Epilogue
Three Years Later…
Barefooted, Konstantinos pushed his feet into the sand.
One step after the other, he walked towards them.
His family. Ignorant to his presence, they paddled in the water.
Two pairs of tiny legs, twenty tiny wet toes, danced with the sea.
Arms waving, they ran away as it came to greet them. Chased it when it receded.
He didn’t hurry. He knew they were safe.
His daughters. Their hair as black as his, and their eyes as blue as their mother’s.
He knew their mother watched them. He knew their adoptive grandfather watched them too from his perch on the terrace.
Alongside the nannies who hovered higher up the beach, waiting for when they were needed.
He knew they were cared for even when he wasn’t here.
He knew they were loved.
And Konstantinos loved them all.
‘Daddy!’
He bent down low and opened his arms. His daughter ran to him, quickly followed by her twin. He scooped them both up in his arms, and kissed their plump, soft cheeks.
His wife didn’t run to him. Too swollen now to run, she waited for him where the sea met the sand. Her belly round beneath her sky-blue dress, wet and hanging heavy at her ankles, she waited for him.
He set the twins down at her feet and, squealing, they ran back to play.
He wrapped his arms around her.
‘You’re home,’ she said. And he knew he was.
The island had lived up to its name. He had found his salvation. Sotiría had become home for them all. For his family. For Léon, who now lived with them. He was family too, a father to both him and Poppy, a grandfather to his children.
‘I am,’ he said, and pulled her closer. Breathed her in.
She was his air.
His best friend.
Honesty was power. The publicity after the talk show had driven his business stocks to never seen before heights. People, it seemed, resonated with second chances. To the rawness of uninhibited love.
And it was raw.
It was beautiful.
And Poppy had given it to him.
The ability to open himself to the possibility of it.
Now he had everything.
They did.