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4
Santorini
The front of the house was positively quaint, Anna thought. It was nestled between two hills in a sort of mini valley. Three white stone arches covered in vines framed a door in the center and two windows, one on each side. A stone wall extended from each side of the front, with a gate several meters to the left and another beyond that. Anna walked through the center archway, looking around as she went. The front of the house was covered in climbing vines, crowded at the bottom by weeds. The wooden front door was beautiful and weathered; it looked like it had been there for hundreds of years, but it was still strong and sturdy.
Eirini called for Anna to follow her through the first gate, bringing her into a square courtyard, about fifteen feet on each side with a table in the middle. The walls were covered in the same climbing vines as the front of the house, nearly obscuring the white paint underneath.
As she followed Eirini through the next gate to the back garden, Anna found herself looking at the most beautiful little cottage she could imagine. It was made of the same whitewashed stone, but it was covered in gorgeous pink flowers. It was small -- Anna imagined it couldn’t have been more than one or two rooms -- but it was the kind of place that Anna would have booked immediately if she’d found it online.
“Is that…?” Anna pointed at the cottage and looked at Eirini, not wanting to make another mistake but hoping dearly that this was the summer house.
“This is your father’s cottage,” she said, “so, yes, I guess it is legally yours now. For some reason.”
Anna ignored the last part and walked up to the cottage, peeking through the window next to the door. It was dirty, but she could see a bed, and another door further on. She turned around to look at the garden, but she couldn’t see where the entrance was. “How do you get back here?”
Eirini sighed. “You can go through the courtyard, or you can use the far gate. But that’s difficult to get to. You will need to put in a path, eventually. The courtyard is the only part of our property you have access to.”
Anna nodded in understanding. She wasn’t about to try to cross this woman, though she would have to see about getting that path put in. Maybe a fence between the houses as well.
Eirini extended a set of keys to Anna, so she moved a few steps closer to her and took them. With that, Eirini turned around and walked back into the house, closing the door behind her.
Christos was sticking his head around the door from the courtyard, and he stepped into the garden after Eirini had gone. “Is Giorgos house,” he said, slowly and deliberately. “Eirini love Giorgos… very much. Is hard.” And then he turned and followed Eirini inside.
Anna watched her grandfather go inside, wishing he spoke better English so she could avoid Eirini. She turned around to inspect her new home, and as she saw it she felt giddy yet again. This would definitely make a great rental property. Maybe there was a rental agency they could work with, and they wouldn’t have to sell it. Then she and Lizzy could come whenever they wanted, and…
… and nothing. After her icy reception from Eirini, Anna knew that she would never be welcome here. She would have to part with the summer house. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy a few days in it. She’d just have to find somewhere to spend her time where she could fit in with the other tourists.
Anna unlocked the door and went inside. As she had expected, it was just one big room with a bathroom in the corner. It was immediately obvious, however, that it was in no state to rent out or sell as it stood. The small kitchen in the far-right corner was filled with rust-covered appliances, and one cabinet door was hanging by a hinge. The mattress on the bed looked like ones Anna had seen in back alleys in Manhattan. The wooden floor was almost completely covered in a thick layer of dust. And while the bathroom had a lovely freestanding tub in it, there was no flooring and no sink. This must have been what Nikos meant when he said she wouldn’t have it on the market in a week. The summer house was going to need a lot of work. She just had to determine if that work was her responsibility.
Anna pulled out her phone to ring Lizzy, and, after taking a moment to connect to the Greek network, a flood of messages came through. Unable to leave the notifications alone, Anna went through each one: a confirmation that the room she was subletting would be held for her; a text from the pizza delivery near her apartment in New York offering “15% off” for the next three days, and a notification that she had beat Lizzy in their latest round of Words With Friends.
Next, she reluctantly opened her work emails, with the intention of just checking there was nothing important waiting for her, but saw a message from Marcus’s assistant waiting in her inbox. The subject line was “Moving forward,” so she clicked into it.
Hi, Anna. Due to your recent tardiness, the second documented offense of its kind …
The first had been the morning after she found out her father had died. She had only been twenty minutes late. As for her second offense, she didn’t even realize she had been written up again. The email continued:
… we no longer feel you are a good fit for MarMac. We would like to give you your two-week notice, which will begin immediately. We are aware that you are away on personal matters, so while we will pay you for the two weeks, you should consider your employment with MarMac, Inc. to be complete. Please return the attached paperwork in order to be eligible for the next two weeks’ pay.
Anna couldn’t believe what she was reading. He was firing her before she could send in her notice. This was a new low for Marcus; not content with sweeping Anna under the rug because he was done with her, he had to have the last word, too. She set a reminder for the next morning to fill out the paperwork before tapping out her reply.
Really classy, Marcus. Thanks for the heads up.
His response came quickly:
Don’t be a child, Anna. At least I gave you severance pay. Just remember that you’ll never be a photographer if you can’t take your work seriously.
Anna groaned and slammed her phone down. He was so infuriating. At least this meant she would be able to stay a bit longer to get the house sold. As she looked around again, she began making a mental list of everything that the new owner would have to do: replace the mattress, tile the bathroom, buy a sink, repair the cabinets, replace the oven, clean the refrigerator, clean the floors, clean the windows… okay, clean everything. And replace a lot of things. Or maybe she was supposed to do all that before putting it on the market? If so, this was going to cost her a lot of time and a lot of money. But, then again, she had a little bit of both to spare.
She picked up her phone again, this time to call Lizzy.
“Hey, Banana!” Lizzy shouted. “You there yet? I was beginning to worry about you.”
“Yeah, I’m here,” Anna said. “I fell asleep for a while. Sorry. But I’m at the summer house now.”
“How was your journey from the airport?” Lizzy asked, and Anna could tell that she was smiling mischievously on the other end of the line.
“Horrible,” she said. “Some guy named Nikos picked me up and we had to walk all the way to the resort where Christos works.”
“I told him to drive you!”
“You told him?” Anna asked. “How do you know Nikos?”
“I met him at Dad’s funeral,” Lizzy said. “I thought you might enjoy having him as your escort.”
“Very funny,” Anna said. “I’m not really in the market for a Greek booty call. A Greek summer house is about all I can handle at the moment.”
“Fine, fine, fine,” Lizzy relented with a sigh. “And what do you think of the summer house?”
“Well… it definitely has potential…”
“Potential? That’s how they describe absolute dumps on home-improvement reality shows!”
“Yeah, well, I think that would be pretty fitting, given that it looks like a crack den at the moment.” Anna walked around as she spoke, opening cabinets to get a sense of what was there. She tried not to balk at the state of some of the dishes, but she knew they would be getting thrown out rather than cleaned.
Lizzy sighed. “Oh, Anna, I’m sorry. I really thought it would be in better condition. Eirini and Christos must not have been in there since Dad died.”
Anna opened her mouth to respond, but as she did, she saw an air mattress and some bedding in a cabinet that looked decidedly cleaner than everything else she had seen.
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” she said, silently thanking Christos for the fact that she wouldn’t have to sleep on the mattress currently on the bed. “But it’s nothing I can’t handle. I just need to pay to fix it up first …”
“How much are we talking?”
Anna did some quick mental math. “Maybe a couple thousand? I need new furniture, a new oven, a sink for the bathroom, and some tiles for the bathroom floor.”
“Anna, that’s a lot of money for us,” Lizzy said. “Remember, we don’t get paid here. Plus, isn’t that a lot to do before you have to get back for work?”
“Well, actually,” Anna replied, “about that…”
“What happened? Did you get more time off at work?”
“Something like that,” Anna said. She didn’t want to tell Lizzy she had been fired; that would mean telling her about what had been happening with Marcus. “The point is that I can stay as long as I need to. I’ve got my savings and a pay check coming through soon. Then I can just recoup the money for the repairs from the sale before we split it.”
“That sounds perfect,” Lizzy said. “You’re the best.” Anna could hear noise in the background. “Hey, Banana, I’ve got to go, but thanks again for handling this. Just remember to have an open mind with Dad’s family. There’s two sides to every story.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Anna said, rolling her eyes. That had been Lizzy’s line ever since she’d gone to the funeral. But Anna wasn’t interested in sides. She was interested in getting out of Greece as soon as possible.
“Let me know what else you need. Love you!”
“Love you, too,” Anna said, but the line was already disconnected. She put down the phone and began to roll out the air mattress, but her stomach began to growl. It had been hours since she last ate, she realised. She poked around in the cupboards and refrigerator, but there was nothing to be found. She pulled a granola bar out of her bag but decided to save it for breakfast. She’d need energy if she was going to walk to get food and supplies the next morning.
She plugged in the air mattress and started to inflate it, but it was incredibly slow. So she sat down at the table and opened up a new game of Words With Friends. A few minutes later, the mattress was about two thirds full, and Anna was just playing a very weak “team” onto the game board when she heard a light knock on the door. As she opened it, she saw a bowl of stew and a chunk of bread on a tray on top of a cardboard box. She looked over just in time to see the door to the main house click shut. Anna smiled as she brought the tray inside. She would have to find a way to thank Christos for helping her out. She set it down on the table and went back for the cardboard box. She put it on the bed and opened the top. Inside were a couple of clean glasses, a couple different kinds of towels, a dustpan and brush, a few rags and some bottles of various cleaners. At the bottom there was a note that said keep the dishes.
The air mattress pump started to whine in a slightly higher pitch, and Anna saw that it was full, so she turned it off. Almost immediately, she could hear a faint whistling coming from somewhere. The hole must have been what made it fill so slowly. This was going to be a long night.
Anna sat down and ate the stew. It was one of the best meals she had eaten in ages. It certainly beat the falafel cart down the street from her apartment, and it even beat some of the “fancy” restaurants she had been to with Marcus. She ate as much as she could with the spoon, then she finished the rest with the bread.
When she was done, she pulled a rag and a bottle of dish soap out of the box and washed her dishes in the sink. Then she cleaned the countertop so she would have a clean place to dry her dishes and laid out a towel for them to rest on.
Anna walked into the bathroom, and as she turned the corner she saw that opposite the bathtub was a huge picture window that looked out over the island. She could see from here how high up they were, nestled into the hills they had climbed on the way here. And between two of those hills was just a peek of what Anna knew from a quick check of the map on her phone was the caldera on the other side of the island. Her father must have built the summer house with a window here just so he could get that view, though why he wanted it from the bathroom was beyond her.
The stars were shining in the sky, and Anna took a moment to appreciate that she was as far from home as she had ever been. Lizzy had come back to Greece for their father’s funeral, but Anna had elected to stay home rather than grieve the man who had left her as a child. The farthest she had been was to Vancouver with her mother when she was a teenager and Cancun for one spring break. She had been meaning to get out and see the world but living in Manhattan on an assistant’s salary was hard. She had barely managed to save the five thousand dollars in her bank account, mostly leftover excess from the student loans she was still paying off. Most months she could barely make her rent, much less buy a transatlantic plane ticket.
And that transatlantic flight was starting to take its toll. Anna slipped the sheet over the air mattress, turning the pump on for a few desperate minutes before bedtime. She didn’t have a pillow, so she filled the pillowcase with her softest clothing and tried to nestle in. And despite it being the least comfortable sleeping arrangement she had experienced since slumber parties on the floor as a child, Anna fell asleep as soon as her head hit the makeshift pillow.
5
The next morning, Anna awoke to a knock on the door. She rolled over on the now almost fully deflated air mattress, hair matted and mouth dry, wondering what time it was. The light coming through the window suggested it was fully daytime outside. The heat confirmed her assessment as Anna felt a trickle of sweat roll down her leg.
“Anna,” came a muffled voice along with the next knock. “Anna, are you in there?”
She groaned an affirmation, but the person at the door did not hear her. She propped herself up on her elbows and blew a strand of hair out of her face.
“Whoareyouandwhatdoyouwant?” she mumbled, barely able to keep her eyes open. But it did no good. Anna was forced to stand up, adjust her pajamas, and walk over to the door. As she opened it, a far-too-awake Nikos stood in front of her with a cup of coffee in his hand. She took it, shut the door, re-locked it, and went back to the air mattress, her bum touching the floor as she sat down.
“Anna, you have to let me in!” Nikos said through the door.
“Go away!” she shouted with as much volume as she could muster. “It’s too early!” Then she pulled the blanket over her head.
She heard the muffled sound of his now-all-too-familiar chuckle. “Early? It’s barely even morning anymore.”
Anna rolled over and pressed the home button on her phone. The screen said 11:47.
She jolted awake. How could she have slept so late? Damn jet lag, she thought.
She shuffled back over to the door and turned the lock, dreading seeing the smug expression on Nikos’s face. But as the door opened, he just smiled, not a hint of smugness in sight.
“Tired from the flight?” he asked.
“I guess so.”
“Makes sense,” he said. He pointed inside. “So, may I come in?”
Anna stepped aside to let Nikos in and shut the door behind him. As he pulled a chair out and sat down in front of the table, Anna walked over to retrieve the coffee he had brought her, then back over to the table, where she sat down opposite him.
“So, did you sleep okay?” he asked.
Anna looked over at the almost-flat air mattress. “Not great,” she said, rubbing at her neck. “But anything beats sleeping on that grubby thing.” She pointed to the mattress on the bed frame.
“Yeah, your dad had been meaning to replace that. Never got around to it, I guess.”
Anna stiffened at the mention of her father. “You knew Giorgos?”
Nikos smiled and looked curiously at her. “You call your dad Giorgos?”
“Well, he wasn’t really much of a dad,” Anna said as she took another sip and looked down at the table, her lips pursed due partly to the coffee and partly to the subject matter. He had been a fine dad for the first twenty percent of Anna’s life. But his record wasn’t stellar after that. Non-existent, in fact.
“Not to you, maybe.”
Anna looked up, and Nikos was staring back at her with something that looked suspiciously like pity.
“Do you want to tell me why you’re here?”
“I’m here to help you,” he said. “You want to fix up the summer house, and I’m here to lend a hand.”
“Thanks,” Anna said, “but I’m not really sure where to start.”
“Well, Christos said that we could use his tools, and we have the truck for the day, but you’ll have to buy materials,” Nikos said, walking around the room. “So why don’t you make a list, and I’ll meet you around front with the truck?”
She nodded.
“Great. See you out front in five.”
As Nikos left, Anna pulled a pen out of her bag. She didn’t have any paper, so she tore one of the flaps off the cardboard box and began to make a list as she noticed things:
Mattress
Pillow
Oven
Sink
Plumbing stuff
Tiles for bathroom floor
Curtains
Curtain rods x2
Vacuum
Dishes
Pots, pans & utensils
Place settings
Trash can
Toilet paper
Food
Bathroom toiletries
Paper
Artwork for walls
Bath mat
Laundry hamper
Hangers
Area rug
As Anna made her list, she realized she had gone from trying to get the summer house to be sellable to putting down luxuries; things that would only matter if she were going to stay for longer. She crossed them off the list. She certainly wouldn’t need a laundry hamper for just a couple of weeks.
List complete, Anna went outside, to find Nikos speaking with her grandmother at the front of the house by the truck. Eirini was happily chatting to him, but the moment she saw Anna, she dropped her smile and squeezed past into the courtyard.
“Can you believe that?” Anna said, gesturing behind her as she climbed in the truck. “You would think that having her long-lost granddaughter come to visit would be a bit more exciting for her.”
Nikos shook his head as he climbed in and started the engine. “It’s not you,” he said. “It’s the situation. None of them knew Giorgos was leaving the summer house to anyone. And it’s not like anyone was keeping you away from visiting them before now, were they?”
“That’s a bit unfair,” Anna said as Nikos reversed down the drive. “Excuse me for not wanting anything to do with the family of the man who cheated on my mother and abandoned his family.”
Nikos slammed on the brakes hard enough that Anna was thrown forward in her seat.
“What the hell was that for?” she shouted, turning to him.
“Maybe it’s better if we don’t talk about Giorgos, okay?” he said, frowning. “I understand why you don’t like him based on the story you know, but that wasn’t my experience with him, and I won’t sit around and listen to you complain about him when you clearly don’t know the whole story.”
Anna blushed and looked at her lap. She felt she had every right to complain about her father, but maybe she needed to realize that she was the odd one out here. And she didn’t want to push Nikos away. She needed his help too much if she was going to get out of Greece as soon as possible.
“Fine,” Anna said. “Let’s just fix up his summer house and be around his family without ever once mentioning him. Sounds easy.” She looked up at Nikos, who was still frowning, and rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine, for real. No Giorgos talk.”
Nikos nodded, put the truck back into gear, and started down the road.
“So tell me about yourself, then,” he said as they turned onto the main road.
“Not much to tell,” Anna said. “I’m from Connecticut, which I’m sure you know from he-who-must-not-be-named. I moved to New York City about a year and a half ago to work at an art gallery. I spend too much time at work, not enough time with my sister, and too much of my salary on cheap wine and falafels. And now I’m halfway around the world collecting inheritance property. Does that about do it?”
“Do you have a boyfriend?” Nikos asked, smiling slyly at Anna.
“No,” she said, perhaps a bit too sharply. Nikos noticed.
“Sounds like there’s a story there.”
“Does it?” She wasn’t about to take the bait. “I assure you, there is no boyfriend.”
“So when do you have to be back at this art gallery job of yours?” he asked.
“Well, the thing is…” Anna wasn’t sure what to say. She hadn’t even told Lizzy that she was fired. But was she going to try to convince Marcus to give her her job back? No, the thought of that made her feel sick. So what was the harm in saying so? “I don’t really have a job to go back to,” she admitted.
“So, your stay is open-ended, then?” Nikos asked, and he almost sounded excited. “Maybe you should see a bit more of the island. Make sure you get the full experience before you go back to the city.”
“We’ll see,” Anna said. “I only want to be here as long as I have to be in order to get the summer house on the market.”
Nikos laughed. “I think you’ll find that will be much longer than a couple of weeks. We’re on island time here, and then there’s Greek time on top of that.”
“What is Greek time?”
Nikos chuckled again. “Let’s just say your social life here will involve a lot of waiting around for people.”
Anna shrugged. “We’ll see. Plus, I don’t think I’ll have enough time to develop much of a social life.”
“We’ll see about that,” Nikos said as they turned into a car park. “Okay, first things first, let’s get you an actual bed to sleep on.”
A couple of hours later, Anna ran out of the McDonald’s in Fira with a greasy brown bag and two drinks. They had tried to fit through the drive-through, but Anna’s new mattress was sticking up too high, so Nikos had made her run in for the food, his only demand for payment for the day of help.
“Two Big Macs, chicken nuggets with sweet and sour sauce, large fries and a Coke,” Anna said, her own burger and fries taking up very little space in the bag. “I still can’t believe you can eat that much.”
“Seeing is believing,” Nikos said. “Now let’s get back to your dad’s place so you can see.”
“It’s my place,” Anna said quietly.
“What?”
“I said it’s my place now,” Anna said, louder this time. “I know everyone wishes I would have just stayed away, but it’s my place now. And I think I deserve it, what after going without a father for the last two decades.”
Nikos sighed as he stared at the road ahead. “I don’t think anyone feels that way – that you should have stayed away.”
Anna scoffed. “Yeah, right. You’re telling me Eirini wouldn’t prefer to have her backyard empty of unwanted grandchildren right now?”
He hesitated a beat before responding. “I thought we weren’t going to talk about this?”
“Yeah, well, we’re not,” Anna said, crossing her arms. “But that response does sort of prove my point.” Plus, it’s not nice to be completely ignored by your only family for thousands of miles.
They made the rest of the drive in silence. When they pulled up to the house a few minutes later, Anna took the food and a couple of shopping bags from the back. Nikos grabbed the mattress and lifted it over his head, following behind her.
“You sure you don’t want to wait until I can help with that?” Anna asked.
“I’m fine. Just carry the light stuff and leave the heavy lifting to the pros,” Nikos said, though Anna could hear a strain in his voice. She just chuckled and continued toward the summer house, leaving the gates open for Nikos behind her. She turned around as she walked through the back gate and chuckled again when she saw him trying to squeeze the mattress down so it would fit through the front gate.
As she walked up to the front door of the summer house, she saw another stew waiting outside for her. She looked from it to the McDonald’s bag and felt a small pang of guilt. She hoped Nikos could eat as much as she claimed. She unlocked the door and stepped carefully around the bowl as she went inside, dropping the bags on the table.
Then, behind her, Anna heard the crunch of something breaking. She turned around to see Nikos frozen, facing away from the door, holding the mattress behind him, the bottom of one of his pant legs soaked in stew, the bowl broken under his boot.
Anna started to laugh.
“Okay, that is not funny,” Nikos said, but he started to laugh as well. He picked his leg up to inspect it.
“No, don’t move,” Anna said between chuckles. “I want to make sure you don’t track any shards into the house.” She reached into one of the shopping bags and grabbed a rag, the price tag still attached, then started picking up pieces of the bowl and putting them on the tray.
“Smells like carrot,” Nikos said, still laughing. “What a shame.”
Anna finally managed to pull herself together and began picking shards from the tread of Nikos’s boot. As she pulled it closer to get a better look, he nearly fell, only just catching himself with the mattress, and it set the two of them off laughing again.
When they eventually managed to make it into the summer house, Nikos swapped the mattresses and immediately collapsed onto the new one while Anna dealt with the mess.
“Hey, lazy bones, no way. We’ve still got an oven and a bathroom sink to unload from that truck.”
“Come on, Anna, it’s nap time. We’ve worked so hard.”
“Not a chance,” Anna said, pulling at his arm, but he shooed her away. “I only have two weeks to get this place in working order. I’m not going to waste perfectly good hours of the day resting.”
“Says the girl who slept until noon.” He didn’t move, but instead began pretend-snoring. For just a moment, Anna stood there admiring the sight of him lying on her bed. She didn’t hate it. But she shook it off. She had more important things to focus on.
“Fine,” Anna said, walking back to the table. “I guess I’ll just have to eat all this food myself.”
Nikos rolled over and propped himself up on one elbow. “I’d like to see you try.”
“I wouldn’t have to if you would just come eat,” she said, holding an order of fries in front of her, wafting the scent toward him with her hand.
“Fine,” Nikos said, hopping up and trying to grab the fries from her hand. But Anna pulled them away.
“Not until you help me bring in the rest,” she said.
“But it will be cold by then!” he said, pouting and tilting his head.
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have stepped in stew or tried to take a nap.”
Nikos groaned. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you pay for lunch.”
“That’s right,” Anna said, putting the fries back in the bag and guiding him toward the door. “Now let’s go earn it.”
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