Chapter Fourteen
Fourteen
A quiet tug-of-war played within Skye.
The readiness with which she had volunteered to start teaching again had taken her by surprise, the surge of enthusiasm vanishing as quickly as it had arrived.
It wasn’t that she lacked faith in her own ability, more that she wasn’t sure how it would feel to slip back into the role.
Being laid off from her last teaching position had been a pivotal moment in her life, one that had spiraled downward in a way she had not anticipated.
The suddenness of it still unsettled her.
One day, she’d had structure, purpose, and a roomful of eager faces; the next, it was all gone.
The work she’d poured in and the relationships she’d built had all evaporated with nothing more than a polite handshake and sympathetic smile as they’d shown her the door.
While the desire to teach again was undeniable, her uncertainty lingered.
Was she really prepared to risk being pulled back into a past she thought she’d left behind?
Skye could not answer that, not yet. But she did know one thing for certain: She wasn’t prepared to go back on the promise she’d made to Theo and George. That mattered more than anything else.
Her pensive mood continued into an afternoon that crackled with heat. Skye left a bikini-clad Joy stretched out on a towel in her garden, her red skirt removed and rolled into a makeshift pillow, and made her way back across the hillside to collect what she needed for the night.
Andreas’s truck was blocking her path, and Skye maneuvered around it, doing her best not to get dust on her shorts.
The windows were down, and peering into the cab, she saw a folded newspaper, several cans of white paint, and a large plastic bottle filled with some kind of oil.
Hanging from the rearview mirror was a blue-glass evil-eye pendant on a gold chain.
She’d noticed it before, during their drive to Chora, and it made her wonder about his superstitions and how they aligned with his beliefs.
“Geiá sou,” she said in passing to Stamatis, who was leaning against the outer wall of the house, vaping and scrolling on his phone. Not far in front of him, the cement mixer churned. Skye went inside and found Andreas standing in the far corner of the main living area, his head cocked to one side.
“Ah,” he said. “Good.”
“Did you find another crack?” she asked, moving in beside him.
Andreas pointed toward the wall where the old fireplace had once stood. Its semicircular opening had been haphazardly bricked up with stones of all shapes and sizes.
“This is very ugly,” Andreas said without a trace of humor or irony.
“It is,” Skye agreed solemnly, suppressing a smile.
“I have not been up onto the roof yet to check the, er, flue, but if you want to use the fireplace, then we must remove all of this”—he whirled a hand around in midair—“stupid stuff. Do you want a fireplace?”
Skye thought for a moment. He’d already convinced her to install air-conditioning units in several rooms. These would, apparently, also provide heat in the colder months.
“I think I do,” she told him. “I don’t know if I’ll ever use it, but I’d like to have the option.”
“Bravo,” he appraised. Then, as was customary, “Perímene.”
He went out to the truck, returning moments later with a set of coveralls on over his jeans and shirt and two sets of plastic goggles—one of which he passed to Skye.
“Put these on,” he said, weighing a large mallet in his other hand, “and be sure to stand back.”
The first strike sent cracks spidering through the surrounding plaster; the second brought down a cascade of stones and rubble.
Skye coughed, quickly covering her mouth.
Tightening his grip on the mallet, Andreas crouched to adjust his angle before winding up for another swing.
More bricks tumbled, followed by lumps of blackened clay and the mummified body of a long-dead mouse.
Shuddering, Skye fetched a dustpan and brush from the kitchen.
When she returned, Andreas was crouched low, peering through his dirty goggles into the empty space he’d created.
“There is something here,” he said, half turning toward her. “Can I use this?”
Skye gave him the brush, and Andreas used the handle end to poke up inside the chimney, just above where the curved hood of the fireplace met the shaft. A moment later, there was a soft thud as something landed on the pile of rubble.
“It’s not another dead rodent, is it?” she asked, tiptoeing forward with trepidation.
Andreas lifted the object and examined it for a moment, blowing hard across the surface to clear away the dust. Whatever it was appeared to be shrouded in some kind of burlap sack.
“Shall I open it?” he asked, glancing up at her. Skye pulled down her goggles, her thoughts already racing.
“I guess so,” she replied, her mind spinning with possibilities.
As a child, she had spent hours digging through the garden in search of ancient pottery, imagining ancient treasures hidden beneath the soil.
She’d joined her dad on metal-detecting excursions, scoured beaches for hidden sea glass, driven by the need to discover something new.
It was a passion that had never quite left her.
Andreas began to unwrap the package, peeling off the burlap one layer at a time until it fell away completely. Skye gasped when she saw what it had been shielding—a stack of envelopes, tightly bound with twine, the topmost bearing a name neatly written in faded ink.
“Is it in Greek?” she asked. “Can you read it? What does it say?”
Andreas stood from where he’d been kneeling and crossed to the open doorway, Skye close at his heel. The sunlight made the words clearer, though she still couldn’t make sense of the characters—except for one. A bold unmistakable K, exactly the same as the one carved in her attic.