Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Crete - September 2001
S tella returned to the hotel room thirty minutes after the Greek men carried James away. To her surprise, she found James tucked away in bed, his head buried in a pillow. Tears glinted on his cheeks. She sat down beside him and placed her hand on his naked back. The rain had intensified, and she’d gotten wet on her walk. Droplets fell onto the sheets from her hair.
He still smelled vaguely of alcohol. His lips were stained red with wine. But when he opened his mouth, his breath smelled minty. He’d had the foresight to brush his teeth.
“I’m sorry I left you at the taverna like that,” he said. He couldn’t look at her.
Stella’s heart shattered. She let a beat pass before she asked, “Why didn’t you tell me about your mother?”
James raised his shoulders.
“That man said you lost her in June,” Stella went on. And then, quieter, she added, “No wonder you never wanted to talk about anything from the past.”
James blinked. It was clear he didn’t want to discuss his mother. Not now. Maybe not ever.
“Listen, James. I love you. That’s real,” Stella declared, her voice breaking. “And love means telling each other stuff like this. It means sharing our innermost secrets.”
James touched Stella’s hair and tucked it behind her ear. It was a tender act; it was also dismissive, as though he wanted to politely ask her to shut up. Stella sighed and went to the bathroom to pull her hair into a ponytail and brush her teeth. She was grateful to be out of the sailboat, but it was as though the magic of their sailing had died out and left them in the horrors of their secrets.
Maybe in the sunlight of tomorrow, they would find a way to talk about this.
It was just a hiccup.
But that night, Stella dreamed of Nantucket Island. She dreamed of her mother screaming at her to get a job. She dreamed of a little boy wearing only a diaper and wandering along the shore. Is that my son? she wondered in the dream.
She woke up sweating and anxious. It took her a minute to figure out where she was.
The storm had calmed and left a blissful and sunny morning. Outside was a blue sky like a miracle. Stella sat up and listened to the sounds of James in the bathroom: showering, brushing out his hair. He wasn’t whistling like he normally did. But he’d had a hard night. Maybe he was hungover. Perhaps she could go to the bakery down the road and get them breakfast and coffee.
That was when she noticed his bag. It was packed with his things and propped up near the door.
Her heart sank.
But it was only a backpack. Maybe it meant he wanted her to pack, too. Perhaps it meant he wanted to go back to the sailboat and head north to Santorini or west to Italy. Maybe he had another adventure planned.
James left the bathroom and looked down at her in bed. His cheeks were hollow. He sat down on the bed and put his hand on her calf.
“Should we get coffee?” Stella asked. She sounded on the verge of tears.
“I have to go home,” he said.
Stella’s face was scrunched. She knew she looked ugly when she cried.
“I’ll go with you,” Stella said.
James shook his head. “Something is going on at home. Something I have to take care of.”
“I can help you,” Stella said.
“I need to do this by myself,” James said. His voice was tender but sure.
Stella’s heart pounded. She wanted to reach out and take him in her arms and never let him go. But she was frozen.
“I don’t understand,” Stella said. “What about the past three months? What about us?”
James winced and looked down. It looked like he was going to cry again. “It’s been a beautiful three months,” he said. “But it has to end. It was always going to end.”
“It doesn’t have to,” Stella said. “I’m an adult. You’re an adult. We can do what we want.”
“One would think,” James offered. “But life is more complicated than that, it seems.”
Stella couldn’t speak. James got up and combed his fingers through his hair. At that moment, he looked more handsome than he ever had. Stella wanted to hate him. But she knew she never could.
“You’re going to meet someone else,” James said. “You’re going to fall in love and have babies and be really happy.”
Tears fell from Stella’s eyes. “No,” she rasped.
But James was already putting his backpack on his shoulders. “I paid for the hotel the rest of the week, so you’re free to stay,” he said. “If you have money problems, talk to Angelos. He said he’d help you.”
Stella couldn’t believe Angelos had known her boyfriend was leaving before she did. They’d just met him last night.
“I love you, Stella,” James said from the doorway. “I think I always will.”
With that, James left and closed the door behind him.
Stella sat in stunned silence. Her hands were in fists.
But suddenly, she erupted from bed and went to the window, narrowly catching sight of him as he turned the corner and out of sight.
He was going to take the sailboat Stella. He was going to leave the real Stella on Crete alone.
Stella remained in that hotel room for the rest of the day. She didn’t eat, hardly drank any water, and stared through space with a dull ache in her heart. Last May—when she’d graduated from university—felt like an eternity ago. She remembered telling her parents, brothers, and friends that she was going to travel through Europe by herself “before I come home and get a job.”
Now that she’d fallen in love and had her heart broken so terribly, what was next? How could she ever have a normal life?
The next day, Stella managed to leave the hotel to get food and wander from beach to beach. It was in the mid-eighties, and Greeks sunned themselves brown on the sands. She swam out into the turquoise water by herself as far as she could go without panicking and peered across the water, watching a sailboat in the distance. She pretended it was James coming back to get her. But it went the wrong way.
The next day was more or less the same. Stella wasn’t sure what to do with herself. She considered flying from Crete to Rome and having new adventures. But her bank account was running low, her mother’s patience was razor-thin, and James was gone, gone, gone and irreplaceable. Stella imagined herself in Rome, crying into a plate of spaghetti.
On the third evening after James left, she ran into Angelos, the Greek man who’d told her about James’s mother. They were on the glossy white road next to the taverna where they’d met. Angelos ushered her into the restaurant and served her a plate of food and some wine. “You need to eat through heartbreak,” he told her. “You need energy.”
Stella asked him if he knew why James was needed at home. Angelos either didn’t know or wouldn’t tell her.
“Sometimes love runs its course.” He shrugged.
Stella couldn't believe that her love for James had run its course. It had only just begun!
That night, it occurred to Stella that she could fly to London and search for James. She planned it for hours and decided to call the airline tomorrow to buy a ticket. She’d ask every bartender, restaurant owner, and person on the street if they knew him. He’d been raised there. She’d eventually get to him.
But late that night, it occurred to her that he didn’t want to be found.
She imagined running through the streets, searching for him, only to discover he’d gone home to his ex-girlfriend or, worse, his wife.
Maybe he’d been having a nervous breakdown in Greece. Maybe she was a part of that nervous breakdown.
But he really did love me, she told herself as she wept. I have to believe our love was real.
Stella called home on the fifth day to tell them she was heading home. Her mother was overjoyed and said she’d have a family party when Stella arrived. Stella cried as her mother talked about what food she might serve at the party. She could hardly picture Nantucket Island.
It was hard to believe it had ever been home.
When Stella boarded the plane three days later—a plane that would take her from Crete to Athens, where she’d take a plane from Athens to Boston—all she could think about was the oracle she and James had met in Athens. The oracle had told them both that they would be married soon. Joy had permeated around them.
Why did I believe him?
Why did I believe in magic?
Stella couldn’t sleep throughout the entirety of her seventeen-hour journey. When she landed in the United States, she discovered it far different than she’d left it. September 11 th had permanently altered her beautiful country. Time had passed. She was different, too.