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“These girls didn’t realize he wasn’t interested in them? Did you?”

“Oh, yes. He tells me all his secrets.” She couldn’t help her smugness. Being Julian’s favorite was something she cherished. “But there was one girl who was a year older than me.” Her amusement dimmed as she tiptoed toward the core of her phobia. “She had a terrible crush on him and thought I was in her way. She kept all the other girls in line against me and said horrible things about me to anyone who would listen. One day she made me so salty, I said I would marry Julian and move to Athens with him and she would be stuck on the island forever, like the rest of the cows.”

He gave a choke of laughter, instantly ten years younger. The light slanted off his bare shoulders as they shook. He hadn’t shaved and his hair was shaggy, but he was so handsome, white teeth flashing, she was dazzled.

“Did that set her straight?” He was still grinning.

“No.” She plunged back into that awful time, shoulders hunching protectively. “She attacked me. Pulled my hair and tried to knock me down. I tripped her and sat on her and spat in her face. We both got suspended for three days.”

“I know it’s wrong to be proud of you for that.” He held up a hand, mouth pursed around the laughter he was trying to stifle. “But I hate a bully. I’m glad you stood up for yourself.”

“Yaya wasn’t. She said I was an embarrassment.” Shame still consumed her soul when she thought of it. “I did every chore I could think of, but she barely spoke to me the whole time I was home.” She wanted to crawl under the table. “I was miserable at school, but happy to go back even though everyone laughed at us.”

“How old were you?” Now his amusement was gone, fading to concern.

“Eleven.” Young enough to believe the world ought to be a fairer place, but fueled by her first taste of adolescent hormones. “The other girl was twelve. Her sister was a year younger than me, but siblings. You know. Loyal.” She glanced at him, envious of his having that unbreakable link with Khristos. “On the way home from school, the younger sister stole my bag. I chased her through an olive grove and into a gulley. She threw my bag into an old shed. When I went in to get it, the older sister locked me in.”

Alia’s stomach still knotted as she recalled that moment when she had rattled at the door and heard them running away. At the profound silence that followed.

Spiro’s black eyebrows slammed together. “How long were you stuck there?”

“Four nights.” With only the dregs of her water bottle during the heat of the late-spring days.

“You could have died.” The harrowing note in his voice was no comfort.

“I was convinced I would.” The painfully familiar gaping chasm opened in her chest. “I thought Yaya would be happy I was gone. That no one would bother to look for me because I didn’t matter to anyone.”

He drew a sharp breath. “Was her dementia already an issue?”

“No. But she thought I was having a tantrum about her being angry with me and would come home by morning. When I didn’t, she began calling around. The girls said they’d seen me on the beach so that’s where the search was focused. Everyone lost hope quickly, thinking I’d been swept away.”

He swore, then said with dawning understanding, “Julian found you.”

“He did. His parents were still living near Yaya. They called to tell him I was lost. He wouldn’t believe I’d drowned and came home to help look. He got the younger sister to confess what they’d done and came to get me.”

Spiro swore and ran his hand down his face, looking at her as though he couldn’t quite believe any of it.

“Yaya hugged me so hard when she saw me.” She made herself smile through the agony of lost hope. “And cried. We never argued again.”

“And the sisters?” he asked sharply. “What happened to them?”

“Their family moved to the mainland to get away from the scandal. Which was what the older one wanted, so I guess she showed me.” She drew a circle in her soup. “At least school was boring after that. No one picked on my anymore and, once I turned fifteen, I quit altogether so…”

“You haven’t finished school?”

“That’s bad, I know.” She winced. “Yaya was already struggling with her memory and money. I needed to take shifts at the taverna.” She looked into the soup she’d barely touched. “That doesn’t reflect well on you, though, does it? Having a wife with so little education?” One who had this massive hang-up around being alone?

“That doesn’t bother me. It took me years to get my own degree,” he dismissed with a wave. “But is that something you want? To finish school? Go to university?”

“Maybe. I know I should. At one point, I thought I would do what everyone my age did—leave the island for school, then figure out my future while having that foundation of a home to return to. Instead, Yaya was diagnosed and I stayed to look after her, which I don’t resent at all, but I’m kind of stunted because of it. It was all I could do to keep our heads above water so I’ve never thought about what my life will look like after she’s gone. I don’t want to wish her life away. And it feels scary to contemplate having no responsibilities to anyone except myself. I’ll be completely on my own, able to do anything, but that’s like trying to visualize the size of the universe. It’s too big. Too many possibilities. So I don’t,” she admitted ruefully.

“Try,” he said with equal wryness. “If you want to finish school or something else, tell me. I’ll support you however I can. I want to know you’re on your feet when we dissolve this marriage.”

Right. Soon this tiny welcome mat of a marriage would be pulled out from under her exactly the way so many other things had been. The void that was her future opened like a black hole, threatening to suck her into its vast emptiness.

“Maybe I will go back to school,” she murmured. If only to have a roommate.

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