The House Guests

by Emilie Richards

  Cassie felt tears on her cheeks, unusual and disconcerting. She took her napkin and dabbed them. “Mark was as at home in a sailboat as most people are in front of their television set.”

  “But he went out with a storm approaching.”

  “Do you think the accident was suicide?”

  “I have no idea. It might have been. Or a need to challenge God, the final showdown to see who would come out on top. But we’ll never know.”

  “You guessed I might have questions, didn’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  She took a deep, shaky breath. “I keep asking myself if I should pursue this, or just back off. He’s gone, and maybe I should concentrate on moving forward.”

  “It’s too late to make a difference for Mark, but maybe it’s not too late to make a difference for Cassie. You two were very different. You confronted your problems, and he kept his inside. You’re open about what you went through and how you’ve coped. I don’t see you wanting to bury this. I don’t see you able to.”

  “Larry, are you giving me your blessing?”

  He picked up his fork, as if to say, we’re done with this now. “My blessing’s not worth the paper it’s printed on. But I want you to know you have my support. Anytime you need me. I’ll be there.”

  20

  ALMOST TWO WEEKS LATER on Epiphany morning, Amber watched Will finish getting ready for the day. He was so excited that he’d been talking nearly nonstop since breakfast.

  “We’ll probably go to Yiayia’s house at some point.” As he spoke, he shrugged his shoulders into a navy blue hoodie that fit perfectly, but would be too short at the wrists in another month. He was almost as tall as his father at the same age, and Amber suspected Will would stop growing about the time he hit Billy’s height.

  Amber resisted the urge to reposition the hood so it rested flat against his back. She could just imagine the conversation that would follow if she tried. “I told Yiayia I’d stop by, too. Cassie’s working at the festival afterward—they call it the Glendi. And I don’t know when or if she’ll get off to make it to Yiayia’s.”

  Somebody rapped on the sitting room door, and Amber found Cassie with her fist raised to knock again. “Travis stopped by to see if we wanted to watch the boys dive for the cross with him. I’ll be tied up preparing food, but you might want company.”

  Cassie looked past Amber to Will. “You’re invited, too, but Savannah says you’re meeting Helia and Minh to go off on your own.”

  Amber still couldn’t believe how quickly things had changed between Savannah and Will. Since the afternoon he had tried to rescue her, they’d moved from a guarded truce to what was beginning to look like friendship. Will was especially glad to be included in Savannah’s activities if Minh was there, too. She saw the way her son looked at Savannah’s friend, and was pleased at his good taste.

  Amber liked both Minh and Helia. Helia, despite sarcastic comebacks and floundering attempts to reinvent herself, had proved she was good-hearted and above all smart enough to learn from her mistakes. Minh was kind and insightful, devoted to her family, while forging her own path in her adopted country. Maybe the girls had banded together because the high school viewed them as outsiders, but their relationship had deepened into friendship, and now it included her son.

  “Why don’t you find out what Travis is planning?” Cassie started back down the hall before Amber could reply.

  “Why don’t you, Mom?” Will favored her with a grin. “He’s from here. He’ll be able to explain the whole thing to you.”

  “I thought I might stay home and enjoy the silence.”

  “You can have silence anytime you want it. Epiphany is once a year.”

  Amber hadn’t taken her son to church often, at least partly because too many congregations, no matter the denomination, tried to involve newcomers in their activities. Neither had she wanted to form friendships or learn more about the God who had abandoned her when she was just sixteen.

  Reluctantly she slipped her feet into flip-flops so she could tell Travis to go ahead without her. “How do you know so much about Epiphany?”

  “Savannah told me. In the Orthodox church, Epiphany honors the day John baptized Jesus in the River Jordan. In other Christian churches, it’s the day the Wise Men visited the baby Jesus. So it’s a two for one.”

  “Well, I do know a bunch of young men are going to get wet today.”

  “It would be nice to be part of something like that. To know all your life that you had today to look forward to.”

  She wasn’t surprised by his wistful tone. “At least you can enjoy it this year and see the dive first hand,” she said, before she went in search of Travis.

  She found him standing by the sliding glass doors in the great room, looking over the lanai with Cassie. He was dressed casually in a button-down shirt, khakis and leather jacket. She really wasn’t sure what it was about Travis she found so attractive. The way his sandy hair waved back from a slight widow’s peak. The deep brown of his eyes and the darker brows arching over them. He had the long legs and trim physique of a runner, along with the relaxed movements of a man comfortable with his body. The whole package was appealing.

  “Travis just offered to share some of his plants with me,” Cassie said, as Amber joined them. “He’s going to give me cuttings and extras.”

  Travis pointed to a corner of the lanai. “If you want to go to the trouble, you can grow tomatoes, lettuce, anything you can pot. It looks like that area gets plenty of sun.”

  “Cherry tomatoes would be great,” Amber said. “Perfect for pasta sauce. I’d help with that.”

  Cassie looked at the clock. “The food at the Glendi sounds good. Roxanne signed me up to make salads. I’d better head out in a moment.”

  “Greek salad with potato salad?” Travis asked, and Cassie nodded. Often Greek salad was served on top of potato salad in Tarpon Springs.

  “It’s not served that way at the Kouzina.” Amber knew from experience, because she’d had to disappoint more than a few customers. “Yiayia’s determined to keep potato salad off our menu. She says it’s not really Greek.”

  “She has firm opinions,” Travis said.

  “I hope she doesn’t see me making salads. Warn me and I’ll hide under a table.” Cassie got her purse and keys and started toward the door. “You two better scoot if you want to see the procession. Amber, make sure to catch it, and Travis probably knows a good place to see the dive.”

  Amber started to protest until she realized she wanted to go. Who knew where she would be next year? Travis wasn’t acting like a man who expected more than someone to enjoy the day with.

  “Do I have a few minutes to change?” she asked him.

  “Take your time.”

  Will passed in the hallway with Savannah, and both teens waved goodbye as she closed the sitting room door. She took a cue from Travis and slipped on a casual denim skirt and peach-colored tank top with a darker peach sweater, ending with comfortable shoes.

  The others were gone by the time she joined him a few minutes later. “Perfect,” he said when he saw her. “It may be cool until later this afternoon. It’s a good thing the divers won’t be in the water long.”

  She locked up and followed him to his car, a small sedan that looked well broken in. “Did you ever dive?”

  “No, I did the whole Greek school thing, learned some of the dances, met pretty Greek girls...” He smiled and so did she. “But I was never involved enough. I was always more interested in watching and writing stories about the things I saw.” He opened the car door to usher her inside, an old-fashioned courtesy she hadn’t experienced in a long time.

  “Always the journalist?”

  “My life’s path. I took leave from a large paper last year when my father fell ill. My mother died when I was in high school so I wanted to be with him. I started
freelancing to make ends meet, and by the time he was gone, I realized how much more I liked living here. So here I am. Still. Probably permanently.”

  “I’m sorry about your father.”

  “He was a great guy. I wish you could have met him.” He didn’t follow up and ask about hers. Travis seemed to know that her past was off-limits. Instead he switched to a rundown of the day.

  “They’re expecting twenty thousand people or more. I thought we’d park a few blocks from the church in a friend’s driveway, and we can walk over to hear a little of the liturgy from outside. There’ll be a crowd around the cathedral. We should probably leave for Craig Park and the bayou before the service ends and the procession begins, but we can find a good spot to see the dive and watch the procession arrive. Sound good? There’s some walking involved.”

  It sounded like fun and she told him so.

  The walk only took a few minutes. The sun poured over them, but Amber was glad she’d added the sweater. As they neared the cathedral, the crowd grew. People chatted quietly, and some stood transfixed as chants from inside serenaded the crowd through loudspeakers.

  “St. Nicholas watched over and protected sailors,” Travis said as they got closer. “He’s the patron saint of Greece, so it made sense for the sponge divers and fishermen here to name their church for him.”

  She’d seen the cathedral, of course. The building of tan brick with dozens of stained glass windows was magnificent, centered in town and impossible to miss. “It’s outstanding, isn’t it?”

  “The architecture is a combination of Byzantine elements, like the mosaics inside and the domed rotunda at the center, with more modern elements. One honors the faith’s origins, the other honors its home here in America. The cross on the tower—” he pointed up “—is illuminated. You’ve probably seen it at night. It’s a beacon for the faithful.”

  “The cathedral must be beautiful inside.”

  “I’ll show it to you sometime.”

  She smiled, because a smile could mean anything and never be called a lie. They stood side by side listening to singing, to people chatting in both Greek and English in the crowd around them, and then prayers and readings from the cathedral in both, as well.

  “You went to Greek school. What are they saying?” she whispered.

  “The Greek the clerics use is an older form. Most people in this crowd couldn’t translate, even if they speak Greek at home. Tradition changes very little, which is important to the Orthodox religion.” He turned to see her better. “You probably grew up with something different.”

  She knew better than to answer in monosyllables or to be vague with a man who made his living digging for facts. She followed her own rule and told as much of the truth as she could. “My parents weren’t religious. But when I visited my grandparents, I attended a one-room church on a dirt road with a preacher who hauled hogs to market the rest of the week.”

  “Where was that?”

  She remembered how she’d changed the story she’d told Cassie and then had to cover up her mistake. “They lived in Kentucky. We did for a while, too.”

  “This must feel very different, then.”

  A moment later a line of young men wearing white T-shirts and blue swim trunks walked out a side door and through the crowd. They looked to be Will’s age, and they were all barefoot.

  “The divers,” Travis said.

  She could picture her son in this crowd of handsome young men. He wouldn’t dive just because it might be fun or because his friends were doing it. He would be as determined as these divers to follow tradition and do his best for something he believed in. That was the young man she’d raised, and she was sorry that she hadn’t, couldn’t have given Will the sense of continuity and belonging these barefoot young men probably assumed were normal.

  “Heard enough?” he asked after the divers had disappeared inside the cathedral.

  She nodded and he took her arm to guide her out of the crowd and down the road where police had set up roadblocks. He dropped his hand once they were able to move freely, and they walked side by side.

  “So tell me what’s going to happen,” she said.

  “The boys were chosen by the nine Orthodox churches in the area to dive. They’ll walk from the church to the bayou in a procession. They always walk barefoot.”

  “Why?”

  “Humility? Because Jesus was probably barefoot when he was baptized, and the event symbolizes Him going into the river that day? I’m not sure. The church tries to make certain the dive doesn’t become a sporting event, so the divers spend time learning about themselves and their religion.”

  “And then they dive?”

  “Not quickly. Wait and see. The boy who retrieves the cross is supposed to receive blessings for the next year.”

  “All boys, no girls?”

  “Fifty-five boys this year, but girls are allowed to dive in other places, including Greece.”

  “Yiayia’s convinced that Greece is holding steady on all traditions, and nothing’s different there than it was when she was a girl.”

  “When Yiayia was a girl? As traditional as she is, it goes further back than that for her, maybe as far back as when the Greeks worshipped Zeus.”

  Amber could sympathize. “Most of the time fear is the motivation for keeping change at bay, isn’t it? Anything new can feel dangerous. I’m not sure what Yiayia’s afraid of, except maybe becoming irrelevant. If she holds on to what she’s sure of, time will slow. She’ll remain young.”

  His eyes were warm with approval. “Handing over a life’s work to the next generation must be hard.”

  “She’s right about one thing. Every time we make a change, it does feel dangerous.” She thought about her own life.

  “Is that why change is hard for you?”

  She came to a stop. “I change all the time, Travis. Jobs. Towns. I’m always looking for something new.”

  “From my perspective? Staying put would be the biggest change of all. From what I know of you.” He held up his hands when she frowned. “And clearly I don’t know a lot. That probably came out of hope that you’re going to take a chance and hang around Tarpon Springs.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can show you the inside of St. Nicholas.” He smiled. “And get to know you better.”

  “I’ve never wanted anybody to know me better.”

  “Then that would be a big change, too, wouldn’t it? And frightening. But I promise it wouldn’t be dangerous.”

  She started walking again but tossed him a warning. “Danger, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.” She hoped he understood.

  After another block he pointed to an area around the bayou, which was more similar to a lake than the murky, sluggish water Amber associated with the word. Yiayia’s house wasn’t far away, but the platform where the archbishop would throw the cross wouldn’t be visible from her yard. Dinghies, tied together, formed a half circle in front of it.

  Travis led the way to a stretch of grass where people were already lounging in chairs or on blankets. “This is my favorite spot. Once the procession arrives, the shore will be crowded right up to the water. Let’s get as close as we can.”

  The ground was cold, but Amber’s skirt offered enough protection. They positioned themselves so they could see around the people just in front of them.

  “Are they in the water long?” she asked. “How long does it usually take them to find it?”

  “At least one time a second cross had to be tossed. Then a boy found the first one buried in mud after the second was claimed. So they were both declared winners.”

  She hoped that the year of two winners had been warmer than this one.

  They chatted until the procession appeared. Travis held out his hand and helped her up to see better. As they watched, children in traditional dress walked abreast, holdin
g hands, and other groups followed. She smiled at the young boys carrying a banner that read Future Divers, and then clapped along with others for a pretty teenage girl wearing a white smock over her dress, who was strolling side by side with a young man the same age.

  “She’s the dove bearer,” Travis said. “She was specially chosen from girls in the choir. Can you see the dove in her hands? She’ll release it during the ceremony. If I’m right, the man beside her is the diver who found the cross last year.”

  The present year’s divers followed, and then bearded clerics in gold cloaks, some studded with jewels, who were preceded by altar boys carrying lanterns and other items Travis described, one of which was an ornately carved box holding an icon of the baptism of Jesus. An older man wearing a high gold crown and a white-and-gold robe climbed up to the platform, followed by others.

  “The archbishop. He’ll bless the water with sprigs of basil that were consecrated inside the cathedral. Watch the boys swim out to the boats.” Travis pointed, and Amber watched as, evenly divided, the divers who had jumped into the water climbed on board and positioned themselves along the gunwales.

  More prayers followed, and at last the dove bearer released the dove into the air to applause from the crowd, which had grown exponentially as the procession arrived. The dove flew up into the sky and disappeared, glad, Amber thought, to finally be free. More prayers followed, and just when Amber wondered if they’d forgotten the dive, the Archbishop stepped forward and threw the cross into the water.

  A terrific splash followed as each boy dove in, hoping to be the lucky one.

  “Well, it’s a fast year,” Travis said after a few moments, pointing into the middle of what looked like a whirlpool. “That took less than a minute.”

  She could see one of the boys waving something in the air, and then they were all climbing a ladder out of the water to be wrapped in towels.