Page 99 of Modern Romance July 2025 #4-8

CHAPTER SIX

T HERE WERE ONLY a thousand people living on the island. Damian knew all of them at least by name.

After walking his grandmother into the clinic, he came outside to chat briefly with one of the locals, but pointed across the square where Carmel was picking over an outdoor display of knickknacks, cheap jewelry and beach bags.

“I’m with someone, but come see Zoia when you have time. She would enjoy a visit.” As he walked away, he was aware of the curious stare that followed him.

He hadn’t thought this through. In trying to please one person—his grandmother—he was about to become gossip for the entire community.

Carmel had a wide-brimmed straw hat on her head when he came up beside her. She held it in place as she tilted her head to look up at him.

“To protect my delicate English complexion?”

“Good idea.”

“I want to find something for Stella.” She left the hat on and looked through the doorway into the shop. “Do you think they have T-shirts that say My sister-in-law went to Greece for a divorce and all I got was this lousy T-shirt ?”

He shook his head at her irreverence, refusing to encourage it. “There’s an art gallery down the way. Local artists. You might find something there.”

She chose a sarong on her way to the payment counter and started to fish out her card, but he handed the proprietor some cash.

“You don’t have to do that,” Carmel said.

“It saves them some fees.” He exchanged a few friendly words with the woman, then they meandered down the alley, which was paved in flat, pale gray stones between bright, whitewashed homes.

“This is so pretty,” she commented.

It was. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d strolled the streets of his youth.

They hadn’t changed much. Tiny gardens bloomed with flowers or held tidy rows of tomatoes and peppers.

Some doors had a fresh coat of bright blue paint while others were faded.

People sat on stoops or drank coffee at wooden tables.

Some were eating a late lunch or enjoying an early ouzo.

Music and the smell of cooking food drifted from different open windows.

They arrived at the art gallery and entered to find an eclectic mix of pottery, jewelry, paintings and stone sculptures.

“What are you thinking to get her?” Damian asked.

“A tasteful carving of a phallus? That’s a joke. But I’d do it just see Atlas’s face when she unwrapped it. What has she told you? ” she asked with mock panic.

That playful sense of humor of hers had been as much a draw for him as the sex five years ago. He’d forgotten that she had made him laugh. Often. It annoyed him that she was so close to doing it again.

“You seem to like her,” he commented.

“Stella?” She glanced up from tilting her head to better view an intricate knot of metal ribbons.

“The first time I met her, I was genuinely horrible to her. I don’t really remember it.

It was five years ago. We took a ski holiday to Switzerland the winter after you and I…

” She waved between them, then grimaced at how it had ended.

“The second time I met her I was even worse. That was when Atlas brought her to home to meet Daddy.”

She took the lid off a glazed bowl and peered inside.

“Daddy was a perfect gentleman to you compared to how he treated Stella. I wasn’t any better.

Atlas should have walked out on both of us, but he got me to the clinic and Stella was so nice to me while I was there.

At first, I was highly suspicious. Like, what could she want, right?

But she texted a lot and sent me little gifts.

I’ve since learned that she’s been knocked around plenty by life, but she never crawls into a bottle to escape it.

She’s too good for Atlas, in my opinion, and he’s perfect, so that tells you how much I don’t deserve to call her my friend.

She insists, though. That’s how nice she is. ”

“You talk down about yourself a lot,” he noted.

She didn’t say anything, only gently set down a blown glass sculpture and moved to study an abstract painting on the wall.

“Did I strike a nerve? I was only making an observation,” he said.

“No, you’re right. I’m overcompensating.

” She shifted to another painting, this one a colorful oil of a local beach.

“Daddy is very superior. Nothing is ever his fault. I was the same way for a long time. Now I make a point of acknowledging my shortcomings to prove I’m not like him.

Also, I’m ashamed of my faults so I try to laugh at myself.

That way I don’t feel the embarrassment so deeply. ”

He actually hated to see her this humble. It was the boxer, bloody on the canvas. Get up. Keep fighting.

“You don’t have to do that around me,” he told her. “I’m already very familiar with your shortcomings.”

She slowly turned her head, brows arched.

“Was that over the line?”

“No. Sarcasm is my love language. Which you know. Flirt. What do you think of this?” She nodded at the painting.

“It takes you a minute to see that the mist is actually an image of Aphrodite rising from the water. I really like it.” She tilted her head.

“Also, I’ve called Stella a smoke show more than once so it works on that level, too.

I’m going to ask if they can ship it to Athens. ”

As they emerged from the shop, Carmel saw Damian check his phone.

“Is Zoia ready?”

“Not yet. Do you want to walk to the church?”

She looked at the long, zigzagging path that went up the hill to the bright white building perched near the top. “Is that where they sell the ice cream?”

“You’ve developed quite a sweet tooth, haven’t you?”

“It’s called self-care, Damian.” She did her best to sound condescending. “I’m staving off heat stroke.”

“I didn’t realize it was a medical emergency.” He waved her into an adjacent alley.

When they had their cones, they made their way to a shaded bench overlooking the sea.

“Can I ask—” She cut herself off as she realized he was watching her sweep her tongue along the ball of strawberry gelato atop her cone. Her heart lurched.

He moved his gaze to the horizon, his profile impassive.

After a moment, he said, “What did you want to ask me?”

“I wondered about your mom. I only bring it up because you mentioned her yesterday. I’ve always wondered if you ever heard from her,” she said tentatively.

“She’s dead,” he said flatly.

“Oh, my God! I’m so sorry. When did you learn that?”

“Someone gave me a box of her things a few years ago.” He bit into his orange gelato and crunchy cone, demolishing it without ceremony, then wiped his mouth and fingers with his paper napkin.

“Where was she? When— I’m sorry.” She gave herself a small shake. “You don’t have to tell me. It’s just that I’ve thought about her a lot over the years, hoping there was a good explanation for the way she disappeared.” At least when her mother disappeared from her life, it hadn’t been deliberate.

Damian had confided his confusion over pillow talk.

His mother had left him with his grandparents and he had never known his father.

He’d channeled his sense of loss and rejection into making himself bigger.

Proving his worth if only to himself where Carmel had gone the other way, letting the loss of her mother and her father’s manipulations erode her self-esteem.

She’d seen this as common ground, though. They’d both struggled to believe they were loved. She’d thought it made them the same, or at least people who were twisted in a way that allowed them to mesh into something that felt more whole. Soul mates, almost.

Then she had broken those fragile threads of connection, sweeping them away like an unwanted cobweb.

“You don’t have to tell me anything about it,” she murmured. She knew it remained deeply personal. Still, she glanced up at him, concerned for how it must still affect him.

Their gazes tangled and she felt all those old, silvery threads tug inside her chest.

He frowned toward the water.

“It was strange that she left me here alone,” he said somberly.

“We usually stayed here together, but she told Zoia she had a job interview and would be back in a few days. They presumed she went back to Athens. That’s where they called hospitals and lodged the police report when she didn’t come back.

She actually flew out of Paros to Malta. ”

“Paros? Why?”

“Probably because it was closer than going all the way back to Athens.” He shrugged.

“But was there really a job interview?”

“We think so. She rented a room at an unlicensed boardinghouse and paid up front. When she never came back for her things, the landlord put them in storage and forgot about it. After he died, his granddaughter was cleaning out his house to sell. She found her bags and thought the photos in her purse might have sentimental value. There was a ticket stub for the ferry to and from our island so she started there. She got Zoia’s details and Zoia called me.

I flew to Malta and, once I knew where my mother had been, I was able to get a police report.

There’d been a hit-and-run on a woman at that time, but she didn’t have identification. ”

“Because it was in her room. And the landlord never reported her missing.”

“Exactly. They filed her as an illegal immigrant. She was cremated and put in an unmarked grave.”

“That’s so tragic. I’m very sorry, Damian.” She touched his arm.

His muscles flexed under her touch before he protectively pulled his arm into his body. “It’s better than believing she didn’t want me.”

She searched his expression, hurting so badly for him, she might never recover from it.

Something tickled her knuckle and she realized her gelato was melting down her fingers. It was about to plop onto her thigh.

She hurried over to a nearby bin and threw it away, wiping her fingers with the napkin, but her hands remained tacky.

When she turned back, Damian was looking at his phone.

“Zoia is ready to go home.” His expression was back to being remote.