by Kate Hewitt
Softly he said, “You believe. You are afraid, but you believe.”
Sophia shook her head, desperate now. “But I’m too afraid.”
“Then let the fear force you to act. It is the only way.” With one last, hard look, he slipped silently from the room.
10
Now
Three days after her dinner with Eleni, Ava was surprised to find Andreas at her door. The top half of it was open to the sunlight streaming in, and when he’d poked his head in, she’d been attempting to access the internet on her laptop, a fistful of wires clutched uselessly in one hand. She’d had some of the rewiring done in the house earlier in the week, arranged by Eleni’s cousin, but it seemed she still couldn’t make things actually work.
“Oh, hello,” she said, and then, for no real reason at all, blushed. Seeing him in the doorway, she was suddenly, surprisingly aware of how tall he was, how dark his hair and eyes were, and how blindingly white his smile in his tanned, weather-beaten face was. He ducked his head, and Ava dropped the wires and went over to the door.
“I was passing through the village,” he said, still smiling, “and I thought I’d see how you are.”
The line had the stiltedness of something that had been rehearsed, Ava thought, and then chastised herself for the thought. English was not Andreas’s first language. Why shouldn’t what he said be rehearsed? Yet she still felt a strange ripple of unease; she couldn’t put her finger on it, or determine whether the unease came from Andreas’s sudden visit or her own surprised pleasure at his arrival. She was still planning on having lunch with him on Saturday, although she hadn’t really expected to see him before then.
“I’m having trouble with the internet,” she said as she undid the latch on the bottom half of the door and ushered him in. “Someone from the power company told me I could have internet access starting today, but I’ve yet to see it actually working. It keeps saying it doesn’t recognize the server—”
“Shall I have a look?”
Ava hesitated. She was tired of being rescued, but she’d been working on her laptop for a fruitless and frustrating hour. “Sure, if you wouldn’t mind.”
Three minutes later, Andreas clicked on a screen and her email popped up. He straightened. “There you are.”
Ava suppressed a stab of annoyance. Why hadn’t she been able to manage that? “Thank you. I don’t know why I couldn’t figure that out after an hour.”
“You would have eventually, I am sure.” Andreas smiled and Ava felt a sudden tightness in her chest. Simon used to tease her about being hopeless with computers. You can’t just start pushing buttons, Ava, he’d say with a laugh. You’ll make it worse. And she had; one time she’d turned all the text on her screen white and impossible to read, and no tinkering with the colors would change it back. Simon had ended up having to wipe her hard drive.
She had, she knew, made it worse in so many ways.
“May I get you a drink of something cold?” she asked, forcing her thoughts away from Simon. She’d been in Greece for two weeks and he hadn’t called again; she hadn’t called either, despite Julie’s urgings. Stalemate, then.
Andreas hesitated, and then nodded. “Thank you.”
Ava went to the tiny kitchen in the back, which looked marginally better with everything cleaned, if not precisely sparkling, and the new refrigerator humming away.
“Everything looks so much better since the last time I was here,” Andreas said. He’d followed her into the kitchen and suddenly the small room seemed half its normal size. Ava’s shoulder brushed against his as she opened the fridge.
“That’s not saying much, though, really,” she said lightly as she peered into the depths of the fridge. She was very conscious of Andreas behind her. “I have some orange juice or sparkling water. That’s it, I’m afraid.”
“Orange juice, please.”
She poured a glass of juice and handed it to him. He took it with murmured thanks, and Ava, still feeling awkward and self-conscious, opened the back door and stepped outside.
“I’ve been doing a bit of gardening,” she said, more to fill the silence than anything else. “Just a few plants. I’m not even sure what they are. I couldn’t read the Greek on the tags—”
“Let me see.”
Andreas stepped out into the little garden and crouched down on his haunches to inspect the few straggly little plants struggling up from the crumbly overturned earth. Ava took a step back, struck by how natural Andreas looked, sitting on his heels, the sun catching the threads of gray in his curly hair. How very Greek.
“This is jancaea,” he said, pointing to a small flowering alpine with violet petals. “It used to grow only on Mount Olympus, in the wild.”
“Oh—” Ava wasn’t sure if that meant it was rather tacky to have it growing in her little patch of garden.
“And this is azalea. You have the same in England, I think?” Andreas turned to her, eyebrows raised, still crouching on his haunches.
“Oh. Yes. Azalea.” Ava blushed. Again. “I’m not much of a gardener, actually. Back in England, anyway. So I’m not sure I’d recognize much of anything.” Not even, apparently, an azalea.
“Perhaps you will learn here.” Andreas rose, brushing the dirt from his jeans. “Perhaps you will like it.”
“Perhaps,” Ava agreed. “If I don’t kill them all first by overwatering them or something.” She felt a sudden, desperate urge to lighten the moment, even though nothing was happening. Andreas took a sip of juice, gazing around at the scrubby garden and the thick swath of pines in the distance, and Ava wondered why her heart was thudding so hard. Clearly an overreaction, and a ridiculous one, at that.
“They’re both hardy, which is good, considering the soil here,” Andreas said, his gaze coming back to rest on her. “I actually came to ask if you have any allergies to any food. I know one must ask these days. You hear things about peanuts.” He smiled ruefully, and Ava shook her head.
“No, nothing.”
“Good.”
Had he really come all this way to ask her about that? He could have called or sent a text. She watched as he finished his juice. “I must go. It is a busy time of year for us.”
“Oh—yes…” She had no idea, really, what went into olive oil production, but she supposed it was time-consuming. Did they stomp on the olives the way you did on grapes? Did anyone actually do that kind of thing any more, or had she just seen it in a film?
“I will see you on Saturday?” Andreas asked, and when Ava nodded, he smiled and she followed him back into the house before he went out the front door, swinging the bottom half shut behind him with one last whimsical smile.
After he’d gone, the house seemed very quiet. Ava went back outside, hoping to get some more gardening done, but weeding a flower bed when she had nothing to put in it seemed pointless. And how long would she really be here, anyway? She couldn’t actually live here, could she? At some point she’d have to go back to her real life, what little was left of it, and pick up the broken pieces.
Her grandmother’s house would fall back into ruin, first the garden and then the house itself. How long would it take for the fresh whitewash to start to flake or become covered in mildew? The weeds would grow back up in the storeroom, and the stairs would rust and fall apart. The wood would rot, the shutters once more hanging askew, if they didn’t fall off completely. Perhaps the cat she was feeding would come back searching for food and find nothing. Perhaps it would have become complacent being fed on scraps and starve to death. In her kindness she would have killed it.
“Oh come on, Ava, get a grip.” Her voice sounded loud in the empty house, but, honestly, she was being horribly maudlin. Without Simon to steady her, she could go right off the deep end into complete melodrama, even over a cat, or a bit of mildew.
Without thinking too much about what she was doing—or why—Ava grabbed her phone and pressed Simon’s number in her contacts folder.
Her head beat with hard, painful t
huds as the phone trilled, the sound tinny and distant. Once, twice, three times. Then, just when she expected it to click over to voicemail, someone answered.
“Hello?” Simon said, his voice giving nothing away. “Ava?”
Ava’s fingers slackened around her mobile as Simon’s voice echoed in her ears. She hadn’t expected him to pick up, she realized; she hadn’t prepared herself to actually talk to him.
“Ava?” he said again, and concern or perhaps just impatience sharpened his voice.
“Hello, Simon,” Ava said quietly. It was good to hear his voice. Better than she’d expected, and yet more painful too. Her throat ached and she couldn’t think of anything else to say. Simon apparently did not have that problem.
“Well,” he said briskly. “You’ve arrived, then? How is the place?”
“Fine. Everything’s fine.” Ava forced herself to adopt Simon’s practical tone. “There were a few mishaps with the electricity and things—”
“Mishaps? What kind?”
“The power wasn’t turned on, and my hire car got a flat tire,” Ava explained, speaking lightly, “but it’s all sorted now.”
“Is it?” Simon sounded dubious, or maybe even disappointed. Did he think she couldn’t manage without him? “I don’t like to think of you alone there, with no car or light—”
“It’s sorted,” Ava said firmly. “And I’m not alone. I’ve made friends—”
“Already?” Simon said incredulously, and now he really didn’t sound pleased. Ava felt a sharp dart of satisfaction. Now he would know how it felt for someone to move on when you weren’t ready to. Or perhaps he wouldn’t; when she’d asked for a separation, Simon had hardly been reluctant to agree. As you like had been his exact words.
“Yes, a woman here knew my grandmother,” Ava explained. “Or at least, her mother did. It’s been interesting—I almost think something happened back then to make my grandmother emigrate.”
“Something? What do you mean?”
As ever, Simon wanted facts. Practicalities. And as ever, Ava didn’t have them to offer. “I don’t know. It’s just a feeling I have.” She thought about telling Simon about Parthenope and her abject apology but didn’t want to hear him sounding dubious. She probably had no idea what she was talking about, Ava. She’s in her nineties. She probably has dementia. “I might learn more—there are a few survivors of the war still alive.”
“And you plan on talking to them? Meeting them?”
Why, Ava wondered, did he have to sound so skeptical? Or was she just being oversensitive? “There’s a schoolteacher here, Helena. She’s interviewing them for an oral history project and she told me about it. Asked me to come along.” Simon was silent, seeming to absorb this. “In any case, people have been friendly. I’m having lunch…” She stopped suddenly, not wanting to mention Andreas.
“You certainly sound settled,” Simon said after a moment. His voice was very even, and Ava couldn’t tell a thing from it. “Despite the problems with the car and the lights.” He cleared his throat. “You do feel settled, Ava? You’re happy?”
Happy, Ava thought incredulously. How could he even ask if she was happy, when in the space of a year her whole life—their life—had fallen apart? She felt the familiar feeling of helpless anger swamp her; Simon had never seemed to understand how his practical attitude hurt her. She’d tried to explain, after the stillbirth, how his ability to soldier on with seeming indifference had made her feel more alone than ever, as if he hadn’t even cared, and Simon had just looked at her blankly. “What do you want me to do?” he’d asked, and she’d heard a weary sort of anger spiking his words. She hadn’t attempted to explain that she wanted him to feel the way she did; she wanted him to share her grief. If it didn’t come naturally, a manufactured emotion for her own benefit would hardly help. It would probably just make things worse.
Now she swallowed past the thickening of tears in her throat and said, “Yes. I’m settled.” She didn’t add the caveat but not happy. She’d been giving Simon every impression that she was doing fine; despite her initial flare of anger she knew it wasn’t fair to be hurt simply because he expected her to be fine.
“Good,” Simon said again. “That’s good.” What an awkward conversation they were having, Ava thought. It was as stilted and uncomfortable as anything she’d been afraid of. She opened her mouth to tell him she needed to ring off when Simon said quietly, “I miss you.”
Shock raced through her like quicksilver, the kind of jolt she’d felt as a girl when she’d fancied someone and suddenly realized he might fancy her back. She hadn’t felt that electric tingling in a long time. Years. A decade and a half, when she’d seen Simon in the university bar and he’d sloshed beer all over himself as he tried to hoist his glass aloft in a wave. He’d been so adorably incompetent for a moment; before then she’d seen only the stoic, capable Simon from the sailing club. That Simon, with his slightly scornful ease around a boat—Ava hadn’t known a thing about sailing and had only joined the club to meet boys—had intimidated her. This Simon endeared himself to her, and she’d gone over and said hello.
And the rest, she thought rather bleakly, was history.
“Ava?” he prompted, and cleared his throat. “Say something.”
“I’m… surprised,” she finally said, and Simon let out a little huff of humorless laughter.
“Are you really?”
“I thought you wanted a break.”
“A break?”
“From me.” And her unending sadness, the tears that seemed to only irritate him, the grief he’d shaken off but kept swamping her.
“You were the one who said you wanted a break,” he replied flatly. “I hope you’re getting one.”
She felt rebuked, even though what he’d said was true. She had been the one to suggest everything: the separation, her moving out, then going to Greece. It had all been her idea, and in that moment she knew she’d done it all because she’d wanted to provoke a reaction in him, something to pierce the indifferent armor he surrounded himself with. She’d wanted, Ava knew, for Simon to pull her to him and beg her not to leave. And of course he hadn’t.
“It’s good to be here,” she said, because that was true, in its way. Yet she wished she could tell him other things, things she knew he didn’t want to hear. I went to church and I thought of our daughter’s casket. Was it heavy when you held it? Or did its terrible lightness make you sad? Why did you never tell me anything about how you felt?
“I’m glad,” Simon said, interrupting her thoughts. He sounded formal, as if he were making a business call. I’m glad your taxes are sorted. Is there anything else I can help you with? “Do you think you’ll stay a while?”
What was a while? “I don’t really know. I’d like to find out more about my grandmother.”
“By talking to the survivors?”
“If I can. I doubt they’ll speak English, but Helena might translate for me.”
“So your grandmother was in Greece during the war?” He actually sounded interested, and Ava felt a sudden rush of warmth. Perhaps they could talk about this, the distant past, without any awkwardness.
“Yes, as far as I know she left in 1946. She met my grandfather Edward and they married sometime after—1947 maybe? I honestly never really thought about her or any of it until I arrived here. To me she was always an old woman.”
“I think most children think of their grandparents that way.”
“Yes, I suppose. But then coming here…” Ava felt a thickening in her throat. Apparently she couldn’t talk about the past without becoming emotional. “It suddenly struck me how different her life must have been. You should see the house, Simon…” Why had she said that? “It’s rustic, to say the least,” she hurried on. “And Eleni told me that when my grandmother lived here, there wouldn’t have been electricity or running water or a tiled floor or anything.”
“And that made you want to learn more about your grandmother?”
“Yes,”
she paused, then plunged on. “The first night I came here I met a woman—Eleni, whom I mentioned—she showed me my grandmother’s house. I met her mother, Parthenope, as well, and when she saw me, she confused me with my grandmother and told me how sorry she was.”
“Sorry? What for?”
“I don’t know. She had tears running down her face and she kept saying me sighorite—I’m sorry.”
She heard Simon breathing, could imagine the furrow between his eyes that he always got when he was thinking deeply. She used to smooth it away with her thumb before kissing him.
“How do you know she thought you were your grandmother?” he finally asked.
“She called me Sophia.”
“Wow.” Simon actually seemed impressed, and Ava felt another blaze of feeling—of hope, something she hadn’t felt in a long time. “Sounds like a real mystery.”
“If I can find any other clues.”
“You said there were other survivors.”
“Yes, and Iousidous is a tiny place. I don’t know what the population was back in the 1940s, but I hope that someone I talk to, or really, Helena talks to, might know my grandmother. Remember her.”
She lapsed into silence, and so did Simon. Ava felt the awkwardness again, the weight of all the things they weren’t saying and couldn’t talk about, and it hurt her afresh because this was her husband. Surely she should be able to talk about anything with him.
“Well, let me know if you find anything out,” Simon said lightly, and it sounded like the beginning of a goodbye. Glad you’re safe. Nice to chat…
“I will.” Ava thought of all the things she wanted to say, now bottled up in her throat, bursting in her lungs. Somehow in that ensuing silence the words didn’t come. It had been too long; she should have said it right away—I miss you, too. Yet she hadn’t, even though she did. Desperately. “Well…” she began, uncertainly, and Simon took the opening.