Chapter Two
Two
Lottery wins did not happen to people like her.
That had been Skye’s first thought when the email arrived, her second was that she must have fallen afoul of an elaborate hoax.
She called the number provided with disbelief, and only when the man on the other end calmly confirmed that, yes, she was one of the six who had been selected, and no, he was not a fraudster who’d somehow hacked the entry list, did Skye accept that it was real.
After that, she’d had a month to make the necessary arrangements, though with no job to resign from and only a meager collection of possessions to pack, the only real task on her to-do list had been sourcing the means with which to fund her new life, and that sizable hurdle had come close to unraveling her completely.
Relief in having made it to the island had diluted any excitement she might otherwise have felt, but as the first hour slid by, Skye began to feel the tingles of something close to pleasure.
The house was hers, every roughened stone and cracked tile of it.
The wildflowers spilling out between the gaps in the walls were hers, as were the old latches on the internal doors, the stained marble basin in the bathroom, and the dappled glass in the window frames.
She hummed to herself as she moved from room to room, a pad in hand on which she jotted down a list of jobs that would need to be done, furniture that would need to be purchased, holes that would need to be filled.
Sometime later, when she was in the process of inflating the single air bed that she’d mercifully thought to bring, a knock sounded at the door.
Skye crossed to the window and peered down, immediately recognizing the broad shoulders of Andreas.
He had returned sooner than promised and was holding two large carrier bags.
Scribbling security chain? at the end of her steadily growing list, she went downstairs to see what he wanted.
“Geiá sou, hello.” Andreas held up one of the bags. “I have brought you a kettle, some coffee, milk, and a little sugar.”
“Oh, wow.” Skye thawed slightly. “You didn’t need to do that.”
Andreas reached into the second bag and produced a toaster.
“I had a spare one at home,” he said when she started to protest. “éla re, take it.”
“I don’t know what to say.” Skye opened the door a fraction wider. As well as the kitchen appliances, Andreas had brought two chipped mugs, a selection of cutlery and basic utensils, a rather burned-looking frying pan, and some sort of plug-in stick blender.
“For making frappé,” he said as she examined it. “You will not fool people that you are a real Greek unless you learn how to make proper coffee.”
“I can pay you for all this,” she offered, but he shook his head.
“We are living on the same island now. We are friends, and in Greece, we look after our friends.”
Skye’s mind went fleetingly to her previous neighbors, their collective gazes dropping to the pavement as she’d passed them, twitching curtains that had remained resolutely shut.
“Thank you,” she said haltingly to Andreas. “This is really kind of you.”
He lifted a dismissive hand. “Do you have anything to eat? Klodi closes his shop at three o’clock.” Extracting a mobile phone from the back pocket of his jeans, he squinted at it and grimaced. “The taverna will open in a few hours, and—”
“It’s OK,” she assured him. “I have bottled water, and now coffee, thanks to you. I’ll survive until morning.”
“Your fridge and oven will arrive tomorrow?” He had posed it as a question, though clearly he did not need her to confirm it. If anything, he appeared to know more about the moving-in schedule than Skye herself.
“The sooner the better,” she said. “It does feel a bit sparse in there.”
A frown passed over his features, and Skye glanced down, her attention momentarily snagged by the eagle-head buckle of his belt. She recalled the row of motorcycles she’d seen down at the port, a battalion of polished chrome and sun-cracked leather.
“Do you like the house?” Andreas asked.
“Well…” Skye considered. “It still needs work, as you know, but yes, I like it. I wouldn’t have bought it if I didn’t.”
“For one euro,” he intoned.
A scruffy ginger cat had stalked up the path from the village while they’d been talking and now sat himself down in the shade of her boundary wall. Andreas clicked his tongue, and the animal stretched toward him, yawning as he stooped to pet it.
“Geiá sou, Tigri,” he murmured.
Skye bent to pick up the bags.
“I should put all this away,” she said. “It really was kind of you to bring it here.”
Andreas straightened.
“Slowly, slowly, the unripe grape becomes honey,” he said almost as if to himself, then smiled at her. “If you change your mind about eating at the taverna, you are welcome to join me, although of course I understand if you would prefer to be alone on your first evening.”
“I think I would,” she agreed, “but thank you.”
Skye remained where she was, watching as he strode back the way he’d come, exuding a nonchalance she could not help but envy.
The cat, Tigri, fixed his pale eyes on her, yowling as she closed the door on him.
There was no point inviting him inside, not when she had nothing to offer save for affection, and even that would have taken considerable effort to muster.
It had been a long day, a journey that had begun not hours but months ago, and all she wanted now was to sleep.
The donated items, she took through into the kitchen, dumping each bag on the floor before going back upstairs.
The air bed was in the larger of the two bedrooms, though rather than returning to the task of pumping it up, she took the ladder up to the attic room, a space she’d run a cursory eye over earlier and deemed too hot, dark, and cramped to use for anything other than storage.
There was only one window, a slim dormer that offered an unblemished view of the sea.
Skye pushed hard against the wooden frame until it swung open, breathing in the scents of salt and warm air.
Dust motes swarmed and long-abandoned spiderwebs hung in corners.
Ducking to avoid the beams, she stepped cautiously over floorboards, which creaked in protest, pausing when she encountered an indentation in one of the supporting struts.
It was the letter K neatly carved. Whoever had engraved it must have stood exactly where she was standing, their brow furrowed in concentration, thinking not of any future inhabitants who would stare upon the mark they made but only of what it meant to them in that moment.
Skye knew that the house had been empty for more than eighty years—had K been its final occupant, or were they someone from long before that? It felt suddenly important to know.
“Who were you?” she whispered, trailing her finger across the wood.
No answer came. There was no sound at all save for the faint thrum of crickets drifting up from the garden, and then, so abruptly that she gasped, another loud knock at the front door.
Swearing under her breath and rubbing her head where she’d banged it against one of the low beams, Skye went once again to answer it.
There was nobody there, only a lidded cooler, inside which she discovered half a loaf of bread, a generous pat of butter wrapped in wax paper, a wedge of moist goat cheese, one small bottle of red wine, and a folded note that read: “Real Greeks like to eat. A.”
For the first time in what had been an undeniably peculiar day, a real smile found its way onto Skye’s face.