by Kate Hewitt
“No.” Jealousy picked at her, little pinpricks of doubt. Why did Julie care so much about what Simon felt? Did she have more loyalty to Simon than to her, especially now she was three thousand kilometers away? “The whole point of coming here was to get some distance, remember?”
“I remember.” Julie sighed again. “I think he misses you, Ava.”
If only. Just the thought that Simon might miss her caused her heart to give a stupid little lurch, even as that jealousy kept picking at her. Julie seemed very interested in Simon’s feelings—what few he had.
“I’ll believe it when I hear it from him.”
“You know Simon. You won’t. He doesn’t do that kind of thing.” Emoting. It had been a joke between them all, back at university. Stoic Simon. They used to laugh about it, tease him when they watched a sappy film. Is that a tear, Si? Are your eyes suspiciously bright? Surely not.
She would have loved him to shed even one tear a year ago. To show he cared just a little, that he felt a tenth or even a hundredth of what she was feeling as they’d buried their tiny daughter.
“I know how Simon is, Julie. Trust me. We’ve been married for twelve years.” Too late she realized she should have used the past tense, although she supposed they were still technically married now. A separation wasn’t a divorce, even if it had felt just as final.
“I’m sorry,” Julie said. “I’m obviously handling this all wrong. I just hate seeing Simon so down.”
Ava felt those little pinpricks of doubt sharpen into claws. So Julie hated seeing Simon down? What about her? She’d been overwhelmed with grief and sorrow for nearly a year. Julie had been supportive—of course she had. As supportive, Ava supposed, as she had let Julie be. Some grief was too deep and intimate to share with just anyone, even your best friend. The person she’d wanted to share it with had been Simon, and he hadn’t been interested.
“If he’s really missing me, he can call,” Ava said shortly. And not just leave a bloody eight-second message.
“Why don’t you call him?”
Ava said nothing. She didn’t think Julie would understand how ringing first would feel like giving in. Showing her weakness. She’d showed enough weakness to Simon over the last year, with her tears and migraines and antidepressants. With her begging and pleading, desperate for him to give her something back. All of it had seemed only to annoy him; she wasn’t about to show him any more.
“OK, I get the message,” Julie said with a sigh. “I’ll leave it alone.”
“Thank you.”
“Have you seen any gorgeous Greek men? Maybe I should come over for a holiday.”
“Not really, but one lives in hope,” Ava joked weakly. She thought, bizarrely, of Andreas. She wouldn’t classify him as gorgeous, exactly, but there was certainly something attractive about his curly hair and dark, molten eyes. She remembered how he’d danced with the other men at the Independence Day celebration, his head thrown back, the column of his throat visible under the bright noonday sun. He’d looked so happy then, happy and free, and Ava didn’t know whether that sense of easy joy was what had attracted her in that moment or the man himself.
In any case, it was way too early to be thinking about attraction in any form.
“I’d love for you to come over,” she said to Julie, “if you can find the time off work.” And despite her earlier absurd jealousy, she knew she’d be glad to see her friend. “It’s not Corfu, though. We’re talking rural Greece. No beaches, no piña coladas. No mobile phone reception, even.”
“No problem,” Julie said breezily, and Ava laughed. She couldn’t quite imagine Julie in Iousidous, but she still wasn’t quite sure if she could imagine herself here, and yet here she was.
The phone call finished, she sat in the sitting room, her gaze on the huge fireplace that dominated one wall. She’d swept it out, but she hadn’t had a fire in the hearth yet. She had no idea what the state of the chimney was. Seventy years ago, when her grandmother had lived here, she would have used the fireplace for cooking as well as heating the house. Ava imagined her bent in front of it, baking bread or stirring soup or—what? She still only had the haziest images of what life would have been like here. What her grandmother’s life would have been like.
She hadn’t heard from Helena about the interviews, but she hoped the people Helena was talking to would agree. Finally she might begin to understand what her grandmother’s life might have been like, even if she still didn’t have any sense of the details.
Her phone, still clasped loosely in her hand, trilled suddenly, startling her out of her mini-reverie. Simon. The name—the hope—was like a lightning bolt streaking through her mind. It wasn’t Simon, though; it was a local number, and as Ava answered it, she hoped it was Helena.
“Ava? It’s Andreas.”
Shock temporarily robbed her of speech. She’d completely forgotten that she’d given him her number when he’d changed her tire. It had been a matter of expediency rather than an invitation, and yet she didn’t think he was ringing about her car now.
“Ava?”
“Sorry, sorry, um, bad connection. It’s better now.” A flush fought its way up her face. “Hi, Andreas.”
“I was wondering, if you are free, if you would like to come lunch on Saturday.” He sounded hesitant, although whether that was his careful English or the nature of his invitation Ava couldn’t tell. She was speechless with surprise yet again, although she found her voice a bit more quickly this time.
“Oh—thank you for the invitation—”
“Kalista would like to practice her English,” Andreas said quickly, and Ava knew this was code for this is not a date. Still, Andreas’s English was really very good. She couldn’t see why his daughter would need to practice with her. “She prefers to speak with someone other than her boring old father,” Andreas said with a laugh, and Ava wondered whether he could read her mind.
“That sounds lovely,” she said, rather firmly. This too would be part of her moving on. Finding her own life here in Greece. “Thank you so much.”
“Would you like to come round about noon? Do you remember the way?”
She had a hopeless sense of direction, so Ava took instructions on how to get there before ringing off. She put her phone back in her pocket and headed outside, stopping short when she saw that every scrap of meat was gone from the dish.
“Coward,” she called to the silent scrub. “You’re going to have to face me sometime.” The only answer was the sighing of the wind in the pines high above her.
That evening Ava went round to Eleni’s for supper. She’d brought a dish of marinated olives she’d bought in Lamia, hoping Eleni wouldn’t be offended. She seemed determined to do everything for her, Ava knew, but she was ready to do some—admittedly small—things for herself.
Eleni kissed her on both cheeks as she arrived. “You look well,” she said approvingly, stepping back to survey Ava from top to toe. “There is color in your cheeks, a sparkle in your eye.”
“Is there?” Ava gave a little uncertain laugh. She hadn’t quite realized it until that moment, but even after Julie’s unsettling call she’d been kind of happy today. She’d kept busy in the garden and hadn’t thought of other things too much. “Here. I brought you some olives.”
Eleni clucked and insisted she shouldn’t have, but she took them all the same. Ava came into the little kitchen, looking around for Parthenope, but she didn’t see her anywhere.
“She is sleeping,” Eleni said quietly. “The celebrations on Sunday tired her greatly.”
“Oh. Right.” Ava drew a deep breath. “Do you know Helena, the schoolteacher?”
Eleni slid her an amused look as she transferred the olives to a ceramic dish and put them on the table. “Iousidous has only about six hundred people, and I have lived here for much of my life. I know everyone.”
“Of course you do,” Ava acknowledged with a little laugh. “Do you know that Helena is trying to get together a sort of oral history of
those who survived the war?” Eleni frowned, and Ava wondered if she’d understood what she’d meant. She also wondered, belatedly, whether she should have told Eleni about Helena’s plans. Maybe Helena wanted to keep them quiet, for some reason.
“I know,” Eleni said shortly, and Ava was relieved on both counts, even though it seemed to be a topic of conversation the older woman did not wish to pursue.
“Has she asked your mother to participate?”
Eleni turned away, busying herself at the oven. A mouthwatering aroma of garlic, rosemary, and roasting meat wafted from the oven’s open door. “I told her no.”
“You did?” Ava said in surprise, before she could think better of it.
Eleni turned back to her, looking annoyed for the first time since Ava had seen her at the window the night she’d arrived. “Yes, I did. My mother is ninety-eight years old. She does not need someone coming here asking questions about things she’d rather forget.”
Eleni’s accent had thickened throughout this abrupt speech, making it hard for Ava to understand her. She understood the gist perfectly well, though. Eleni did not want anyone, not Ava, not Helena, stirring up her mother’s past.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I know you didn’t want to upset your mother when she thought I was my grandmother, but…” She took a deep breath and recklessly plunged on. “Don’t you think it might help? To talk about it—whatever it is? Whatever is bothering her, for her to say sorry after so many years?”
Eleni stared at her for a long moment. “No, I don’t think it can help,” she finally said, sounding more resigned now than angry. “Whatever happened, happened. It was terrible—I know that. More terrible than anything either you or I have lived through. Why bring it up? Why…” Eleni snapped her fingers, scrunching her face up impatiently before she remembered the word. “Why pry?”
Pry. It made Ava feel like a snoop. But this was her grandmother they were talking about, and Parthenope obviously had some memory or association with Sophia Paranoussis. “I don’t think of it as prying,” she replied carefully, “when it’s my own relative. And if there was anything I could learn about my grandmother—”
“What if it is something sad? Something tragic? Something you wished you had never known?” Eleni gazed at her steadily. “Haven’t you had enough sorrow, Ava? In your own life?”
Ava stared at her, all thoughts of her grandmother evaporating in the knowing light in Eleni’s eyes. “What,” she asked, her mouth dry, “do you mean?”
“I’m not certain what happened,” Eleni said, “but sadness covers you like—like a cloak.” Ava said nothing, her throat suddenly tight. “It was a child, wasn’t it?” Eleni sighed. “Now I am the one who is—what did I say?—prying.”
“How did you know?” Ava asked when she finally felt able to speak.
“You touch your belly, like this.” Eleni pressed one hand against her stomach. “Like you are missing something, a part of you.” Ava swallowed. She hadn’t realized she did that. Had anyone else noticed, or even guessed the reason why? “And,” Eleni continued, “I know, at least a little, of that sorrow.”
“You had a—”
“I was never so blessed. But my husband and I longed for children.” Her smile curved wryly. “He was Greek: of course he wanted a large family. Sons and daughters. But none came.” She spread her hands wide. “No babies.”
“I’m so sorry, Eleni.”
The older woman just shrugged, but Ava saw a lingering sadness in her eyes. A different kind of grief, but one she still carried. Did it ever end?
“Do you want to talk about it?” Eleni asked after a moment. “What happened?”
Ava opened her mouth to say no, she did not, she wasn’t ready. Instead she heard herself say, to her own surprise, “Her name was Charlotte.”
Eleni’s face softened into a sad smile. “A pretty name.”
Ava nodded, glanced down at the floor, and then continued. “We’d been trying for years to have a baby. I wanted a family almost as soon as we got married. Simon didn’t want to rush, and in the end that wasn’t an issue, because nothing ever happened. The doctors didn’t even have a reason—unexplained infertility, they said. Apparently it’s quite common.”
“Yes.”
“We did the tests, the fertility drugs, the IVF. Rounds and rounds.” She spoke faster, hearing the pain in her voice, like something broken. “It was stressful for both of us, I know that, and there’s some horrible percentage rate of couples who split up after too many rounds of IVF. But I couldn’t let go of it. The dream. I wanted a baby so very much.”
“Of course you did,” Eleni murmured.
Ava was still staring at the floor, blinking hard, talking faster and faster. “In the end we decided to take a break. From the IVF, not each other. Not then. Just a couple of months to focus on each other again, to reconnect. And amazingly, three weeks later, I found out I was pregnant. Naturally.” She let out a shuddering breath. “It felt like such a damned miracle.” Her gaze flew up to meet Eleni’s as she realized that to the older, more traditional woman, the word might cause offense. “Sorry, sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
Eleni waved a hand, smiling faintly. “I don’t think I know that English word.”
Ava smiled back even though she could feel the tears, heavy and hot, crowding her eyes and thickening in her throat. “No, I don’t suppose you would.”
“So.” Eleni sat down at the table, her chin propped in her hands. “You were pregnant.”
“Yes, and the strange thing, the stupid thing, really, was I thought that was it. Nothing could go wrong now. It had been so bloody hard—sorry—so hard to actually get pregnant, and then when it happened naturally…” She shook her head, helpless in the face of her memories, and the almost smug complacency she’d lapsed into once she knew she was pregnant. “I thought it was meant to be. I was sure everything was going to be fine. It had to be.”
“Perhaps,” Eleni said, “you needed a rest from worry. From fear.”
“But in the end I should have been afraid. I should have been afraid, and worried, and maybe—” Ava stopped, not wanting to give voice to the thought. Not wanting to believe that she could have changed the outcome. One more ultrasound. Another doctor’s visit. Not going for that jog. Something.
“What happens, happens,” Eleni said quietly. “There is a reason, lost in the sorrow, perhaps, but it is still there.”
Acid burned in the back of Ava’s throat. “You really believe that?”
“I believe the world is much bigger than our grief.”
“And you believe that some god above ordains things like this? For my daughter to die inside me when I was seven-and-a-half months pregnant?” Ava heard the snarl in her voice and knew she should stop. Apologize. Yet she couldn’t stand any platitudes about how her daughter’s death had been for the best, or for some absurd purpose. It had been meaningless. Utterly, horribly meaningless.
“I don’t have the answers you are seeking, Ava,” Eleni said quietly. “But I don’t believe our lives come together or apart by simple chance. There is something greater at work, even in our grief. In our pain.”
Ava just shook her head. She swallowed and blinked hard. “I’m sorry,” she said stiffly, “for seeming rude.”
“Nonsense. I am the one who is rude, asking you these questions and telling you things you don’t want to hear. I thought it might bring you comfort, to know it is not for nothing.” Ava did not reply, and Eleni smiled sadly. “Let us eat.”
The rest of the meal passed peaceably enough, although Ava felt a remnant of the strain between them. Parthenope joined them, and Eleni gave Ava another one of her warning looks. Perhaps after Ava’s outburst she didn’t trust her to leave her mother alone.
Yet Eleni’s words came back to Ava as she walked in the quiet and the dark back to her grandmother’s house. The village was silent, the air utterly still. She felt as if she were the last person on earth.
I don’
t believe our lives come together or apart by simple chance. There is something greater at work, even in our grief.
How could Eleni believe such a thing, when she’d seen so much suffering herself? Her entire country devastated and ruined for several generations. Her own lack of children. Her own mother refusing to talk about the past, for whatever painful reason. What greater purpose could there be in any of that?
In front of the house Ava stopped, tilted her head up to gaze at the fathomless night sky, inky black and spangled with stars. She tried to make out a few of the more familiar constellations, Ursa Major at least, but after a moment she stopped trying to make sense of it and simply stared at all that distant, endless beauty, impossible to fully understand.
Her grandmother had surely stood in this same spot, had perhaps tilted her head up in the same way and stared at these same stars. For the first time Ava felt a flicker of recognition, like an echo or a shadow, of her grandmother’s life. Her grandmother herself. It was gone in an instant, but she felt it reverberate through her own soul. Slowly she lowered her head and blinked in the darkness. The cat, she saw, was on the railing of her grandmother’s house, giving her its unblinking stare.
Ava stared back, and then with a swish of its tail the cat jumped down and stalked towards her, surprising her so much that she took an inadvertent step backwards.
In an instant it was gone, leaping elegantly over the wall and into the shadows, its tail having brushed her bare legs.
9
July 1942
Ever since her meeting with the stranger in the dark, Sophia had been counting the days. The hours, even, marking them as the sun rose and set in the sky, as the earth grew hot and then cool, light sliding into darkness, once, then twice. Two days passed. Just one day until she was expected to slip out into the night, a dangerous thing in itself, and meet a man named Perseus in the darkness of the Lethikos olive grove.
And if she didn’t…?