Chapter Nine
CHAPTER NINE
T HE FIRST WEEK he stayed away from the island—and her—was torture. He barely slept. He hardly knew himself in meetings. He refused to look at himself in the mirror, for fear of what he might see. He even considered drowning himself in alcohol, something he never did, because surely there he might find oblivion.
He refrained from testing that theory, but detested the fact he’d allowed himself to toy with even the idea of such a descent—to a dark, low place he knew all too well.
By the end of the second week, Anax hated himself thoroughly. But there was no other choice. He had Maria call him on video so he could see Natalia. He pretended that he wasn’t desperate for any hint about Natalia’s mother. He refused to ask after her.
Though he had never been an overly superstitious man, Anax knew better than to welcome in the ghost that already haunted him nightly. And daily. And every second of every hour in between.
He threw himself into work.
He traveled the world too many times to count.
From one day to the next, standing before this window or that, it was difficult to discern what city he found himself in. One boardroom was very like the next. One set of negotiations led into another, and there was a point at which jet lag and exhaustion became so commonplace that he could almost convince himself that that hollowness within him could be explained by time zones alone.
And not the truth he did not wish to admit that he was running from.
The unpalatable, unacceptable truth that he had betrayed every vow he’d ever made to himself where Constance was concerned.
In this way, he was no better than his own father. Paraskevas had never met a promise he could not break, or a vow he did not rush to splinter into pieces. Paraskevas had laughed it off, his lies and his backtracking and his spontaneous retelling of histories they had all lived through, as if he could convince them it had happened another way.
He found himself doing something alarmingly similar, going over that night in his head again and again and again, trying to make it...something other than it was.
Trying to pardon himself for the unpardonable.
When he slept, it was fitful, and he dreamed of her. Of that night. Of the innocence she’d given him so sweetly, so fully. It never failed to make him hard. It never failed to wake him in the middle of the night, reaching for her the way he had that night—
Only to find an empty hotel pillow here, a cool bed there.
Even when he wasn’t asleep, she haunted him.
All those things she had said to him. Going back to the very beginning, when that was the last thing he wished to do, even in the privacy of his own head.
Anax would prefer to pretend that he could not remember that very first night. The hit of all that heat, all that light, all those people packed into that tiny little church. And then Constance there, smiling serenely, pregnant with his child and more beautiful—yes, then, how had he convinced himself otherwise?—than he cared to recall.
It was bad enough that she was the mother of his child. That he had married her. That there was no possible way to remove himself from the situation that would not harm his child in some way.
Those things had already been true before the night of the ball. He had already been too fascinated with her.
“Are you fascinated with her?” Vasiliki asked archly after a set of meetings somewhere hot. That was all he retained about the place—the tropical heat. Heat which must have gone to his head for him to admit such a thing to his sister. “Or is it the fact that you’ve never had the opportunity to spend so much time clothed with any other woman? Because I think you know the answer, don’t you?”
What Anax knew was that while his fascination with her clothed had been bad enough, now he knew what it was like without such considerations.
He knew exactly how it could be between them. And that was not better, because unlike every other woman he’d ever touched, he wanted her more, now.
His itch was not scratched. His fascination had increased tenfold.
He would rather die than say such a thing out loud.
“Tell me,” he said to his sister, smiling at her in a way that made her eyes narrow. “Are you ever going to put poor Stavros out of his misery?”
She stiffened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“He would never dare indicate his interest in you, lest it insult you.” Anax eyed her, enjoying that the shoe was not on his foot just then. Enjoying it too much, perhaps. “Or maybe it is that you enjoy playing games with him. A little cat and mouse, is that it? Do you know who that reminds me of?”
His sister glared at him, but to his surprise, did not rise to the bait. “I’m nothing like our father, Anax,” she said quietly.
Quietly enough that he looked away. Quietly enough that he regretted having said such a thing in the first place.
So quietly that he felt a hot wash of shame move over him.
“What’s fascinating to me is that he is your go-to insult,” Vasiliki continued in the same tone. “You were ready at a moment’s notice to trot him out like a weapon. To bludgeon me with him. Perhaps it is not me who has to be concerned about taking on his characteristics.”
It was, of course, no less than his worst fears, spoken aloud.
Because all of these endless nights and all of these weeks later and he could not accept the real truth. He could not run from it. He could not escape it no matter where he went or how many time zones he moved through.
He had forced his sister to lay it bare before him, and it was still the same truth.
No matter how he dressed it up and called it passion , he had lost control of Constance. He hadn’t hurt her, thank God, but surely it was all the same sort of slippery slope.
He had vowed that he would not touch her.
Then one touch, one kiss, and he had been lost.
She was addictive—or perhaps it was simply that he was an addict. A bright, impossible flame that he had been utterly unable to look away from. Even now, just thinking of her, he could feel the lick of that flame moving over him, changing him.
Making him into the very model of the worst man he’d ever known.
Because Anax knew what was next.
He knew where this ended. The blood, the sobbing. The broken, ruined things in pieces on the floor. The injuries that never quite healed.
The monster looking back at him, ready to pounce.
He remembered his childhood with alarming accuracy.
And so maybe it was inevitable that when he got back to Greece, he did not go to that flat of his that now felt infused with her. As if Constance lurked there, beaming back at him from every shiny surface, as if she claimed the view outside his windows like she was Athens itself.
Nor did he head out to the island, though there was a deep ache in him to see his daughter that was nearly neck and neck with that intense desire to see her mother.
His wife, by his own command and decree, in case he wanted to blame her for that, too.
But there was another need in him when he landed, and this one even more inexplicable.
No matter what it was, or what it meant, he found himself at his mother’s all the same.
He had wanted to set Evgenia up in luxury the moment he was able, but she had wanted none of it. She had eventually consented to a small house set there in the village in the foothills where she’d grown up, before her own father had surrendered to a set of bad decisions and moved the family into Athens. Before that had landed her in the kind of place where Paraskevas had seemed like a good idea.
Anax had grown up in the city and considered himself a city person, first and foremost. He understood Athens. It was why he liked his flat, with its bird’s-eye view of the whole sweep of the ancient place, from the slums he had called home for so long to the rarefied air he could now afford to breathe.
His mother’s little village seemed to get under his skin in ways he could not readily explain as he drove in, and more so than usual. It was not just that it was far away from what he considered the beating heart of things. That was always the case. Today it was something else. Something that moved in him like agitation.
When Anax made it a point of honor to never be agitated in his mother’s presence.
He climbed out of the car in front of his mother’s house and waved his driver off, knowing that his mother found his wealth embarrassing. In case he might tell himself otherwise, she had been sure to say so, more than once. She did not like that much money. And she certainly did not like to see it flashed about outside her cottage, where the neighbors would be sure to comment.
Anax stood outside in the cool sunshine. He did not have to turn to know that his mother’s ancient neighbor was peering out her window. He knew that his presence would be shared round the whole village, likely before he said hello to Evgenia—
And that was when he realized that this village was not so different, really, than Constance’s Halburg. There were more hills and goats and olive trees than cornfields, but the feel of each place was more alike than not.
He could not have said why that comparison seemed to slosh about uneasily inside of him.
And he might not know what he was doing here, but he had not gotten where he was by wasting time questioning his decisions. He strode to the door and knocked, not entirely surprised when there was no answer. He could have let himself in, because he had his own key—and suspected Evgenia did not bother to lock her door anyway—but he knew that there was only one other place his mother was likely to be.
Opting not to test her door to see if his unlocked theory was correct—a thought that would keep Stavros up in the night—he walked through the village, down to the small church at the base of the hill.
Anax had no particular reason to dislike this place, he could admit as he walked. It was lovely, especially basking in the sunlight on this near winter’s day. It was colder than Athens, but that was to be expected, as it was at a higher elevation. As he walked, he could admit that it was charming and picturesque.
It was only that his mother loved it and so unreasonably, he thought. That, to his mind, she had shrugged off one foot on her neck for another.
An opinion she had not liked very much when he had shared it.
The church was old, and kept in pristine condition, something that made him tense all over again. Because he knew what he would see, and he did. He walked in the front doors and there was Evgenia Ignatios herself.
Though her bank account was now stuffed full and every luxury on this planet available to her with a wave of her finger, that was not how she chose to spend her time. It was this. It was here, no matter how baffling it seemed to Anax. Cleaning this church as if it was her own home.
Something she did not have to do any longer either, because he had a service come into the cottage.
So she did it here instead. Every day. As if this was one of the flats they’d lived in when he was young and her actual health and well-being hinged on making the place sparkle.
Anax stayed in the back of the church and watched her as she moved around, concentrating fiercely on her work. It reminded him of when he’d been a boy. No matter what nightmare his father had unleashed upon them the night before, Evgenia would always be up with the dawn, keeping whatever hovel they lived in bright and sparkling.
He did not move from where he was, though he was aware that his mother knew he was there. She made no move toward him. She continued her work and when she was finished, she rose from the floor that she had been scrubbing on her hands and knees. She wrung out the rag she’d used and hung it on the side of her bucket.
Only then did she look at him.
It was quiet. Peaceful, he supposed some might say, though he was not likely to agree.
“What an unexpected visit that brings you not only to the village unannounced, but into the church.” His mother sniffed. Her dark eyes seemed to pin him to the pew where he sat. “I can’t imagine what could cause such an unprecedented event.”
“Can a son not visit his mother on a whim?”
“Many sons do.” A gleam in his mother’s eyes reminded him a little too much of himself, just then. “But mine does not, as a rule.”
She walked toward him, and it had been a long time since he had really looked at her like he did now. Without any preconceptions. To see what others must.
That she was, perhaps unsurprisingly, a beautiful woman. Yet if anything, her vanity moved in the opposite direction of most women’s. She wore her dark hair scraped back into a bun, so that if there had been any gray showing it would be obvious. But there was still only the faintest hint at her temples. She wore no makeup, ever. He could recall his father shouting about a bit of lipstick here and there, back in the day, and wanted to wince as he wondered if that was why she preferred to keep herself barefaced now.
But he rather thought that it was a kind of armor.
She refused to hide from her past. She refused to hide in his money. If she was still beautiful, it was a simple gift from nature that she did nothing at all to nurture.
He knew from his sister that many men in the village had attempted to charm her, but she had only ever laughed them off.
I do not think, Vasiliki had said, that our mother has any desire to ever enter the marital state again.
Can you blame her? he had always responded. It is a state of disrepair, at best.
But now he wondered. “How many ghosts do you think we carry within us, you and me?” he asked Evgenia as she drew near.
She did not seem remotely discomfited by the question, which was an answer in itself.
“Even all your money cannot keep them at bay. Did you think otherwise?”
“Is this what keeps them at bay?” He did not need to wave a hand around the humble little church, or the village around it, full of simple people with simple lives. Or so he had always believed. “Is this what you do to banish them?”
He thought too much of his father when he thought of the influences on him. His drive, his focus, when his father had only ever truly paid attention to his vices. Somehow he always forgot that it was this woman who had survived.
The way she looked at him then, canny and knowing, with that interior core of steel that he knew had built him up from the start, made him wonder why.
But she did not say one of her enigmatic, usually dark little prophecies over him. Instead, she came to a stop in the narrow aisle and looked at him. “You are married.”
He did not expect that. Maybe he should have. “I am.”
“I do not seek out the papers, but I could not avoid them. They’re filled with speculation about this wife of yours. This American. It is rumored you even have a child, though I know this cannot be true. Because I would be a grandparent, and I know that, surely, my own son would inform me if I had become one.”
And despite himself, Anax actually felt...ashamed. Like the small boy he could barely remember being, trying to sneak a snack from the kitchen—back before he’d understood that all of them needed to follow the rules for their own safety. That even then, it wasn’t all that safe.
“It was a complicated situation,” he told her by way of an apology.
His mother nodded sagely. “So it is with ghosts, and marriages.”
“You are the expert, I think.”
Her mouth curved, though he was not foolish enough to think it a smile. “Your penance is an act of building yourself up so that no one can break you down again. I understand it. Mine is different. You think that I do this—” and she waved at the church “—because I wish to punish myself.”
“I assumed,” and he was careful as he spoke, “that there was a certain familiarity in the punishment. That perhaps you had grown accustomed to it.”
She looked as close to sad as he could remember seeing her, at least in as long as they’d been free of Paraskevas. Then she shook her head. “You’ve got it wrong, yiós .”
He could not recall the last time she’d called him son , either.
Evgenia sighed. “I wish only to humble myself some little bit. To remind myself that were it not for my pride, I might have saved all of us, long ago. When it was my job to do so, and I failed.”
Anax stared at her, sure he couldn’t possibly have heard her correctly. This was not something they talked about. Not so directly.
She smiled then, a real smile, as if she knew it. “I am an old woman, Anax. And I would like to see my grandchild.”
“I am not holding her ransom,” he said darkly. “You know where the island is, though you have refused every invitation to visit it. And what do you mean, your pride?”
“I mean exactly that,” she replied, seeming to pull herself straighter and taller where she stood. “There was a time when I was the only thing that could soothe your father. And it took me too long to accept that I was not more powerful than his demons. Or his liquor. And in the meantime, I had two children who needed a better situation than the one I gave them. Who is to blame for that? Your father, diminished as he was? Or me, who stayed with him?”
“Him,” Anax bit out.
His mother only gazed back at him for a moment. “Perhaps. And then again, perhaps not.”
“You have a granddaughter,” Anax gritted out, though there was a deep, pounding thing inside him that felt as if he was breaking open from within. “Her name is Natalia. She is...”
And that ache in him threatened to knock him over, though he was already sitting down. He hadn’t seen her in weeks. He hated it. She was so young now. She might be someone else entirely by the time he went home to see her—
Anax stopped there because that island wasn’t home. He had no home. He had many homes, and he prided himself on that.
His mother was watching him, far too closely for his peace of mind. “She’s perfect,” he said. “And her mother...”
But he couldn’t finish that.
“The thing about ghosts,” Evgenia said quietly, much too quietly, “is that they don’t always haunt you in the dark of night, Anax. Sometimes they are right in the mirror, staring back at you.”
And this was what he had always wanted to avoid.
This conversation.
This moment.
The truth he needed to know, no matter how terrible it was. No matter what it did to him.
No matter what became of him after.
“Am I him?” he asked, in a voice he barely recognized as his own. “Mother, you must tell me the truth, no matter what. Am I the same monster?”