Chapter 26
Athena
“In the mist of our illusions, truth chimes softly. Listen closely. It calls you home to yourself.”
—Eloisa Hobby
Athena paced from one end of Crafters’ Corner to the other, head down, book clutched to her chest, muttering under her breath.
She’d spent the past two hours after fleeing the brunch reading It’s Not You cover to cover, and her world came crashing down around her.
Calista had been right all along. Benjamin was not a golf genius as he professed.
He was not a good father because he applied strict discipline.
He was not the perpetual victim of others; in fact, he was the perpetrator, bullying those around him.
All the ways he’d used to bind Athena to him raced through her head, thoughts speeding like a bullet train.
The times he told her that she was the only one who truly “got” him.
The way he would pull her aside to whisper in her ear, “You are the best part of me” or “No one is as good a golfer except for me.” How whenever she won a tournament, he was there, putting his arm around her, taking command of the mike and the media, speaking for her.
Never letting her have a say in her career.
Distressed, she started walking, no destination in mind, except to outwalk her mistakes and misbeliefs, but no matter how far or fast she went, she couldn’t shake her demons.
And she’d been so bent on proving she deserved her father’s praise, and staying on his good side, she hadn’t noticed how he’d taken over her life.
He was controlling. He was grandiose. He was entitled.
He was self-important. He could only be around people he deemed important or successful.
He was exploitative. He was arrogant. He was jealous.
He lacked empathy. He ticked off every box for a clinical diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder, but the label didn’t matter.
What caused deep pain and suffering in all who came in contact with Benjamin Dempsey was his behavior.
He put himself above others, and he didn’t care about anyone but himself. Not even his children.
Especially not his children.
The excuses she’d made! Defending him to Calista.
You don’t understand Daddy. He’s special, talented, the best. In actuality Athena was the one who hadn’t understood Benjamin.
He has good qualities too; why are you so focused on his flaws? It’s not like we’re perfect. But all Benjamin did was berate them for their flaws, and when he did praise them, it was to take credit for their achievements.
He’s just trying to make us better. Maybe his methods are skewed, but he means well.
Except no, he did not mean well. This was projection on Athena’s part.
Because she meant well, she assumed he did, too, but he did not.
He looked out for number one. Always. Forever.
No matter who he stomped on to get his way.
Oh dear, oh dear. She couldn’t take a deep breath.
Only the top part of her lungs functioned.
Her head spun. She bumped into a jacaranda tree and apologized to it.
Pain shot through her hip, but she didn’t feel it.
People stared at her. Shamed, she swallowed the feeling whole, and it settled into the silt of her stomach, in the murky depths of childhood trauma.
All this time, she’d felt sorry for Calista. How she’d gotten locked out in the cold of their father’s affection. But now she saw the truth with the clarity of a microscope. Benjamin had never loved either of them. He simply did not have the capacity for love.
Bereft, shattered, Athena didn’t notice the weather changing, the humid air mixing with a cold northern breeze and spreading a misty fog over the land, damp and blinding.
But instead of seeking shelter, Athena took refuge in the vapor. She was not a person to live in her imagination like Calista. Athena was sensible, grounded, focused.
Except not today.
Crossroads. Life’s biggest intersection. If she kept on her current path she would always and forever be under her father’s thumb. But if she left the endless freeway of achievement, where would she go? What would she do?
Calista had been so brave, breaking free, walking away. Athena didn’t know if she was that strong.
The fog formed a thick cocoon around her. She welcomed the ethereal veil separating her from the world she knew. From the father whose love always came with conditions. From the sister she pushed away in her relentless pursuit of perfection, trying to please an unpleasable man.
How had she been so blind? How had she not seen the manipulation, the constant molding of her personality to fit her father’s grand plans?
You are the best part of me, Benjamin told her, but what he meant was, You are the best part of me because I made you in my image.
Athena’s breath hitched, a wretched noise ripping from her throat. She swallowed it down, a habit ingrained since childhood. Dempseys didn’t cry. Dempseys didn’t show weakness. Dempseys were winners, always.
But what did winning mean when the game itself was rigged?
She stumbled forward, the mist clinging to her skin, seeping into her bones. She should have been scared. Instead, a wild freedom pulsed through her veins. Here, in this space between what was and what could be, she didn’t have to be anyone’s perfect anything.
A sound whispered at the edge of hearing, faint, melodic. Wind chimes in a gentle breeze. The soft tinkling tugged at something buried deep, some long-forgotten ache. Athena followed, drawn by its haunting call.
She pushed through a curtain of misty leaves. Their cool touch against her skin felt like absolution, or her mother’s fingers brushing away childhood tears.
The fog that swallowed Athena whole began to lose its grip. At first, she thought she was imagining it—a trick of hope, of desperation. But no. The white wall around her was thinning, like cotton candy dissolving on the tongue.
Light seeped in, turning the mist into a living thing.
It glowed from within, pearl white and opalescent.
Wind swirled, sending the mist dancing. It twirled upward in gossamer ribbons, revealing the world in teasing glimpses.
A patch of emerald moss, soft as velvet.
A clutch of wildflowers, their petals still heavy with dew.
Each revelation was a gift, a secret shared between the island and Athena.
As the last wisps of fog retreated, curling away from her ankles, Athena felt naked. Exposed. All her carefully constructed walls were vanishing with the mist, leaving her raw and achingly alive.
Then the world just fell away.
Before her stretched a clearing.
Athena sucked in her breath, stunned. Thousands of wind chimes hung from branches, a symphony of metal, wood, and glass. Athena stood rooted, her chest heaving.
The chimes’ song swelled, wrapping around her like her sister’s arms used to, before golf and expectations and the weight of being Benjamin Dempsey’s daughters crushed the joy from their lives.
In the clearing’s center stood an ancient oak, its trunk twisted with age and secrets. It drew her, inevitable as gravity. At its base, nestled between gnarled roots, lay a hollow. A transparent lid shimmered with otherworldliness.
What was this?
Athena knelt. She reached for the lid. Warmth bloomed up her arm and settled in her chest. It felt like her mother’s hugs, before she left. Like Calista’s hand in hers, before the gulf between them grew too wide to cross.
“What are you?” Athena lifted the lid.
Inside lay a journal, bourbon-colored leather soft with years of handling. It smelled of secrets and memories, of hopes poured onto the page and dreams long deferred.
Athena traced the tooled vines on the cover. How many others had sat here, bleeding their hearts onto these pages? How many had found the strength to change their lives?
She opened it.
The spine cracked softly, releasing the scent of old paper and something green, something alive. Her eyes skimmed entries from strangers. Their words touched something raw within her, creating a bridge to these unknown souls who had faced their own demons in this magical place.
Then—a familiar scrawl. Looping curves, a deep forward slant.
Calista’s handwriting.
Athena’s heart stuttered. Her sister’s words, here? It seemed impossible. And yet . . . Hands trembling, she began to read.
Sometimes, I dream I’m shaking Athena. My hands on her shoulders, my voice hoarse from screaming, “Can’t you see what he’s doing to you?” But she just stares at me with those blue eyes of hers, confused and hurt, like I’m the one betraying her.
God, Attie. He’s turning you into his mirror, and you can’t even see it. Every day, you become a little more him and a little less you.
I want to grab your hand and run. I want to pull you away from his poison, his twisted love that’s not love at all. But I can’t. I’ve learned that the hard way. You have to want to leave. You have to see the bars of the cage before you can break free.
So I wait. I hope. I pray to a God I’m not sure I believe in anymore that one day, you’ll open your eyes.
That you’ll see the truth and find the courage to walk away.
And when that day comes—if it comes—I’ll be here.
I don’t care if we’re forty or sixty or ancient and gray.
I don’t care if we’ve forgotten how to talk to each other, if we’ve become strangers who share nothing but a last name and a history of hurt.
I’ll be here, Attie. Waiting. Ready to help you pick up the pieces and remember who you were before he got his hands on you.
I love you. Always have, always will. And I’m sorry. Sorry I couldn’t shield you from him. Sorry I couldn’t make you see. Sorry I left you behind.
But I’m not sorry for hoping. For believing that one day, we’ll find each other again. That we’ll sit on some porch somewhere, gray-haired and wrinkled, and laugh about how we escaped.
We’ll be free then, Attie. Free of his shadow, his expectations, his crushing transactional version of love. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll remember how to be sisters again.
The words blurred. Athena blinked, and tears splashed onto the page. She pressed a hand to her mouth, trying to hold back the sob that threatened to tear her apart.
All this time, she’d thought Calista was the one who needed saving, but they’d both been drowning, hadn’t they?
The wind chimes sang, giving voice to years of unspoken pain. Of longing. Athena wept. Deep, racking sobs that shook her entire body. She mourned for the relationship she and Calista should have had. For the childhood they’d both lost. For all the years wasted, trapped in their father’s toxic web.
How had it come to this?
Memories flooded back, sharp-edged and painful.
Calista, wild-haired and laughing, daring Athena to climb higher in that old backyard oak tree.
Calista, eyes flashing with hurt and anger, screaming that their father didn’t love them, he only loved what they could do for him.
Calista, packing her bags, begging Athena to come with her.
And Athena, always Athena, choosing to stay. Choosing the familiar cage over the terrifying freedom her sister offered.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered to the empty clearing. To the sister who wasn’t there. “I’m so sorry, Lissy.”
She stood on quivering legs. The wind whipped her hair, carrying the song of the chimes. It sounded different now. Mournful. Keening. A lament for all that had been lost. All that might never be reclaimed.
Drawn to the ocean, to the setting sun, she walked to the edge of the cliff and stared down at the churning water. For a moment, she imagined letting go. Letting the sea wash away the pain. The confusion. The suffocating weight of expectations she’d carried for so long.
Who would miss her, really? Her father, now that she was no longer his perfect puppet? Calista, who she’d hurt so deeply? The golfing world, which would surely move on to the next rising star?
One step. That’s all it would take to end the pain.
A gust of wind tossed her forward. Athena pinwheeled her arms, teetering on the brink.
Her heart leaped into her throat. In that moment of pure animal panic, she realized—she didn’t want to die.
She wanted to live. To make things right.
To become the person—the sister—she should have been all along.
But as she scrambled backward, her foot caught on a root. She fell hard. The impact drove the air from her lungs.
Athena lay gasping. Tears streamed down her face, mingling with the damp grass. She was alive. Broken. Humiliated. Utterly alone. But alive.
As the adrenaline faded, leaving her shaky and nauseated, a new sound cut through the foggy air.
A rhythmic thudding, growing louder. Footsteps? No, too heavy. Too . . . alien. Athena pushed herself up on her elbows, squinting.
An ostrich, its long neck swaying as it loped toward her.
She blinked, certain she must be hallucinating. But the large bird—Shushu, the island’s infamous rescue ostrich—was real. She stopped just a few feet away, regarding Athena with eyes that seemed far too knowing for a mere animal.
Athena stared back, feeling stripped bare under that steady gaze. She had lost everything. Her identity. Her purpose. Her sense of self.
A laugh bubbled up, half hysterical. This was rock bottom. This was her all-is-lost moment.
But as she looked into Shushu’s eyes, a strange calm settled over her. The ostrich took a step closer, then lowered itself to the ground beside Athena.
An offer. A choice. She could stay here, wallowing in her pain and confusion. Or . . .
She reached out to touch Shushu’s soft feathers.
“Okay,” she said, pulling herself onto the ostrich’s back. “Okay, let’s go.”
Shushu rose, surprisingly gently, and Athena made a silent vow. She would find out. Whatever it took. However long it took. She would discover who Athena Dempsey really was—beyond the golf prodigy, beyond her father’s daughter.
Even if it broke her completely.
Even if it remade her entirely.