Chapter 18
Ican’t stop thinking about Hayes’s father in the days that follow.
I know the world is vast and unpredictable and that people die every day, but until now, death has always felt abstract. Something that only existed in news headlines or on movie screens. Distant. Impersonal. The kind of thing that happened to other people, in other lives. Never like this.
This wasn’t supposed to happen to us.
Death is supposed to come later. After college. After marriage. After kids. When we’re older and worn down by time. When we’re parents ourselves. It’s not supposed to arrive when we’re barely stepping into adulthood.
It feels like I’ve lost something forever, something I didn’t even realize I had.
Some quiet piece of innocence I’ll never get back.
The world seems tilted sideways, like one of those carnival fun houses lined with warped mirrors, everything bent and unfamiliar.
Nothing looks quite right anymore, and I don’t know how to move through life the way I used to.
Most nights, I end up crying into my pillow. Small, muffled sounds, like a private confession. Which is strange, because I wasn’t even all that close to Hayes’s father.
The man was always busy, always on the move. Important. Out of reach.
I saw him mostly at family dinners or big events, like Hayes’s birthday parties and holiday gatherings. Even when he let me ride his horses or joined me in the ring, he was quiet, often somewhere else in his mind.
Still, he was the only father figure I’ve ever really known.
Perhaps that’s why the grief hits deeper than I expected. Maybe it’s not just the man himself I’m mourning, but the idea of him. The permanence he seemed to represent. Stability and power.
Aidan Vassilios was larger than life. He felt untouchable. If someone like that can disappear in the blink of an eye, then it’s proof the world can change at any minute, without any warning.
No one—not even the strongest of us—is safe.
Apparently, it was a freak car accident. A truck veered into oncoming traffic and hit his luxury sedan head-on. Both Hayes’s father and his driver were killed on impact.
I had to hear all of this secondhand from Amber.
According to my sister, the funeral was held in Athens, where Hayes’s father was buried alongside generations of relatives in their ancestral cemetery.
Hayes and Kora flew back to California shortly after to settle his father’s estate, though no one knows how long they’ll stay here.
With his father gone, the family business needs Hayes more than ever.
Another trip to Greece—a final, permanent one—feels inevitable.
It’s hard not to be upset that Amber is the only one Hayes is confiding in. More than anything, I want to be the person Hayes leans on right now. Except he won’t let me. He’s shut me out completely.
He won’t answer any of my calls or texts. Mom says his behavior is normal and that I should give him space. That people grieve in different ways and I shouldn’t take it personally, because death can make people act strangely, even pull away. Especially when it’s this sudden and shocking.
Fine, okay. I get that.
I just don’t understand why he’s sharing everything with her—his grief, his plans—while I’m left in the dark.
Still, it feels petty to bring this up to anyone.
Now isn’t the time to be dramatic or clingy.
Not when Hayes is going through so much.
So I try to ignore the ache in my chest and pretend not to hear Amber’s late-night calls with him echoing down the hallway.
Even when it breaks my heart a little more each time it happens.
“Yes, of course I’ll go with you,” I hear her whisper into the phone one night while I’m cramming for midterms in the kitchen, hunched over a big pot of coffee. Her bedroom door is open down the hall, and she’s even louder than usual.
“Yeah, I get that. But you need me,” she says, then pauses, like she’s listening closely to whatever he’s saying on the other end. “We’ll figure it out.”
Then I hear her annoying, tinkling laughter.
“Duh, yes, of course. I know it’s far, Hayes.” I can practically hear her rolling her eyes at the phone. “But I want this to work, too.”
My stomach knots.
I have a sickening hunch they’re talking about her traveling with him to Greece when he goes back. I don’t know if Hayes plans to finish the semester at LHU or take a leave of absence now, but with his father gone, a move to Greece feels like a foregone conclusion.
It’s not if.
It’s when.
But is he really bringing Amber with him?
How would that even work? She’s a senior. She still has to finish high school. Mom may be a pushover for Amber, but I can’t imagine her signing off on something that drastic. Not before graduation, at least.
Unless they’re just talking about a short trip during winter break. That would make more sense, though it’s hard to believe Mom would let Amber fly off to Europe, even with Hayes. Our family has never even left California. And I have no idea where she’d get the money for an international flight.
Amber laughs loudly again into the phone.
“No, I suppose the whole princess part doesn’t hurt either.”
I don’t even want to know what they’re talking about now.
I slam my textbook closed and storm down the hallway, shutting myself in my room and curling up in bed.
I have to remind myself not to overreact and remember my mother’s advice.
Hayes is hurting; he’s not thinking clearly.
I need to be patient. Cut him some slack.
So even though what I really want to do is wring his neck, I bottle it up and keep it all inside.
The next day, I drive over with Mom to help her deliver the grief sachets she made for him and Kora. They’re filled with herbs like lavender and tiny chips of rose-red rhodonite that she says are supposed to “calm the spirit,” whatever that means.
I tell myself I’m doing this to be kind. To offer support. The truth is, I just want to see him and remind him I’m still here, even if he doesn’t seem to want me anymore.
But when we arrive, no one answers the door. We quietly leave the sachets on the porch, tucking them beneath the welcome mat, and that’s that.
When we get back home, I immediately head for my room and climb back into bed, where I’ve been wasting away for days.
Mom trails after me, her long, floral peasant skirt sweeping the floor.
Her ponytail is tied back with a matching silken scarf covered in tiny butterflies.
I catch her watching me with that firm, no-nonsense expression, the one she wears whenever she senses I’m slipping into that quiet, shadowy place inside myself.
“That’s it. Enough moping around, Alysander,” she says, planting herself in the doorway.
“I’m not moping.”
I quickly shove my song journal beneath my pillow before she can catch a glimpse.
Heat prickles at my neck just thinking about what’s inside.
In between studying for exams, I’ve been working out a new song—a messy, heartsick ballad about painful unrequited love.
One that even I know is way too on the nose.
“Your sister says you haven’t gotten out of bed all week except for class,” Mom says, crossing her arms. “She’s worried about you. I am too.”
I groan. “Ambrosia needs to learn how to keep her mouth shut.”
Of course Amber told her.
I bet she couldn’t wait. I can practically see Amber’s smug little smirk as she told Mom how I’ve been holed up in my room, blasting sad-girl indie rock and plowing through an alarming amount of pizza and ice cream.
“This isn’t healthy. Your aura’s all black and blocked.” Mom sits beside me, tucking a greasy strand of hair behind my ear. “Come on, you’ve got to get out of this funk. Shake it off, sweetie.”
I snort.
“Okay, Taylor Swift.”
“I’m serious. It’s time to stop sulking—and start cleansing.” Her gold bangles clink as she pulls a thick bundle of sage from her pocket and waves it like a magical weapon.
I duck away.
“Mom, no. You know I hate the smell of that stuff.”
“Now don’t be negative,” she says, striking a match and setting the smudge stick ablaze. She gently blows until the tips glow red and smoke curls into the air. “A little sage will do wonders to clear out all this bad energy.”
She stands and begins circling me with the smoking bundle like she’s cleaning the air. Then the chanting begins. She starts speaking in another language—maybe Latin, maybe something else—as if she’s performing an ancient ritual to chase away demons.
“What is this, The Exorcist?”
Sadly, my joke doesn’t earn a reaction. She’s in full healer mode now, impervious to my wit, as she smudges over my head and then moves to each corner of the room.
She smudges my bed. My desk. Even my closet gets the full spiritual cleanse.
“Here, now you try,” she says, pressing the sage into my hand, wrapping her fingers around mine. “Like this, remember?”
She guides my hand through the motions, starting at the base and then moving up and around, circling the corners and rising toward the ceiling. I half-heartedly follow her lead, waving the sage in one hand while pinching my nose with the other.
“This is really unnecessary. I’m just sad, okay?” I mutter. “It’s not like I’m about to start levitating or crab-walk down the stairs like Regan MacNeil.”
I let out a dry laugh as I remember the first time Hayes and I watched The Exorcist. Me, half-hiding, half-giggling behind a throw pillow during the scariest parts, while he narrated every jump scare in a ridiculous, over-the-top Greek accent, mimicking the voice the demon used to torment the characters.
“That’s not funny!” Mom snaps, her face pale with alarm. “Possessions are nothing to joke about. Spirits can slip through cracks in your soul if you’re not careful, and believe me, grief leaves cracks everywhere.”
“See, this is why I need Hayes. He would’ve laughed,” I say, flopping back down onto my bed. “No one else gets me like he does.”
“Oh, honey…”