Page 13 of Footprints in the Sand (Coleman #13)
Chapter Thirteen
I t’d been more than a week since Estelle’s reading, more than a week and a half since Dimitra left Greece, and Dimitra found herself in the front seat of Oriana’s SUV, slamming to a stop on Fifth Avenue as Oriana and Meghan squabbled about something Dimitra couldn’t follow.
(She knew the dynamic of sisterhood and knew that it was often difficult to understand if you were on the outside.
She and Athena were certainly incomprehensible to most of their peers.)
Dimitra hadn’t been to Manhattan in many years, not since she’d been an entirely different person during the early days of her marriage to Kostos, but she thought the smells were the same: grease and hot concrete and hot dog trucks, exhaust and too many people and so much life. After island life, it was a wild rush.
Oriana pulled into the hotel they’d decided on—The Wallace—and handed the keys over to a sharply dressed valet.
Dimitra wasn’t accustomed to such luxury.
She got out and opened the back of the SUV, where ten of her paintings had been stored gently and wrapped in cloth.
She didn’t want to leave them in the SUV by themselves.
Oriana understood immediately and asked three bellhops to take the paintings carefully to their suites upstairs.
The fact that Oriana had immediately booked them suites rather than regular hotel rooms still boggled Dimitra’s mind.
But Oriana had explained many times that it was because she assumed she and Dimitra would sell most, if not all, of the paintings that weekend.
“Let’s splurge a little bit to get in the mood for our big win,” Oriana said.
Dimitra, who’d never really had money before, couldn’t fathom it. But she knew better than to protest. Give yourself over to it , she thought.
Upstairs, Oriana, Meghan, and Dimitra parted ways for a little while, saying they’d meet in an hour to go shopping, grab a drink, and prepare for the party tonight.
The suite had a mind-boggling view of Manhattan and Central Park, one that stopped Dimitra in her tracks.
For a moment, she had a strange urge to call Kostos and tell him what she was seeing.
You’ll never believe it, she imagined saying.
But Kostos was gone, lost in the Aegean Sea. Her heart cracked.
Instead, she called her sister. Athena answered on the second ring.
“There you are. My long-lost sister,” Athena said, sounding grumpy.
“Nice to hear your voice, too,” Dimitra said sarcastically.
“You run off and abandon us and leave us with this little American girl!” Athena cried. “Nico has already taken a liking to her, obviously, because he falls in love with everyone. But what’s going to happen when she leaves? And why can’t he just focus his attention on a nice Greek island girl?”
Dimitra giggled. She should have guessed that Nico would try to swoop in on beautiful Eva. “Eva is too sensible for him,” she guessed, although she’d never met the girl in person.
“I don’t know about that. You should have seen her dancing around at the family party.”
“Family parties are for dancing!” Dimitra said.
“Aphrodite has decided they’re best friends, too,” Athena said. “That American girl is going to steal both of my children away from me! You know that all the young people want to leave the island these days.”
Dimitra was beginning to regret the call. She’d wanted to brag about her trip to Manhattan, not listen to her sister’s very real fears of losing her kids.
“Tell me,” Athena said, “when is your little adventure coming to a close?”
But just then, there was a knock on the hotel door. “I have to run,” Dimitra said, grateful to have an excuse. “I’ll text you later.”
“Ugh. Fine.” Athena paused. “I love you, but I’m not happy with you right now.”
“I’m not surprised. I love you, too,” Dimitra said with a laugh in her voice.
When she opened the hotel door, she found Oriana and Meghan dressed and ready to go. Dimitra threw on a shade of lipstick and apologized. “I wanted to call my sister. I lost track of time.”
Meghan looked excited. “Has your sister met Eva?”
“She has! She’s been watching out for her and inviting her to things,” Dimitra said, putting false joy in her voice. “She says that everyone is taking to her in the village. She thinks her son has a crush on her.”
Meghan was very suddenly stricken. “Oh.”
“Don’t worry,” Dimitra said. “I don’t think it’s serious.”
“I hope not,” Meghan admitted, her eyes to the ground. “It’s my nightmare that she’ll fall in love and never come back.”
“But you want her to find herself,” Oriana reminded her. “You want her to be able to see herself beyond that horrible relationship.”
“Yes,” Meghan said quietly, but she refused to say anything else.
On the walk to the little wine bar down the street, Dimitra hung back and gave herself a silent pep talk.
That evening, she was going to do what she’d told Kostos she never wanted to.
She was going all out on selling her art.
If she ever wanted her career to go anywhere, anywhere “real,” she needed to put her face out there.
She needed to meet the high rollers of Manhattan.
Before the fishing trip that had ruined her life and ended his, Kostos had pushed Dimitra to make different and more sellable art.
It was something they’d fought about often.
Dimitra had said she didn’t want to make silly art for tourists.
She wanted to create art that echoed her soul.
She wanted to make art that mattered to her.
Otherwise, she might as well stop. Kostos couldn’t fathom why she didn’t want to make more money.
He pointed out his friend, who owned a few hotels and was fast becoming a millionaire.
He pointed out his other friend, who owned several restaurants and had purchased another house on another island.
“Don’t you want more than this?” Kostos had asked her.
Dimitra shook those memories from her mind. She didn’t like to think about them. She liked to remember Kostos as a kind and loving and loyal and honest man. She didn’t like to remember his greed.
Everyone’s greedy , she reminded herself. Everyone needs and needs .
“We’ll be broke forever,” Kostos had said during one of their last fights. “Or you’ll be broke forever. I’ll figure something out.”
Dimitra hadn’t understood what he meant.
At the wine bar, Oriana provided Dimitra with a bit more background information about the client hosting the party tonight, a client who had spent many millions of dollars on art over the years. “He believes in giving back,” Oriana explained, “and he gets bored with the art on his walls in a snap.”
Dimitra asked, “Should we have brought my paintings with us tonight?”
Oriana shook her head. “He wants to get to know the artist behind the art first. After that, he’ll decide.”
Dimitra’s heart pumped with a mix of intrigue and fear. Meeting this wealthy client felt like a challenge she had to meet head-on. She couldn’t be afraid.
The penthouse apartment of William Cottrill was located in the Upper West Side and offered another startling view of the park.
When the elevator doors opened to bring Oriana, Meghan, and Dimitra into the fold, Dimitra felt immediately underdressed and messy, her hair in wild gray-and-black ringlets that contrasted the sleek bobs and shining straight hair around her.
Electro beats filled the air, and people walked slowly and cooly around the massive apartment, showing off their slender waists and their toned arms. Bartenders and servers milled about with trays of appetizers and spritzes and stronger cocktails.
Because Dimitra was nervous, she opted for a negroni, then shoved a stuffed mushroom in her mouth and nearly choked.
It was incredibly delicious. She guessed it was the single most expensive stuffed mushroom she’d ever had.
Almost immediately when they arrived, Oriana was pulled into conversation with other high-rolling Manhattanites, and Meghan and Dimitra made their way alone, laughing together and gazing out the window.
Meghan confessed, “I never feel comfortable at these things,” and then told Dimitra a very soft-spoken story about Oriana’s early years in this field, how she’d accidentally sold a big client a forged art piece.
“She could have been ruined,” Meghan whispered.
Dimitra was amazed. What a scandal!
“Oriana never would have done it on purpose,” Meghan said. “Her best friend was responsible for the forgery. Sometimes I think about that. How can we trust the people we’re closest to?”
Dimitra filled her mouth with her cocktail and felt her heart thud with recognition.
But before long, Meghan was pulled into a conversation with another woman whose daughter had just “moved halfway around the world to Japan for no reason,” and they were commiserating.
Dimitra felt guilty and moved away from them, eyeing the guests, wondering which of them was the “high-paying client” Dimitra was supposed to meet before the night was through.
Before long, Dimitra found herself in a side room, eyeing the art tucked away in here.
Much of it was incredibly strange and exciting, art that broke new ground and demanded fresh perspectives.
It made her want to talk to the artists, to ask them how they felt about their work being displayed in a room that, it seemed, people very rarely entered.
Was that what she wanted for her own pieces? Did she want them to be hidden away like this—in exchange for money? It felt so purposeless.
She walked farther into the room and discovered a long glass table, within which were displayed numerous artifacts.
The artifacts took her breath away. They were old marble sculptures, old papyrus texts, things from Ancient Egypt, Ancient Rome, and Ancient Greece.
So much history was here, hidden away. Did anyone even look at these anymore?