintest of smiles as we exited the house. As we walked up the street, people stuck their heads out of the windows and many of them came out to speak to us. One woman rushed over to me and gave me a single rose. I stopped and looked around. It was as if this whole place knew who I was. How?

  “He always told the story of the daughter he never knew who would one day find him. In a way, everyone here has been waiting for you, Jane.” The tears began to well up in my eyes again as I glanced across at everyone’s faces.

  We walked all the way up a hill and into a small cemetery at the end of the road. It was located high up and looked down over the sea below. It was easy to see which gravestone was his: The fresh flowers had overtaken it. I walked up to the grave and stared down at it.

  Was this real? Was this even happening? But when a hard gust of wind rushed past me and pulled at my hair and clothes, I knew it was real.

  A sense of finality made me want to cry out loudly and scream in anger and rage. I had reached the end of my journey and there had been no big, shiny pot of gold. Instead there was just this one small, gray headstone. Tears rolled down my cheeks.

  A pain in my hand made me flinch: I had pricked my thumb on the rose I was holding. The blood pooled on the surface of my finger and I wiped it away. I bent down and laid the single rose across his grave. I wanted to open my mouth and say something, but there were no words to adequately describe this moment.

  I trailed my fingers across the cold stone as I set the rose on it, then I stood up again and started walking away. I didn’t know where I was walking to. I had nowhere left to go; there were no more roads and paths to walk to find the answers I was looking for. Instead they had all come to a dead end right here in a tiny cemetery on a hill.

  I was aware of the footsteps walking behind me. I walked back through the streets, past the houses I had seen. Some of the people were still outside waiting and watching as if this was some kind of a tragic show. It felt like a tragic comedy, that’s for sure. I continued to walk in silence; the only noises were the trees swaying in the wind, the birds chirping, and our footsteps on the paving. I was walking in a kind of ghostly, zombielike trance.