epilogue
Decca, Greek Easter
The smell in the kitchen was unmistakable. Yeasty, starchy, and warm. Gus was batch baking the communion bread.
“Yia-Yiá and your mom finally let me come home.”
“What was it this time?”
“Lamb organs. Skewered on a sword and wrapped with intestines. I was the one responsible for rinsing the intestines.”
He smiled like it was an inside joke. “Kokoretzi. Pappou’s favorite.” Gus washed the caked dough off his hands. “Actually, Pappou’s the only one who eats it. At least you’re not squeamish.”
“I didn’t think I was until George sliced that poor lamb’s throat.”
“Yeah, he’s the best at it. Quick. Doesn’t let it suffer.”
“Why don’t you just go to a butcher?”
“Tradition. From Greece. I’m sure when Yia-Yiá and Pappou die, we’ll go to Publix like any other family. And as you saw this morning, we eat more than just a boneless leg of lamb. Yia-Yiá gets the eyeballs.”
“Have you ever—”
“Of course.” He leaned back on the kitchen counter, wrapping his hands around my waist and pulling me closer. “When I was a boy, and I had to look like a badass in front of George. It was revolting.”
“I can’t imagine cooked and congealed vitreous fluid would an appetizing texture.” Tilting my head back, he kissed the sensitive spot under my jaw.
“Speaking of appetizing texture...” His kisses trailed lower, making my back arch as electricity crackled across my chest and down my arms. I threaded my hands in his hair and reluctantly pulled him back.
“I’m caked in lamb guts. Let me shower first.”
“Why do I feel like this is the wedding reception you should have had?” Bethany handed me a Manhattan and sipped from her own syrupy sweet Mai Tai.
“Because our skeleton was incomplete,” I said. “We hadn’t yet exhumed all our bones.” I closed my teeth over the bamboo cocktail stick and slid the fancy cherry off the end, looking across the bar at my husband bending over the pool table, lining up a tricky shot to the side pocket.
He sunk the eightball. His eyes lifted straight into mine before standing upright. Waylon slapped him on the back. George glared at the table, his fingers tapping the cue before returning it to the rack.
I wandered over to congratulate Gus. Or maybe just to feel his arm wrap around my waist for a few seconds. He was collared in public. Neither of us liked to be too handsy.
“Waylon was saying how the attic is apparently a common room to… escape.” Gus smiled at me.
“Oh my God, I forgot Waylon saw me naked. I will never live that down.” I hung my head.
“It was just your back.” Soula shrugged. “You’re definitely not the only ones who’ve ever slipped up those attic steps for a quickie. Why do you think we drew straws to see who was going to come get you?” Soula gripped her beer tightly, hoarding it like a dragon guarding its gold. She was breastfeeding, working, breastfeeding, teaching, and breastfeeding an infant and toddler. A night out—with alcohol and without her children—was indeed something to be treasured.
“When did you—”
“Uh, the last time…was around Christmas. Mom took Athena to the cemetery for a walk, and I was nine months pregnant with James.” She sighed. “You know how I get when I’m pregnant.”
Bethany scoffed. “I know how you are all the time.”
“Well, I’m sorry. It’s worse when I’m pregnant.”
“Mmm…you’re not pleading a very good case for holding off on our third.” Waylon smiled over the rim of his own beer.
“My body’s pleading that case just fine. I told you, I need a year off. Besides, if you insist I marry you, it won’t be happening in a maternity gown.”
“For someone who didn’t want kids…” I shook my head.
“I know. But I love my bastard children,” Soula said, sipping her bitter IPA.
I looked at Bethany, perched between George’s legs on a barstool. She shrugged. “I mean, it’s right upstairs from our office. When Sofia’s at school and we have no clients…. Hey, there was a particular fantasy that needed to be dealt with. I didn’t know it would start a whole thing. And it’s a good bed. Firm.” She pinched her lips between her teeth.
“Maybe we should have a sign-in sheet,” George teased.
“A sock on the door.” Waylon laughed.
“Maybe we should get a rug or something. Make it homier,” I said. “Not that I intend to make it a habit.” Gus’s eyes flashed to mine. I would swear I could see his pupils dilate even in the darkness of the bar. “I’m not crazy about the idea of siblings sharing a sex room in their parents’ house.”
“If it makes you feel better,” Bethany said. “technically, I own the house. “This is all just hypothetical, anyway, but why has that room never been finished?” Bethany asked.
“We never needed it until a few years ago. When you came,” Soula said.
“And ruined everything,” George said softly into her ear.
“What are we talking about?” Tiff asked as she came up to our table. She was the morgue tech under Soula. Her husband, Javi, was right behind her. Waylon shifted to his side, immediately breaking into hockey talk—something about how Javi needed to move right whenever Cameron had the puck.
Ewen Cameron, the district attorney who played on their team, was there, too. He’d shown up suspiciously soon after Quinn, the fellow in the morgue.
She was leaving in a few months, but she’d been a welcome addition to our ghoul gang of deathcare workers.
“How horny the Smythe siblings are,” Bethany deadpanned.
“I don’t like that word,” Soula said.
“It’s true though, Doc,” Tiff confirmed. “Nothing deters you. I’m pretty sure you’d have sex in the decomp room of the county morgue if it wasn’t a breach of ethics.”
“I wouldn’t.“ Waylon’s face looked green as he stared into his beer.
“So, Greece, huh?” Cameron asked me. As our resident resigned bachelor, he’d just started to hang out with us regularly. He was going into a cold sweat in the company of all these couples. “That’s some vacation.”
Quinn blushed when he glanced across the crowd at her.
Maybe he wasn’t so resigned to bachelorhood after all. The two of them seemed to lock eyes every few minutes. Then she’d blush and look down, her pale skin giving away all her secrets. It looked like they could use an interlude in the Smythe Mortuary sex room, if they hadn’t already interluded elsewhere. Maybe we should start charging.
Gus and I hadn’t taken a honeymoon, or any vacation together, yet. We’d been too busy pining for each other like idiots to tell each other the truth about how we felt after we’d gotten married. And a honeymoon felt too celebratory, too happy, too much opportunity for sex.
Two weeks in Greece was exactly what we needed now. Gus was going collarless—incognito. We’d attend church services while we were there, mainly because I was interested in how the style in the mother country differed from the US, but he wouldn’t be celebrating the Liturgy as a clergy member.
He’d successfully completed his first Greek Easter, which wasn’t just a day or three, but an entire forty-eight-day season of strict fasting, constant prayer, multiple-services-per-day, plus meetings and classes. It was an ultra-marathon for priests.
On top of that, Father Vasili would be fully retired in a few months. He agreed to stay on through Pentecost, so we could have this time together. I was pretty sure I’d be touring a lot of the archeological museums alone, while Gus caught up on sleep, and that was fine with me. I still had a friend in Crete who worked at Knossos. She’d get me into all the places regular tourists couldn’t go.
I couldn’t wait for tomorrow. Two weeks of eating delicious food and lying on Agiofaraggo beach until the sun-scorched sand had baked all its reflected warmth into our skin, compelling us to dive into the clear Libyan Sea to cool our blistering skin.
Plus, there was Malia and the Matala caves, and the Acropolis on the mainland, and… Oh, I couldn’t believe I was selling out my goth soul for the beach, but here we were.
At least my bikinis were black.
“You’re cousins are expecting you, Kosta.” Raynie said, when our food arrived at the big table. “They know you’ll be in Críti and they want you to stay with them. And remember your Pappou’s goddaughter and her children and grandchildren. And don’t forget the olive oil. I need at least two liters. I’ll give you the address for the place you can get the crowns for Soula’s wedding, and the candles for the baptisms, and…”
I closed my eyes and held in a groan. “Did your mom just re-plan our entire honeymoon?”
“Probably. This is why you don’t tell your cousins when you take your honeymoon in Greece.”
I looked sharply at Gus. “You get two days with cousins. And we are staying in hotels.”
“Yes, Crow.”
“I’d planned on spending two weeks naked from the waist up on a very secluded beach.”
He groaned. “No cousins, then.”
“No cousins. I want you alone so I can gape at your wide-open collar and lust after your suprasternal notch.”
“Hmm… I feel like that would be sexy if I knew what you said.”
“Just wait ’til I get your collar off.”
“We don’t have to wait for Greece for that.” Gus kissed me on the temple.
“I wasn’t planning on it.”
Thank you so much for taking your time to read The Bones of Love. This is the last book in the Smythe Mortuary family saga, but something tells me this won”t be the last time you”re seeing Soula, Bethany, and Decca.