by Kate Hewitt
“Dimitrios—” Angelika tried again, and once more he waved her away, impatient, dismissive.
“Shut up, Angelika.”
“If they’re watching me, they’re watching you,” Sophia told him, and he just laughed.
“Oh, yes, but not tonight. Tonight they are looking for the soldiers who have fallen from the sky.”
“If that’s so, why didn’t they contact me, then?” she challenged, reckless now with fear.
Dimitrios just shrugged. “No time. We only just heard. And now we go.” He jerked her none too gently to her feet. “Dress warmly.”
“This is madness,” Sophia tried one last time. “I cannot help you, Dimitrios—”
He moved so quickly she didn’t even see the back of his hand, just felt it hard against her cheek, tasted the metallic tang of blood on her tongue. Angelika let out a little shriek of dismay.
“Sophia!” she cried, starting forward, and Dimitrios pushed her back, hard enough so she stumbled as her eyes filled with tears.
“Get dressed,” he said flatly, one hand resting on the rusty old rifle he had boasted about in the coffeehouse, and without another word Sophia reached for her dress and pulled it over her nightgown. She would need all the layers she could find on a cold night such as this.
She wore her oldest dress and thickest wool stockings, with two shawls wrapped around her. It was cold outside, and would be colder, she suspected, wherever they were going, whether mountain or forest. And, she realized bleakly, she had no idea how long she would be gone.
She turned to Angelika, who was gazing at her in silent misery. “Tell Father I’m safe,” she said quietly and her sister wrung her hands.
“Oh, Sophia, I’m sorry,” she exclaimed. “I didn’t realize… oh, what shall I tell Father?”
For a moment, no more, Sophia wanted to slap her sister just as Dimitrios had slapped her. How could Angelika have been so stupid, to trust a man like this? She knew it wasn’t really her sister’s fault that she was heading into the forest with a man who was no better than a Nazi, hitting women as he did, threatening them with the rifle strapped across his chest, and yet for a bitter moment she was tempted to blame her.
“Tell him you don’t know anything,” she said with a despondent shrug.
“You’ll think of something, ’Lika,” Dimitrios said, patting the girl’s cheek, and Sophia seethed as Angelika jerked away, her eyes flashing. How dare he touch her that way! Angelika, at least, did not respond to it the way she once might have. Perhaps her sister was finally gaining some sense.
Dimitrios turned to Sophia with a grim smile. “Let’s go,” he said, and prodding her in the small of her back, he urged her forward, down the rickety stairs, and out into the night.
16
Now
It was time, Ava decided grimly, to start living. To say yes to everything. She’d said yes to a drink with Helena in town that weekend, and yes to a shy and hesitant invitation to dinner with Andreas—no mention of Kalista—the following night. Yes, Ava thought defiantly. Yes, I will move on, just as Simon so obviously is.
She didn’t want to be bitter; hadn’t she been bitter long enough, in her grief? And yet she knew she was. She felt those sour seeds take root in the soil of her soul; it was as crumbly and rock-strewn as that on these ancient hills. Yes, she was bitter, more bitter than she’d ever been before. She forced it down when she went to meet Helena; their friendship was fragile and new and she wanted to forget her misery, not pour it out on someone else.
By half past five on Friday night Helena and Ava were settled at a corner table in one of Lamia’s cheerful tavernas; a trio of musicians in the corner playing a lively tune on unfamiliar yet interesting-looking instruments.
Ava plucked an olive from the dish in the center of the table as Helena gave her a frankly appraising look. “So it is not very often we have English people move to a place like Iousidous. How are you finding it, really?”
“Really?” Ava repeated, swallowing. “It’s been good to have a change.” She paused, wanting to reveal more yet afraid to at the same time. “I needed a change.” Helena nodded, accepting, and Ava was glad she chose not to press. She didn’t know whether she wanted to talk about the past or forget it for a night. A bit of both, she supposed.
“From what Eleni has told me,” she asked Helena, “it’s uncommon for young people to stay in Iousidous. Why have you chosen to live there?”
Helena grinned. “Well, not for the men I’ll meet! Most of them are fifty years older than I am.” She shrugged and reached for her drink. “I loved living in Iousidous as a child. I love how simple it is, and the…” She swept an arm out, impatient with her faltering English. “The sense of time—”
“And tradition?” Ava filled in, and Helena nodded.
“Yes. Sometimes change is good; sometimes it is not.” She smiled wryly. “But I am glad you are here. It is good to spend time with a woman my own age. Have you found enough to keep you busy?”
“Yes, I think so.” Ava thought of her little garden, the work on the house, her one English lesson at the school, her lunch with Andreas and Kalista, and her time with Eleni. It wasn’t a life exactly, but perhaps the beginning of one. “I’m giving a local teenager some English lessons,” she said, mostly just to make it seem as if she were more productive than she actually was. Helena seemed so confident, so competent. A bit like Simon that way. “Her name is Kalista Lethikos. Do you know her?”
Ava wasn’t sure if she’d imagined the flash of emotion across Helena’s face. She must have, for the other woman smiled easily and took an olive from the dish. “Oh, yes, I know the Lethikos family. Andreas and I were friends when we were children.” She popped the olive in her mouth and gestured to a nearby waiter. “Now let’s order some food. A day of teaching makes me hungry.”
Ava nodded, yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that Helena had just deliberately changed the subject.
The next night Ava drove to the Lethikos property for dinner with Andreas. As she made her way up the winding road, olive trees on either side, she thought back to what Andreas had said about the Greek Resistance using the grove to shelter the SOE agents before they blew up that viaduct. She wondered if there was any truth to the story.
The night was so peaceful, the first stars just starting to come out in an indigo sky, the only sound the rustle of the breeze through the trees, that it was hard to imagine this had once been a place of intrigue and danger, terror and violence.
How had her grandmother navigated through all of it? And when—and why—had she gone?
“Ava, welcome.” Andreas had opened the front door and stood on the veranda, smiling. He wore a white linen shirt that was open at the throat and a pair of faded chinos, and Ava had to admit he looked attractive, the light color of his clothes setting off his olive skin and curly dark hair. She smoothed the swishy skirt in lilac cotton she’d finally decided to wear after changing outfits three times. She’d been worried about making it seem as if she were dressing up and yet she’d also wanted to make at least a little effort.
Now, as she came up the veranda stairs and Andreas placed his hand on the small of her back, she felt a jolt of alarm. This felt so date-like, so strange. She hadn’t had a date, a first date, in over fifteen years. And no matter what she’d told herself about moving on, just being in a dimly lit room with Andreas as he handed her a glass of red wine felt like a betrayal.
Simon had gone out for dinner with Julie, she reminded herself. And Julie had lied about it. There was no way she should be feeling guilty now.
She took a sip of wine, defiance and dread both roiling within her. Not a great way to start the evening. “So, how are things?” she asked, her voice coming out a bit too loud, a bit too bright. “Where’s Kalista?”
“Things are good. And Kalista is staying with a friend tonight.”
They were completely alone? Ava’s throat dried and she saw Andreas’s cheeks redden slightly. “Were you expecting t
o practice English with her tonight?” he asked with an awkward little laugh. “I am sorry. I should have said. You can practice with me instead.”
And now Ava was the one blushing, because even though she was quite sure Andreas didn’t mean it like that, his words felt full of innuendo. Was the whole evening going to be this awkward and full of misunderstanding?
“Come into the dining room,” he said, his voice little more than a mutter. Clearly he was as embarrassed as she was. “The food is already prepared.”
The table in the dining room was laid with a snowy linen cloth, the porcelain and crystal glinting underneath the candlelight. Ava tried to swallow past the dryness in her throat. There could be no question now that this was a date.
And why shouldn’t it be a date? she asked herself recklessly. She was separated, probably on her way to a divorce. The divorce papers might even be winging their way towards her already. The thought felt like a punch to the gut, but with effort she shrugged it off. She would enjoy herself tonight. She would.
“Come. Sit.” Andreas pulled out a chair and Ava sat down, tensing slightly as he rested his hands on her shoulders for just a few brief seconds. His hands were warm, dry, the weight of them strangely comforting, and yet despite all that she still felt as if she were strung tight enough to snap. Break.
And Andreas didn’t seem much better, she observed as he sat down across from her and began to serve out the food. Lines of tension bracketed his mouth and he concentrated just a little too much on simple things: pouring water, dishing out the salad appetizer.
“This is delicious,” Ava said as she speared a cucumber. “Do you like to cook?” Her voice still sounded too high, too bright, too much.
Andreas looked up, smiling wryly. “What Greek male cooks? But since Althea died, yes. I have learned.” He shrugged, a simple twist of his powerful shoulders. “I cannot say if I like it, though. What about you?”
“Do I like to cook? Sometimes.” As with everything else, she and Simon had approached kitchen duty in two entirely different ways. She liked to dream up big meals: Chinese stir-fries accompanied by chopsticks and fortune cookies, Indian curries with homemade naan bread and onion bhajis, all of it without consulting a cookbook much. Simon was, of course, stolid when it came to cooking. He never deviated from a recipe, always measured things with mathematical precision. And, Ava had to acknowledge, he had more steady successes than she did with her madcap, wholehearted commitment to the endeavor.
“You are remembering something,” Andreas said quietly, and she looked up to see him smiling at her in a kind of wry, understanding sorrow.
“Sorry. Yes, I was.” She took a breath, made herself continue. “Just thinking about my husband and me, and how different we are. Were.”
“How were you different?”
She shrugged, not really wanting to talk about Simon, and especially not with Andreas. “In all sorts of ways.”
Andreas nodded, seeming to sense her reluctance to speak. “And you said you are separated?”
Ava nodded, her throat tightening.
“But you still love him?” he queried gently, and her throat tightened further so she could barely get the words out.
“I don’t know.” But she did know. She did love Simon, and she didn’t want to, because she was wrenchingly certain that he was well on his way to no longer loving her. She wasn’t about to say any of that to Andreas.
In any case he just nodded again, and then held out the little dish of olives swimming in seasoned oil. Ava took one, grateful that the intense conversation had stopped for a moment at least.
Things relaxed a bit between them after that, enough for Ava to sit back and feel the tension that had been tightening her body ease. She drank another glass of wine with the moussaka Andreas had made, and felt a little more of that tension slip away.
It was far more pleasant to chat about Andreas’s work, and about her attempts at gardening, than the messy, painful past. Although perhaps the past always came round again, because as they were finishing the last of the wine along with sticky-sweet baklava, Andreas asked about her grandmother.
“Have you discovered anything more about her?”
“Not really. Only that she had a sister, Angelika. She never mentioned her to me, and as far as I know, my mother doesn’t know about her, either.” Which reminded Ava she needed to call her mother and tell her everything she’d learned, as well as deal with her mother’s loving concern about how she was coping.
Andreas frowned. “Perhaps something happened to her? During the war?”
“Perhaps,” Ava allowed. She didn’t like to think of something terrible happening to Angelika, the unknown butterfly, although why it should matter, she wasn’t sure. She hadn’t even known the woman existed until a few days ago, and she’d most likely died—probably not recently. “I’ve been sitting in on some interviews of people who were here during the war,” she told Andreas. “Helena, the schoolteacher in Iousidous, is trying to put together an oral history. Do you know her?”
Andreas’s expression stilled for one tiny second before he smiled and nodded. “Yes, everyone knows everyone around here.”
“So I’m realizing.” Ava gestured to their plates. “Let me help you wash up.”
“That is not necessary—”
“I’d feel guilty otherwise. If Greek men don’t cook, I doubt they wash up either.” She smiled, relaxed enough to have injected a faintly flirtatious note into her voice and not care. “Is that something else you’ve had to learn?”
“So it is.” Andreas rose from the table and began stacking plates. “But I will accept your help.”
They worked in companionable silence, taking all of the dishes to the kitchen, and then Ava scraped the dishes while Andreas loaded the dishwasher. With each dish she found herself moving more slowly, unwilling to let the evening end. It was so familiar, to clean up after a meal with a man, the night dark and silent outside, the kitchen a small oasis of warmth and light. Even though they barely spoke, she enjoyed the company, the lack of loneliness.
“This was lovely, thank you,” she said as she hung a damp tea towel to dry on the oven’s rail.
“You must come again.”
“Yes…” She wasn’t quite ready to commit to another evening like this one, enjoyable as it had been. Now that she was about to leave, the awkwardness had returned, and she felt the strain of her smile as she went to collect her things. Andreas followed her, his hands in the pockets of his chinos, and Ava was very aware of his presence, the size and strength and sheer maleness of him, so different from Simon’s whippet leanness, gained from years of running and sailing.
“So…” Andreas stood on the veranda, holding the door open, so light spilled out onto the weathered boards, and Ava smiled again as she jangled her keys.
“Thank you for coming, Ava.” He stepped closer, the door swinging shut behind him, his gaze steady on her. Ava didn’t move; standing there, she realized she’d known this would happen, and now that it was here, she found she was almost anticipating it. How long since she’d been touched? Kissed? She couldn’t even remember the last time she and Simon had touched each other with affection, much less desire.
He smiled slightly as he took another step towards her, and Ava waited, feeling the hard thud of her heart, her keys biting into her palm, uncertainty and anticipation waging war within her.
Andreas lifted his hands and slid them along her jawbone, his fingers stealing up her skull so he was cradling her face. Ava waited, her heart still beating hard, her lips slightly parted.
“Ava…” Andreas whispered, and he took her silence as assent, which it was, as he lowered his head and kissed her.
The first brush of his lips against hers was a shock, because they didn’t feel like Simon’s lips, cool and firm. They didn’t taste like Simon, like minty toothpaste and tea; Simon never drank coffee. Andreas’s lips were warm and soft and rather fleshy, and he tasted of wine and honey.
I
t should have been pleasant, but it wasn’t. Instead Ava had to fight the deep-seated and instinctive urge to jerk away, to wipe her mouth. She remained still, and that only with effort, and after a moment Andreas pulled away, a rueful smile on his face.
“You are the first woman I’ve kissed since my wife.”
“Andreas—” Ava didn’t say anything else, because she didn’t know what to say.
“It is too soon, I know,” Andreas said quietly. “For both of us.” He cupped her cheek with his palm, then stepped away. “Goodnight, Ava.”
“Goodnight,” she whispered, and then she hurried to her car, because she had a sudden, inexplicable urge to burst into tears.
She kept it together all the way back to Iousidous and into her cottage, checking her phone and then her computer: no messages or emails.
She sat on her sofa and rested her head in her hands and wished, quite desperately, that things were different. She just didn’t know how to make them be so.
17
October 1942
Sophia stumbled out of the house, Dimitrios’s hand hard on her back. The cold air felt as sharp as a knife, cutting right through her. She pulled her shawl more tightly around her and gave Dimitrios what she hoped was a challenging look. She prayed he wouldn’t see how she trembled, and not from the cold.
“So where do we go from here?”
“We look for the drop.”
“The drop?”
“Where the SOE agents parachuted,” Dimitrios answered impatiently.
“The SOE agents?”
“Do you not know anything?” He spoke sharply, yet she still had the sense he was enjoying her ignorance. “Soldiers, Englezoi.”
English. They were looking for Englishmen. Perseus really hadn’t told her anything beyond the parachute drop.
She straightened, throwing her shoulders back. “And where are we meant to look for this—this drop?”