Chapter Thirteen
Two Weeks Later…
Konstantinos couldn’t find her.
Every day, for the last two weeks, she’d been in reach of his mouth. His fingers. They’d started and ended each day touching. In bed. And the times in between…
He hadn’t gone to work. He’d been here. With her.
Inside her most of the time. His only goal to drive out their chemistry.
Make the feel of her body on his, his body’s response to her, something repetitive.
Something he did by rote. Gave pleasure and took his in return.
But still, it was not rote. It was not repetitive. Sex. With her…
It was never enough.
It never had been.
He wouldn’t think of it.
It only lingered now, this fierce chemistry between them, because it had been so long since they’d been together.
It would go away.
It had to.
His hands curled into fists.
It flashed in his mind. Kyparissos. Tall evergreen trees named for the grieving. For those who mourned beneath them.
He knew where she was.
The koimeterion.
The sleeping place.
He followed the white stone walls, walked beneath the arched, too low ceilings where no windows let in the sun. It was a stone tunnel, built by the monks to lead them from community prayer to find their own sacred solitude. To take them out of the darkness into the light outside.
Reaching the end of the tunnel, Konstantinos opened the arched door, stepped outside. And up he went. Up the dusty stone steps warmed by a high sun. Down the path he’d enlarged to accommodate the procession.
Konstantinos had led them all carrying the white box with tiny gold handles on his shoulders to the too small piece of land that would forever be his son’s home.
A place where he would forever sleep. But he’d never been awake.
Never alive. Never…real. Not in the way he was to Poppy.
As if the time he’d spent inside her womb she had got to know him. Love him.
They came into view. The cypress trees at the top of the hill blocking out the sun and standing guard of those buried below their textured trunks.
He hadn’t wanted to bury him with his parents.
Poppy hadn’t wanted to bury him with hers.
There had only been one choice. Here. On the island.
In a graveyard exclusively for the monks.
To bury him with other souls truly at rest.
His gut spasmed.
Had Isaak had a soul?
He reached the flat summit of the small hill.
His footsteps slowed. So quietly did she stand there, with her back to him, the only movement her white dress.
The cotton pushing close against her skin.
The wind blowing in from behind her. Her blonde hair was loose.
It fell about her shoulders, moved in time with the rustle of the wind in the trees surrounding her.
A husk of softly spoken French teased at his eardrums. Swept to his ears by the grace of the breeze rustling the trees.
He frowned.
Was she singing? Singing to… Isaak?
Something sharp jabbed into his heart.
Their son could not hear her.
He crossed the distance between them, because his body would do nothing else. His feet dragged him closer. And he did not think. He did not question his need to do it. To be with her here in a place he hadn’t visited. Did not want to visit. And yet, he was here. With her.
He stood beside her but found his eyes did not try to find hers.
They looked only at the grave now marked with stone, with his name.
Isaak Ariti.
It slammed into his chest. He felt the bones in his chest give way. Crack. Inwards. And they trapped the air he needed to expel inside his lungs. Until it burnt. Until it…hurt.
The pain, it wasn’t imaginary. It was real. As real as the grave in front him. As real as…
Tentacles choked him from the inside. Wrapped around his throat and squeezed.
Or was that…?
He looked down. Her hand, it was holding his. Her fingers had slipped between his, entwined themselves around his. And she was…squeezing.
He raised his head. Looked into her blue eyes. She looked…thoughtful.
‘We need to talk,’ she said softly.
‘Why?’
‘The last two weeks… They’ve been good. So very good. But there is so much we haven’t spoken about. Things I need to talk about, because it feels so heavy not to. I know last time was…hard.’
‘Poppy,’ he warned. He didn’t need to do this. Not here. When the memory was all too real. An imprinted image in his head of her falling to her knees, carrying her to bed, and leaving her to sleep.
‘I didn’t get a chance to apologise to my mum.’ She looked down at the hand she held. She placed her other on his. Trapped his between her much smaller ones. ‘I want to apologise to you, Konstantinos.’ She raised her head. ‘I was in the wrong, too, in our marriage. I see that now…’
Shame gripped him. She wanted to apologise to soothe her own guilt by owning her part in her pain. She needed to own it. He could see that now. And he recognised it. The need for it.
She needed to say sorry to him, because she’d never had a chance to say her sorries to her mother. Just as he hadn’t. How could he deny her that? But he struggled to open his ears and accept it.
He’d made so many mistakes. With his mother. With her. He should have held her. He should have done so many things differently. He should have been by her side; however hard it was to see her like that. However it made him…feel.
It had been inhumane to close her off. But he didn’t know how to apologise for his actions. He didn’t know if it happened again, would he be different?
It wouldn’t happen again.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he dismissed.
‘But it does matter.’ She snatched in a too shallow gulp of air.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t notice what you were going through with your dad.
I’m sorry I was so wrapped up in myself I didn’t see the little things, Konstantinos.
I was your wife, and I didn’t know—I didn’t see what you were going through. I didn’t consider it.’
‘I do not need your apology. Not about…him. He will cause no more distress for anyone.’
‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.’
‘I didn’t need you to be there.’
She ignored him. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t give you a chance to explain before I left.’
‘You have explained now,’ he said roughly.
‘I was selfish.’ Her neck, those delicate tendons inside her pale flesh, tightened. ‘I’m sorry. For everything. I’m so sorry I pushed you away when I was pregnant.’
‘Your mental health…’ he offered up to her, as an easy end to this conversation. A ready-made excuse.
‘It started before the pregnancy was even deemed high-risk. I can see that now. So clearly.’
‘You were…’ he thought of her exercise regime in the beginning.
Her healthy eating. Preparing the nursery ‘…nesting,’ he finished because that was how she’d appeared to him.
Stockpiling her little twigs. Making her nest all alone.
Without him. The nest had not been big enough for him to join them.
She’d pushed him away. Disconnected from him, even then. Before he was…gone.
‘I was hyper-focusing,’ she countered. ‘Obsessed, with doing everything right.’ Her gaze left his and flitted to the little grave in front of her.
He didn’t turn. He kept his eyes on her. On the real woman in front of him. Alive.
He couldn’t save Isaak, any more than he could have saved his mother.
‘Your explanation about your…family. It helped me understand. It helped me understand…you. I’d like you to understand…me. A little more. I want you to know why I behaved like that when I was pregnant.’
‘I already understand it,’ he said. ‘You were never put first as a child. So you put the baby first without hesitation.’
‘I did,’ she agreed. ‘I put my needs before our marriage. Before…you. I did what had been done to me for my entire childhood by my father. What had been done to you for the entirety of yours. I put you second.’
‘I’m not unaccustomed to the position,’ he admitted because too closely did she stroke that hurt inside him. An old pain now. But still it ached. Deep in his bones.
‘It shouldn’t have been that way for us.’
‘But it was,’ he reminded her. ‘It was the only way we could be. The only way I could be.’
He needed his hand back. He needed to step back. Because oh, so close was she to knowing. Understanding all those things he’d never explained to anyone. Why he worked so hard to be number one. Why he was never second place in anything he did.
‘Is that why you never wanted children?’ she asked, digging, probing into parts of himself he didn’t want to go. ‘Because you never wanted them to come second best to business?’
‘Exactly,’ he answered truthfully. What was the point in denying it when she already knew? But still she pressed.
‘That’s why you hated him? The real reason you never took over your father’s company? Why you made a rival business—became number one in the industry? You did it to be number one?’
‘I did it for her.’ His lips curled into something ugly.
‘I did it to prove it didn’t have to be like it was for my mother.
No one had to be second best to business.
No one. Not employees. Staff. Everyone could be treated fairly.
Equally. No one had to be left behind. No one had to be alone.
Like she was. My father left her to suffer.
He locked her away from the public. He left me to look after her, and I… couldn’t.’
He was breathless. His heart pumped as if he’d been in a ring with a boxer. Never had he confessed it. Never had he let anyone see why he had to be the man he was. Number one. Kind. Fair. Loyal. But he had told her.
‘I’m so sorry I left you behind, too,’ she said, and her apology stroked something inside him. Lifted it.
No one had apologised for leaving him behind. But she was. She was doing this because she thought he needed it. He couldn’t let himself need it. Words, they meant nothing.
She was still leaving him. A few more months, and it would be over between them as if it had never happened.
A mist sheened her eyes. ‘Oh, Konstantinos.’