Page 4 of Footprints in the Sand (Coleman #13)
Chapter Four
W hen Dimitra and Eva first discussed the potential arrangement—a house swap like something out of a television show—they said two months, maybe three.
“I don’t want to let myself off the hook too easily,” Dimitra said.
“I want to fully immerse myself in Martha’s Vineyard.
I want to really experience what it’s like to live there. ”
Eva said, “And I want to escape for as long as I can.”
Dimitra laughed nervously. Eva hadn’t mentioned what she was escaping, and although it was terribly interesting, Dimitra didn’t want to pester her for more details. On the phone, Rachelle had simply said that Eva needed to get away for a while, and Dimitra had understood that to her bones.
Rachelle knew that Dimitra needed to get away. Dimitra had told her enough during their nights out in Rome. And maybe Rachelle had realized the deep, impenetrable sorrow behind Dimitra’s eyes was not something that could be dealt with easily.
It needed moving and shaking. It needed change.
Now, the day before Dimitra’s departure, she was finishing up a deep clean of the house she’d shared with Kostos and trying to see the space from the perspective of a twenty-eight-year-old American woman.
In Dimitra’s mind, Americans had enormous houses with big grassy yards; they had big-screen televisions and fireplaces and golden retrievers.
She hoped Eva wasn’t going to be disappointed in Dimitra’s two-bedroom, one-bathroom house on the hill overlooking the turquoise Aegean.
More than that, she hoped the men in the village would leave Eva alone, or at least not pester her too much.
Eva was coming all this way to get some perspective, or something.
She didn’t need some overly romantic Greek man to “sweep her off her feet.” Nobody did.
There was a knock on the front door followed by the scream of the hinges.
It was her sister who always let herself in.
“You really need to do something about those hinges!” she called as she breezed in, walking through the halls to find Dimitra in her art studio, packing up the rest of her paints and brushes and drawing pads and vacuuming the corners, under the easels and desks and chairs.
She wanted to give Eva the impression that she could use any space in the house if she wanted to. Art was a form of redemption.
But how much help did Eva really want from Dimitra? They were strangers.
“There you are.” Athena stood in the studio doorway with her hands on her hips. “I really don’t know why you’re doing this. Mom’s sick with worry.”
Dimitra half rolled her eyes and went over to hug her sister. “I’ll miss you, you know? Even though you’re annoying.”
Athena flared her nostrils. “How can I help you? Put me to work.”
“I did everything already.”
“Then pour me a glass of wine,” Athena ordered. “I want to say a final goodbye to my sister. Imagine me, having an entire summer in Aliki without you! I’ll be miserable.”
They went to the rooftop with a bottle of wine and two glasses and gazed at the fading light of the gorgeous eighty-degree day. Athena was talking about her son Nico, a thirty-year-old fisherman who was going through yet another breakup.
“Would it kill him to settle down and give me a few grandchildren?” Athena asked. “Would it kill him to do what I did? Does he respect me so little?”
Dimitra bristled. “Nico has always wanted to go his own way. He needs to get off this island. He needs to see something other than everything he’s ever known. And being a fisherman? That’s the first step in staying right where you are, waiting for something to happen.”
Athena gave her a dark look. She obviously didn’t want her son to go away. “Don’t you dare tell him that,” she said.
Dimitra promised she wouldn’t and smiled. She and her sister always got under one another’s skin, but this sort of commitment to one another, the commitment to annoy one another and to love one another and to watch out for one another, was a rare thing.
“So you’re going to pick up Eva at the ferry the day after tomorrow?” Dimitra recited.
“I’m going to pick up the strange American girl staying in your house for some reason the day after tomorrow, yes,” Athena said. “And we’re going to invite her to the family party, just like you said we had to.”
“I want her to feel welcomed,” Dimitra said.
“You know how we Greeks are. We can’t help but be welcoming,” Athena said, as though she was exhausted by the very prospect of it.
Not long after that, their mother and father dropped by spontaneously with another bottle of wine and an eagerness to see their Dimitra one final time before she dropped off the face of the earth.
Like Athena, Anna was agitated about the arrangement and had to hold herself back from asking too many questions.
But it was Dimitra’s father who said, “Our Dimitra has always been the explorer of the family. You’re like a woman in the old mythology, darling.
You go into worlds you don’t know anything about, and you battle the great demons we don’t know anything about.
” He sipped his wine, his eyes glassy with drink.
“We need to celebrate your bravery and your beauty. And we will wait for your return, so you can tell us everything you’ve learned about the great universe beyond our island. ”
Dimitra’s heart swelled with love for her father. Because he supported her, Athena and Anna begrudgingly accepted Dimitra’s “adventurous” spirit and made a toast.
But Dimitra couldn’t tell any of them the truth about what was really going on in her mind: in going to Martha’s Vineyard, she didn’t feel adventurous in the slightest. She felt like a woman on the brink of going insane, who was doing everything in her effort to keep herself in check.