Chapter 15
Athena
“Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is admit you’re lost.”
—Eloisa Hobby
Dirt under her nails. Wouldn’t come off. Her thoughts were disjointed, floaty. Athena scrubbed and scrubbed in that tiny bathroom sink. Soap that smelled like fake lemons. Mom had hated fake lemon smell. Said it reminded her of hospitals.
She washed again and got most of it out, but she still felt like it was there.
With a heavy sigh, she left the bathroom. People were getting in golf carts, drifting away. She looked around for Calista. Where was her sister?
Eloisa’s voice. “Athena.”
She turned.
The diminutive woman strolled over, smiling like she didn’t know how to stop. “Calista wanted me to tell you, she went sailing with Reid.”
Sailing? Calista hated Reid. No, used to hate Reid. Things changed. People changed. Except for Benjamin. Except for her.
But maybe she was changing too.
Athena nodded at Eloisa. Should she say something? Words stuck in her throat. She nodded again.
“Are you all right, dear?”
No, but she didn’t want to talk about it. She felt the corner of her mouth lift, mirroring Eloisa’s, pointed toward the golf cart and said one word. “Go.”
“All right.” Concern knit Eloisa’s brow. “Are you—”
“Later.” Two words. That was good, right?
Athena hopped in the golf cart and peeled away from the memorial garden as fast as she could in the slow-moving vehicle. So this was what an emotional blender felt like. Not a fan.
Calista tried to warn her, for sure, but Athena had been unable or unwilling to hear it.
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
The lush greenery of Hobby Island rushed past, all cheery, verdant, and oblivious to the fact that her entire world was crumbling faster than a sandcastle at high tide.
Her mind raced, replaying the bomb her vicious flashback exploded. Her father, the man she’d spent her entire life trying to please, the architect of her golfing career, the man who ran her life and managed her money—was a grade-A, certified shithead.
Don’t sugarcoat it, Attie. He’s a monster. Calista’s voice in her head. Sharp and clear.
“Congratulations, Universe.” Athena rolled her eyes at the sky. “You’ve outplotted M. Night Shyamalan. What a twist!”
She whizzed along, leaving the coastline for the interior of the island, having no idea where she was going. The destination didn’t matter. Outrunning her mental demons was impossible, but she was sure gonna try.
The golf cart, as if sensing her existential crisis and reveling in it, decided this was the perfect moment to quit. It slowed, whirred, and then gave up. The battery drained, and the charge lost.
Rats! Why hadn’t she checked the gauge?
“Perfect.” With a groan, she cast a glance at her unfamiliar surroundings. Okay, where was she?
Athena got out. Her legs were as steady as a newborn giraffe on roller skates. She needed help, but more than that, she needed . . . what? A time machine? A lobotomy to erase the last twenty-four hours? A trained psychiatrist specializing in daddy issues?
Seriously, this part of the island looked like Hansel and Gretel. In the distance, a few cottages. Roofs all wrong. Tilted. Crooked. Her head spun. Her high school geometry teacher would’ve had a fit. Paths. Winding. Twisting. Going nowhere and everywhere. Flowers along the sides. Wild. Untamed.
Where did they lead? Nowhere, probably. Everywhere maybe.
What was happening to her brain?
Couldn’t make sense of paths. Tried to follow one. She caught another path. Then another. Too many choices. No straight lines. Nothing made sense here. Colors and angles and paths. All jumbled up. Like her thoughts.
“Right,” Athena said, “because clearly what this day needs is a dash of surrealism. What’s next? Talking flowers? Doc and a DeLorean?”
The trees thickened until she was in a forest. How would she find her way out of here? Forcing her brain to engage logically, she spotted a sign that read Dot’s Apothecary.
The vine-covered cottage with board and batten shutters, and a slate roof that looked straight from Stratford-upon-Avon.
Athena raised an eyebrow. Dot had an apothecary out here too?
Or was this the mothership for the apothecary in Crafters’ Corner?
The place where the older woman compounded potions and spells?
Lacking any better options (and secretly wishing Dot had the Ramones on her playlist and a tonic labeled “I Wanna Be Sedated”), Athena made her way to the door and knocked. Dot had been at the remembrance garden. What were the odds she was at home?
Fingers crossed . . .
She knocked again, and the door swung open to reveal the towering British woman with a smile so enthusiastic, Athena wished she’d worn sunglasses.
“Athena!” Dot’s face lit up like she just won a lifetime supply of tea cakes, and calories don’t count on Saturdays. “Darling, you look like you’ve been hit by a runaway lorry. Come in, come in!”
Before Athena could dredge up a believable excuse involving alien abductions, she got swept into a cottage that looked as if Mary Poppins opened an herb shop after a wild night out with Macbeth witches.
Dried plants hung from every available surface, shelves groaned under the weight of colorful bottles, and various animals lounged about as if they were paying rent. A sage-looking black cat gave Athena a once-over that said, Honey, you think you’ve got problems? Try coughing up hairballs.
“My golf cart ran out of juice,” she said.
“Your buggy needs a bit of a pick-me-up, does it?” Dot pushed against the lace curtain to peer out the window. “Let’s get it sorted.”
They ventured back outside and walked to the path where the cart had died.
Together, they pushed the golf cart back to Dot’s and a small charging station hidden behind a honeysuckle bush.
Athena noticed the strange contraption next to the charger—a bicycle connected to what looked like an old-fashioned butter churn, with an old Vitamix attached to the handlebars and a small wind turbine affixed to the back.
Dot followed her gaze. “Oh, that’s my pedal-powered potion mixer. Combines exercise with herbal brewing and smoothie making, and on windy days, it charges my satellite phone. Efficient, don’t you think?”
Athena blinked, wondering if Dot was kidding or if she herself accidentally stepped into an alternate universe where logic took an extended vacation to Narnia. “Sure, because who doesn’t want their kale smoothie with a hint of lavender and a dash of static electricity?”
“Exactly! Now, this will take a little while. Why don’t you come inside and have some tea while you wait? I promise it won’t turn you into a frog. Well, probably not. There was that one time with Mr. Ribbit, but he’s much happier now, I assure you.”
Athena wasn’t sure whether that was a joke or not, but she gave a forced laugh out of politeness. Either way, reality left the station some time ago.
Back inside the cottage, Dot guided Athena to a small table by a window overlooking a garden. Flowers of wildly vivid colors grew next to vegetables, showing off like they were in a county fair competition.
“Now then.” Whistling a jaunty tune that sounded like “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” Dot busied herself with a kettle.
The irony was not lost on Athena, who hadn’t been this far from happy since she found out Santa wasn’t real. (Which, incidentally, had also involved her father lying, now that she thought about it. Red flag, much?)
Dot set a steaming cup of tea in front of Athena. The liquid was a deep, rich purple that didn’t occur in nature and probably glowed in the dark. “What’s on your mind, dear? You’ve been through the emotional wringer and then some.”
Athena stared at the rough-hewn table, tracing a knot in the wood with her finger. How could she explain the tornado whirling inside her? Where would she even start? Previously on Athena’s Life: Everything You Thought You Knew Was a Lie?
“I . . .” she began, then faltered.
Dot sat across from her, cupping the delicate teacup in giant palms and sending Athena a look of large-hearted sympathy. “Mm-hmm.”
“I don’t know who I am anymore. It’s like I showed up to life’s costume party, and I’ve been wearing the wrong outfit this whole time.”
Dot arched an erudite eyebrow. “Ah, an identity crisis. Tricky business that, but also an opportunity.”
Athena snorted. “An opportunity? For what? A complete mental breakdown? Because let me tell you, it’s happening.”
“For reinvention, dear.” Dot stirred her tea, which was changing colors from purple to blue.
Athena wondered if she was hallucinating or if this was just another day on Hobby Island.
“When we lose our sense of self, we have the chance to rebuild. To choose who we want to be, rather than accepting who we’ve been told we are.
It’s like redecorating your soul. Pitch out the old and in with the new self-actualization! ”
The words hit Athena like a well-aimed golf ball to the forehead, leaving her surprisingly clear-eyed.
What false story did she believe about herself?
The golden child. The golf prodigy. Daddy’s little champion.
But were any of those things really her?
Or were they just roles she’d been cast in without ever seeing the script?
Mind boggled.
“Everything I thought I knew about my childhood, my father . . . it’s all a lie,” she said in a soft voice. “I feel like I can’t trust my memories. It’s like my entire identity is crumbling faster than my resolve in front of a plate of hot fudge brownies.”
“You know, Athena, memories are like garden herbs. Some are sweet and healing, like chamomile or mint. Others are bitter and can hurt if mishandled, like that time I accidentally used ghost peppers instead of peperoncini in my ‘Soothe Your Soul Soup.’ But let me tell you, it cleared everyone’s sinuses! ”