Chapter 14
earlier that day
A irplanes will be the death of me.
I’d only been in the air for a little under three hours, but by the end of it I felt like I’d been dragged through hell.
The earliest ticket I could get was a window seat in economy, and I gave it up the second a nursing mother asked if we could switch. I spent the rest of the flight wedged between her crying baby and a man snoring like he had a personal vendetta against silence.
I kept my eyes on the seat in front of me and tried not to listen when the baby finally calmed down, let out a soft little giggle, and the mother answered with quiet coos. Tried not to think about how easily some women seem to carry life while mine keeps ending in sterile rooms and negative tests.
By the time the plane landed, my head was pounding hard enough to crowd out every other thought.
Now I’m back in Chania for the first time in almost a decade, standing in the middle of the airport and feeling completely lost. The terminal is bigger than I remember. Brighter. Busier. None of it feels familiar.
Only the pain does. That same cold pressure lodged behind my ribs, unchanged by time, waiting for me like I never left.
Around me, life keeps moving. The airport is loud and full and alive, but none of it reaches me. No one knows I’m here. I didn’t tell Yiayià or Althea. That should make this easier. Instead, it makes me feel even more alone.
Once, Xavier made me believe I never would.
“Don’t laugh,” Xavier said, with an earnestness that almost undid me before he even got the words out.
There was ink on the inside of his palm, lines of something he still wouldn’t let me see, and a note card in his other hand gone soft at the corners from being opened and closed too many times.
The sight of it pulled at something deep in my chest. Xavier never fumbled. And yet his hands were shaking.
I bit the inside of my cheek, fighting the smile trying to break through. “I’m not.”
His mouth tightened, like he didn’t believe me for a second. “My Greek is terrible,” he said, sounding faintly disgusted by the fact. Then his voice softened. “But I wanted to say this to you in the language that feels most like home.”
My breath caught.
He glanced down at his palm once, then lifted his eyes back to mine.“S’agapo, Yara.”
The words leave my eyes burning. He sees the tears gathering there, and the severity in his expression gives way to something achingly tender.
“I love you,” he said, quieter now. He took my hand and pressed it over the hard, uneven beat of his heart. “Only you, Yara. If you let me, I’ll spend the rest of my life proving it.”
His forehead came to rest against mine. “When the world grows too heavy, lean on me, amor. You have stood on your own for long enough. You do not have to carry all of it by yourself anymore. Not while you have me.”
I leaned on him. Trusted him with the parts of me I kept hidden from everyone else. I believed him. And he broke me anyway.
A tear trickles down my cheek. I scrub it away with the heel of my hand as suitcase wheels scrape past and an announcement spills through the terminal.
The noise, the movement, the bodies around me crowd back in.
I blink hard, drag in a shallow breath, and tighten my grip on the handle of my suitcase.
No more crying.
I force my legs into motion, following the signs toward the taxi stand just outside the terminal.
The afternoon sky is startlingly bright after the airport’s artificial chill, and a cool breeze threads through my jacket.
The air smells of sea salt and rain, cool enough to prickle my skin but still mild by Crete’s standards, nothing like the blistering summers I grew up with.
A row of taxis lines the curb. I flag the first one, and a middle-aged driver steps out to hoist my suitcase into the trunk.
I climb into the back seat and give him Yiayia’s address. He seems about to speak, then decides against it. Once we leave the airport and merge into the morning traffic, I finally check my phone.
Seven missed calls. Two voicemails. A stack of messages, all from Xavier.
7:02 a.m. I’m sorry about last night.
7:05 a.m. Are you awake?
7:11 a.m. Have you eaten anything?
7:14 a.m. Please answer me, amor.
7:19 a.m. We need to talk.
7:23 a.m. I love you.
I stare at the words until they lose shape. Maybe another version of me would have cracked at them, clung to the apology, the concern, and most of all the last line. Right now, all I feel is fatigue and the dull, airless ache that has been sitting under my skin since last night.
Based on his messages, he doesn’t know I’m gone yet.
He still thinks I’m somewhere in that house, ignoring him, which would be laughable if any of this were funny.
Even if I hadn’t spoken to Yiayia, I was never staying.
Top of my list was finding the best lawyer I could and filing for divorce.
Especially now, when part of me can’t shake the thought that my husband might want me dead.
Him leaving the house was the final nail in the coffin.
He didn’t think it was important enough to stay. Not that it would have changed anything. He made his choice. And I made mine.
My phone buzzes with a new message, this time from an unknown number. The preview reads, In case he didn’t tell you. I stare at it for a second. Probably spam. It isn’t the first strange text I’ve gotten this week. I lock the phone and turn to the window.
The road runs along the coast, giving me quick flashes of sea between the hills.
Beyond them, the water lies in a clear blue band beneath the morning light.
Whitewashed houses and terracotta roofs cling to the green slopes.
Oleander burns pink by the roadside, and old olive trees twist silver-green against the sky.
We pass a tiny roadside shrine—one of those little white chapels perched on a post, marking a death or a prayer for safe travels. I used to count them as a child. Now I whisper a broken prayer of my own as we pass. Let me find some peace here. Even for a little while.
The taxi winds through the outskirts of Chania toward the neighborhood where I grew up.
The streets narrow and twist, familiar landmarks rising one by one.
There’s the old bakery, redone now with bright paint and a new sign, and the tiny church with its sun-bleached bell tower.
The leaning lamppost still marks the corner where I fell off my bike as a kid.
Bougainvillea spills in loud fuchsia over garden walls, and lazy stray cats stretch through patches of shade, flicking their tails.
We rumble over a strip of potholes, and I know exactly what comes next. I squeeze my eyes shut, as if not seeing it might spare me the blow. Instinct wins. I open my eyes just as the taxi turns onto my old street.
The lot where my childhood home once stood opens up before me. Empty. A hollowed-out space between two houses, fenced off and choked with weeds. No cheerful cream-colored walls. No red roof. No old olive tree in the yard.
Of course there isn’t. It burned to ash eleven years ago.
But my mind reaches for the old shape of it.
If I blink, I can still see the front porch where Babá played his bouzouki at dusk, the windows Mamà used to cover with homemade paper stars every Christmas, Althea and me mangling the kalanta at family gatherings until everyone laughed and pressed coins into our hands like we’d done something extraordinary.
After that, the flames. Devouring everything. Black smoke spilling into a summer sky.
I bite down on my lip, choking back sobs. I shouldn’t be falling apart like this, not over a memory I should have learned to live with by now. I hate that I’m still this breakable. That one glimpse can undo me so completely.
I left Crete with whatever pieces of myself I could salvage. I didn’t realize then how much more life would take from me, or how easily I’d splinter when grief found me again.
Empty.
That’s what I feel like in every possible way.
A soft, hiccuping sound makes the driver check the mirror.
Only then do I realize it’s coming from me—a strangled half-sob I couldn’t quite hold back.
I look down at my hands, white-knuckled in my lap, and force myself to take another slow breath.
Keep it together. I’ve spent so long learning how to be strong, how to endure pain in silence.
I won’t unravel in the back seat of a stranger’s car.
By the time we turn onto Yiayia’s street, I’ve managed to cage my tears again, though every part of me still shakes with the effort.
The taxi bumps up a steep, narrow lane shaded by citrus trees.
My pulse kicks faster as we climb. Through the leaves, I catch the first glimpse of cream-colored walls and bright blue shutters at the very end of the road.
The house is exactly as I remember it, sitting high above the lane, sun-washed and still.
Cream walls. Blue shutters. Wide stone steps lead up to a deep veranda.
Its columns cast cool strips of shade across the pale flagstones.
Terracotta urns flank the entrance, and trimmed hedges soften the edges.
Beyond the wrought-iron gate, the old lemon tree still stands near the porch.
One look at those shutters—the same ones Babá painted the summer before he died—and I have to brace myself.
I haven’t seen this house since the day I walked away.
The taxi rolls to a stop outside the gate. I don’t move. I just stare through the iron bars.
Home.
“Here we are,” the driver says in Greek.
He must hear the hesitation in my silence. I clear my throat and fumble for my purse, my hands unsteady as I pay him and murmur a thank-you.
“Na ’sai kala,” he replies. Be well.
I nod, push open the door, and step out to retrieve my suitcase from the trunk.