Chapter Two
Chapter
Two
Dani
“Stop the bus!” Dani yelled, running to the back window to try to catch one more glimpse of the man her brain could only impossibly process as being Theo.
But the bus didn’t stop, and soon the man was nothing but a tiny speck in the distance.
The rest of the Silvers gawked at her as she ran down the aisle toward Cosmo in the front, a few of them casting her judging glances like she was some ridiculous, overly dramatic youngster on what should be their calm, relaxing vacation.
“I said stop the bus,” she said again, rushing down the walkway.
“No, I believe you said ‘Go, go, go,’ ” Cosmo said.
Dani found it difficult to keep from rolling her eyes. Now wasn’t the time to be literal and hold her to her words.
“I know. But that man back there,” she said, tossing her thumb behind her. “I didn’t realize who that was earlier. He’s dead. We need to stop.”
Cosmo raised a brow. “I’m sorry, did you say ‘dead’?”
Dani waved her hands, dipping her head as she tried to catch her breath. “That’s not what I meant. I mean, people think he’s dead. But he’s clearly not.”
“And how do you know that?”
“Because he’s right there!” Dani said, pointing back toward Knossos. “We have to go back.”
“Can’t,” Cosmo said, flipping a page on his clipboard without looking at her. “We have a tight schedule.”
Dani braced herself with her hands on the back of one of the bench seats and took a deep breath. Relax. Relax and explain what you saw.
“Cosmo?” she said, using her most pleasant voice. The voice she used whenever she approached a group of rowdy teens in the YA section not studying or reading quietly despite the abundance of signs demanding silence throughout the library.
“Yes?”
“We have to go back,” she said, calmly.
Cosmo sighed and brought his clipboard in front of his waist, folding his arms atop it. “And I told you. Not. Possible.”
“Why not?!” She dropped the calmness.
“Tell me, Miss…?”
“It’s Dani.”
“Miss Dani—”
“No, it’s Dani Guiterrez, but—”
“Okay, Miss Guiterrez, then—”
“I mean, you can call me Dani.”
“Fine. Dani, tell me what exactly the reason is we need to turn around.”
How to explain this in a way that would make sense?
“Have you heard of the missing American archaeologist, Dr. Theo Galanis?” she asked.
“No,” he responded, pointed and direct. He then lifted the clipboard and returned to his notes, but Dani put her hand over the page to stop him.
“Dr. Theo Galanis went missing over a year ago, and he was just there. At Knossos,” she said.
“So then he isn’t missing, is he?”
Dani brought her hands into an upside-down V in front of her face, placing the apex of her index fingers at the bridge of her nose. “You’re not listening to me.”
“No, I’m listening. But you’re not hearing me. We can’t make any changes to the schedule.”
“Oh really? What about lunch at your uncle Vasilios’s tomorrow?”
Cosmo’s gaze narrowed at her, but as he opened his mouth again, the driver called out over his shoulder.
“Galanis? I remember him. The archaeologist. He was Greek, too, no?”
Dani pushed past Cosmo and knelt beside the driver. “Yes! Theo Galanis. He is Greek American.”
“Yes. His boat capsized, right? There was a huge reward for any information surrounding his disappearance,” the driver said.
Dani looked up at Cosmo, whose eyebrow ticked up half an inch. This bit of information piqued his interest.
“Fine,” he said.
Dani clasped her hand around his forearm, relief washing over her. “Fine, we’ll go back?”
“No. Fine, I’ll call the authorities and let them know what you think you saw.”
She didn’t like the way he said think, but it was better than nothing.
“Should I pull over to wait?” the driver said. They hadn’t gone too far, but probably farther than Dani would like to walk on a busy, sidewalk-less road.
“No,” Cosmo responded. “We have a schedule.”
* * *
“So explain it to me one more time. I thought I heard you say he’s dead?
” Harold asked, chomping on the crunchy bread in his Cretan salad in the outdoor seating area at a restaurant in the square near their hotel later that evening for dinner.
It may have been well after nine p.m., but Dani wouldn’t have guessed it based on the number of people mingling about the brick plaza, eating, drinking, and socializing under string lights and neon restaurant signs.
“Well, clearly he’s not. Or at least, I don’t think he is,” Dani said, staring at the table trying to make sense of things. Hell, she had no idea what she’d seen.
“You think it was a ghost?”
Dani’s eyes flashed up to Harold’s and she furrowed her brow. “No, Harold, it wasn’t a ghost. I’m telling you, it was Theo. I know it.”
Harold shrugged and scanned their shared plates full of gyro meat, salads, and fries, planning his next bite. “How can you be so sure? If there was ever a place for ghosts to be lurking, I bet the lair of the Minotaur would be prime real estate.”
Because, she thought, I’d never forget his eyes.
The same eyes had stared down at her during senior prom after her date stood her up.
He’d been a sophomore in college, so it was patently uncool to go to high school dances at his age.
Not that Theo had ever have been considered cool even when he was in high school anyway.
He was the guy who was constantly (and annoyingly) over at their house all the time, built his own clay replicas of stills from the movie Clash of the Titans, and talked about Zeus like he was a real person.
But when he showed up at the Guiterrezes’ doorstep wearing a suit and holding a bouquet of flowers after Dani had already changed into her pajamas thinking she’d have to miss the prom, well, that night she no longer saw him as Eddie’s dorky best friend.
And on the dance floor when he spoke the words, Whenever you need me, I’ll always be here for you, Dani, well, those words were the dawn of Dani’s epic, decades-long crush on Theo Galanis.
The funny thing was that Theo was decidedly not her type.
Up until then, and even after, Dani went for the bad boys.
The risky options. Men who broke her heart without a second thought.
Theo, on the other hand, dated nice girls.
Good girls. Most importantly, good Greek girls.
Triple Gs, as the Galanises all called them.
Women who sat politely and quietly at Thanksgiving dinner, unlike Dani, whose M.O.
was to be loud and brash, leading her father to call her “cochina” all too often at the dining table.
But over the years, she sometimes caught those blue irises staring at her.
At a summer pool party. At Eddie’s college graduation.
Then again at Theo’s parents’ thirtieth-anniversary celebration after the words When you know, you know were spoken.
And, of course, that last night they’d spent together a few weeks before Theo had left for Greece, a night that seemed to change things between the two of them.
Those two cerulean seas trapped her in their depths time and time again, threatening to never release their hold on her.
That’s how she could be so sure. Those eyes. Not even a thick, dark beard and his glasses that he’d abandoned sometime during college could disguise him from her.
“His body was never found,” she said. “And the guy down there was wearing a Detroit Tigers’ hat and said he was allergic to apples. Theo is allergic to apples. Those can’t all be random coincidences.”
“Hmm,” Harold murmured as he looked off to the side as if he found those facts particularly curious. “So then what happened? Tell me again—my old brain doesn’t retain things so great nowadays. And pass the pita, if you don’t mind.”
Dani handed the bread basket across the table and then recounted the events leading up to the news of his death and the details thereafter—the mysterious dig, the harbormaster’s eyewitness report, weeks without a single sighting.
No calls. No texts. No tracking on his phone.
And then finding the boat waterlogged and mangled on the shore months later.
She left out the parts about the devastation the news caused Theo’s family and her own.
Theo had been a staple in their lives. Even after he’d moved away for college and eventually landed in Chicago to take a job at the National Hellenic Museum, he’d still managed to pop on home to Grand Rapids every few months between his travels to Greece, though he’d all but stopped participating in actual digs in recent years since the new gig had him either behind a desk, on the phone, or rubbing elbows with museum donors.
But each and every time he visited home, Dani would be there.
Not specifically waiting for him—whereas he spent his adult life traveling and seeing the world, her biggest adventures nowadays involved little more than altering her grocery store routine or trekking over to another county for a library-book exchange.
A pathetic change from her younger days of river-rafting excursions and backcountry camping at Pictured Rocks.
She didn’t have time for those things anymore. Her parents needed her.
Or at least, she’d thought they did.
But she remembered Theo once saying that one of his favorite things about coming home was knowing she’d be there.
Not his parents. Not Eddie. Her.
You’re the one thing I can always count on, he’d told her over a couple of micheladas and fries in their midtwenties, which had started somewhat of a tradition. Even though he wasn’t always there physically, she felt the same.