Chapter Three #2
On the rare occasions he came to the villa, Thanasis stayed in one of the cottages set apart from the main house.
He enjoyed the walk, and the privacy, and there was something in him that no number of years in gray and rainy London could repress.
That something that loved without reservation the brightness of a Greek day.
The scent of sweet flowers on the breeze, and the silvery olive leaves as they took in the sun.
And, always, that gleaming sea that waited in the distance no matter where he looked. That wild Aegean blue, forever just there, just out of reach.
As he walked, he could pretend that there was nothing to worry about but this. The weight of a summer afternoon. The songs of the birds in the trees. The endless blue sky above and the whitewashed walls of all the buildings that seem to beckon the blue closer, then bring it deeper.
But soon enough, all he could see was the sprawl of his father’s pet project.
The original villa that had stood on the site dated back to a time when the Zachariases were little more than goat herders.
It was Thanasis’s great-grandfather who had started the business and had renovated the cottage that had always stood here to better reflect his new station in life.
It had been his grandfather who had made the villa a showpiece in its time, a restrained bit of Greek beauty.
And then had come Pavlos who had decided that he could command architecture the way he did his minions. He had thrown up a wing here and a bristling collection of roofs and structures there, connecting them all by breezeways and archways so that it all resembled balled-up pieces of discarded paper.
Though not in any sort of Frank Gehry sense.
The place was, truly, a vulgarity.
Though today Thanasis found that he felt more sanguine about the place than he normally did. He had detested living here, that was true. His childhood had not been a happy one, and while he knew it was not the house to blame for that, the house was where most of his childhood had occurred.
It was where he’d come to understand exactly who his father was.
But today all he could think about was the resurrection of his beautiful Saskia, and so he didn’t have it in him to condemn the massive display of more wealth than taste outright.
It was possible, he allowed as he drew closer, that there was a certain charm to it all. It was so over-the-top, so outrageous, that there was nothing to do but surrender to it. That was why he’d hated it all his life, perhaps.
He found he minded it less, today.
Inside, the staff was still sorting out the mess from last night. Thanasis picked his way through the front hall and made his way deep into the center of the sprawling building, where, if he knew his father, Pavlos would be nursing a tender head in his personal spa.
And sure enough, that was where the old man was. He was stretched out on a massage table next to his private pool, enjoying the ministrations of a masseuse who looked far prettier than she did physically capable, which only made Thanasis grit his teeth.
It had always been this way. His father did not consider women his weakness, but his right. This take of his had been the bane of his mother’s existence, Thanasis knew too well.
For this and a hundred other reasons, he could not allow the same fate to befall his Saskia.
His father looked up and smiled, smugly, when he saw Thanasis standing there. “I thought you ran off before dawn, as usual. Didn’t you once promise me that the sun would never fall upon your face on this island again?”
“I think you have me confused with one of your other children,” Thanasis said calmly. “One of the more theatrical ones, I would wager.”
Pavlos waved his lovely masseuse away and then sat up, sparing no apparent thought for the sheet that had barely covered him. He stood, stretched luxuriously, and then took his time settling his waiting robe back over his shoulders and belting it around his waist.
He had greeted company in precisely this way whenever possible, as Thanasis recalled. Especially if they had been there to see his mother and, preferably, knew her through the church.
The old man liked nothing more than making everyone around him uncomfortable.
Thanasis, obviously, refused to give his father the satisfaction of seeing any kind of reaction. What he did instead was wait there, one brow raised in vague distaste, until his father finished peacocking about and sat down in a chair beneath an overwhelmingly bright canopy of bougainvillea.
Pavlos lifted a hand and servants rushed from inside the house to present him with a tray of drinks and food, all calculated to settle his stomach and ease the pressure in his head.
Thanasis only took a seat when his father made a grand production of waving him into the one beside his, after acting as if he didn’t realize that Thanasis intended to stay.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of this unusual, extended visit?” the old man asked as he settled back in his chair, then began to sample the food before him. With a certain laziness that would have befit a king.
“I decided to stay a while,” Thanasis said mildly. “It’s been too long.”
Pavlos gazed at him, challenge in his dark eyes. “You hate it here.”
Thanasis gazed back, impassively. “There are things I dislike about the place, certainly. I think you’ll find that most people have complicated feelings regarding their childhood home. I presume you must also, or you wouldn’t keep changing the shape of it.”
He knew that he’d struck a nerve when the old man sniffed, and took his time with his dolmades.
“And what do you think of my bride-to-be?” Pavlos asked. He smiled. “Soon enough your new stepmother?”
Thanasis thought too many things to name. It was like a wretched kaleidoscope winching this way and that in his head, clogging his throat, and making everything in him tense up immediately.
But he made himself smile. “She’s not really your type, is she?”
“Do I have a type?” Pavlos sniffed again, though this time he frowned at his son, not his tray of food. “I am merely a slave to beauty, my boy. It is a curse.”
“Most of your paramours are already famous in their own right,” Thanasis said, almost offhandedly.
As if he was reading an article about his father.
He knew that it was important that he never seem too interested in anything.
It only fueled the old man’s vindictiveness.
“Marissa’s mother is still a model. Telemachus’s mother was an actress of some renown. ”
Pavlos laughed, and not nicely. “That is one word for what she did, hopping from one yacht to another in the unforgiving glare of the C?te d’Azur.”
Thanasis ignored that. Even if it were true, which he was not certain it could be, that suggested only that his father was the sort of man who took part in the kind of squalid parties that Thanasis had assiduously avoided his whole life.
Because the only way to enjoy such events, or pastimes, was to forget that the women there were people.
That had never been a possibility for him.
“This choice of yours seems different, that’s all,” he said, with a careless shrug.
The old man looked at him for a dark, brooding sort of moment, then returned his attention to a bit of hair of the dog. He threw back a small measure of ouzo, then followed it with a few plump grapes.
“I am not the young man I once was,” Pavlos pronounced after a moment. And it was tempting to imagine that he could hear something like humanity in his father’s voice in that…but Thanasis had fallen for such tricks before. “Perhaps I would like a bit of sweetness and ease as my time here dwindles.”
“I’m surprised to hear that.” When Pavlos’s thick brows shot up, Thanasis shrugged. “I have never heard you entertain the faintest thought that you could be anything but immortal.”
Pavlos shook his head. “You don’t think much of me. Most of the time, I don’t care. You must dance to my tune no matter what you think, and that entertains me. But at the end of the day, Thanasis, every man must die alone.” He eyed his eldest son. “Even me.”
He stared at Thanasis as if he expected an argument.
But when Thanasis only regarded him in the same deliberately impassive way, he grunted.
“It is no secret to you, of all people, that marriage did not suit me. I did it because it was expected and, no matter what else I might have done, I always did what was necessary to honor the Zacharias name.”
Thanasis couldn’t help the laugh of disbelief that came out of him, then. “Did you? When was this, exactly?”
His father sneered at him, and the sad part was that Thanasis found that more recognizable than whatever the rest of this was. This…unburdening of a twisted soul, unsolicited and unwanted though it was.
“You think your mother is some kind of holy creature,” Pavlos growled at him. “But I set her free almost immediately. She chose to stay. She wanted to suffer. Remember that the next time you think to accuse me of anything. Martyrs tend to light their own fires, Thanasis. How better to burn?”
Any other time, Thanasis might have walked off at that, because he would not tolerate his father’s take on his mother. Not after the way she had been treated here.
But there was Saskia to consider now. There was more at stake here than his mother’s memory, and in any case, he had the sneaking, unwelcome suspicion that his father was not entirely wrong.
“You, of course,” he said, and he forced himself to sound lazy and unbothered, “never threw any accelerant on that fire, I suppose. It simply burned and burned of its own volition. Nothing to do with you at all.”
Pavlos inclined his head, giving him the point. “I never pretended to be a good man. And I don’t really care what you think of me. But I will tell you this. That girl makes me imagine that I could be a different man altogether. And at my age, after my life? That is a gift.”
Thanasis studied at his father for a long while.
Oddly enough, he felt something like sympathy for this version of the old man, when he had never felt anything like it before. But that was Saskia. That was what she did. He knew exactly what it was like to look at her, to fall into those dark, clever eyes of hers, and imagine himself redeemed.
He wasn’t at all surprised that this was not a unique experience, given only to him. He supposed something in him would grieve that, later.
But here, sitting in the shade with the mean old man he had been so determined to hide Saskia from five years ago, he couldn’t help but feel something else instead.
Some measure of distant regret, almost, that he could not allow his father to experiment with that redemption.
That he could not countenance the marriage between Saskia, no matter who she thought she was, and this man who could never, ever, appreciate her.
Hadn’t he spent the two years he had with Saskia going out of his way to keep her as far away from the reach of his family as it was possible to get? Wasn’t that why she’d left him that night?
She had imagined that he was embarrassed by her. When the opposite was true. He was embarrassed by all of this. By this mess he came from and carried with him.
And now, all he felt was a sadness mixed with determination, because he could not allow this wedding to take place.
He could not permit his father to get any closer to Saskia than he already had—and Thanasis discovered that he could not allow himself to think about that closeness, not now. Perhaps not ever.
Perhaps that was something to simply decide, here and now, he would never consider too closely. For his own sanity.
His father was not, really, the man he wanted to be with Saskia. Just as Saskia was not the woman she thought she was, with no memory of her actual life.
Thanasis was the only one who knew the truth. About both of them.
And the only way he could think to make certain this abomination never happened was to remind her of that truth. To find a way, somehow, for her to remember what she really felt. And who she really was.
So what he did was smile at his father, until the old man narrowed his eyes with suspicion.
“I think I’ll stay a while,” Thanasis said, and it wasn’t a question, or request. It was a statement of intent. He could see that his father knew it. “It’s been far too long since I enjoyed the particular pleasures of the family nest, don’t you think?”
Pavlos sneered at him again. “Careful, boy. You wouldn’t want to wear out your welcome in this nest of vipers.”
“How could I?” Thanasis replied. He lifted a hand. “After all, all of this will be mine someday. Isn’t that your plan? To bludgeon me with all of this once you’re gone?”
He smiled wider when his father grunted and said, “I hope it is a killing blow, you arrogant—”
Thanasis cut him off, pleased that he’d provoked him into temper. It meant he’d won, and he could tell the old man knew it.
“Congratulations, Patéras,” he said smoothly. “How very mythical of you. Like Kronos himself. I believe that is a certain kind of immortality, after all.”