“So, did you sleep okay?” he asked.
Anna looked over at the almost-flat air mattress. “Not great,” she said, rubbing at her neck. “But anything beats sleeping on that grubby thing.” She pointed to the mattress on the bed frame.
“Yeah, your dad had been meaning to replace that. Never got around to it, I guess.”
Anna stiffened at the mention of her father. “You knew Giorgos?”
Nikos smiled and looked curiously at her. “You call your dad Giorgos?”
“Well, he wasn’t really much of a dad,” Anna said as she took another sip and looked down at the table, her lips pursed due partly to the coffee and partly to the subject matter. He had been a fine dad for the first twenty percent of Anna’s life. But his record wasn’t stellar after that. Non-existent, in fact.
“Not to you, maybe.”
Anna looked up, and Nikos was staring back at her with something that looked suspiciously like pity.
“Do you want to tell me why you’re here?”
“I’m here to help you,” he said. “You want to fix up the summer house, and I’m here to lend a hand.”
“Thanks,” Anna said, “but I’m not really sure where to start.”
“Well, Christos said that we could use his tools, and we have the truck for the day, but you’ll have to buy materials,” Nikos said, walking around the room. “So why don’t you make a list, and I’ll meet you around front with the truck?”
She nodded.
“Great. See you out front in five.”
As Nikos left, Anna pulled a pen out of her bag. She didn’t have any paper, so she tore one of the flaps off the cardboard box and began to make a list as she noticed things:
Mattress
Pillow
Oven
Sink
Plumbing stuff
Tiles for bathroom floor
Curtains
Curtain rods x2
Vacuum
Dishes
Pots, pans & utensils
Place settings
Trash can
Toilet paper
Food
Bathroom toiletries
Paper
Artwork for walls
Bath mat
Laundry hamper
Hangers
Area rug
As Anna made her list, she realized she had gone from trying to get the summer house to be sellable to putting down luxuries; things that would only matter if she were going to stay for longer. She crossed them off the list. She certainly wouldn’t need a laundry hamper for just a couple of weeks.
List complete, Anna went outside, to find Nikos speaking with her grandmother at the front of the house by the truck. Eirini was happily chatting to him, but the moment she saw Anna, she dropped her smile and squeezed past into the courtyard.
“Can you believe that?” Anna said, gesturing behind her as she climbed in the truck. “You would think that having her long-lost granddaughter come to visit would be a bit more exciting for her.”
Nikos shook his head as he climbed in and started the engine. “It’s not you,” he said. “It’s the situation. None of them knew Giorgos was leaving the summer house to anyone. And it’s not like anyone was keeping you away from visiting them before now, were they?”
“That’s a bit unfair,” Anna said as Nikos reversed down the drive. “Excuse me for not wanting anything to do with the family of the man who cheated on my mother and abandoned his family.”
Nikos slammed on the brakes hard enough that Anna was thrown forward in her seat.
“What the hell was that for?” she shouted, turning to him.
“Maybe it’s better if we don’t talk about Giorgos, okay?” he said, frowning. “I understand why you don’t like him based on the story you know, but that wasn’t my experience with him, and I won’t sit around and listen to you complain about him when you clearly don’t know the whole story.”
Anna blushed and looked at her lap. She felt she had every right to complain about her father, but maybe she needed to realize that she was the odd one out here. And she didn’t want to push Nikos away. She needed his help too much if she was going to get out of Greece as soon as possible.
“Fine,” Anna said. “Let’s just fix up his summer house and be around his family without ever once mentioning him. Sounds easy.” She looked up at Nikos, who was still frowning, and rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine, for real. No Giorgos talk.”
Nikos nodded, put the truck back into gear, and started down the road.
“So tell me about yourself, then,” he said as they turned onto the main road.
“Not much to tell,” Anna said. “I’m from Connecticut, which I’m sure you know from he-who-must-not-be-named. I moved to New York City about a year and a half ago to work at an art gallery. I spend too much time at work, not enough time with my sister, and too much of my salary on cheap wine and falafels. And now I’m halfway around the world collecting inheritance property. Does that about do it?”
“Do you have a boyfriend?” Nikos asked, smiling slyly at Anna.
“No,” she said, perhaps a bit too sharply. Nikos noticed.
“Sounds like there’s a story there.”
“Does it?” She wasn’t about to take the bait. “I assure you, there is no boyfriend.”
“So when do you have to be back at this art gallery job of yours?” he asked.
“Well, the thing is…” Anna wasn’t sure what to say. She hadn’t even told Lizzy that she was fired. But was she going to try to convince Marcus to give her her job back? No, the thought of that made her feel sick. So what was the harm in saying so? “I don’t really have a job to go back to,” she admitted.
“So, your stay is open-ended, then?” Nikos asked, and he almost sounded excited. “Maybe you should see a bit more of the island. Make sure you get the full experience before you go back to the city.”
“We’ll see,” Anna said. “I only want to be here as long as I have to be in order to get the summer house on the market.”
Nikos laughed. “I think you’ll find that will be much longer than a couple of weeks. We’re on island time here, and then there’s Greek time on top of that.”
“What is Greek time?”
Nikos chuckled again. “Let’s just say your social life here will involve a lot of waiting around for people.”
Anna shrugged. “We’ll see. Plus, I don’t think I’ll have enough time to develop much of a social life.”
“We’ll see about that,” Nikos said as they turned into a car park. “Okay, first things first, let’s get you an actual bed to sleep on.”
A couple of hours later, Anna ran out of the McDonald’s in Fira with a greasy brown bag and two drinks. They had tried to fit through the drive-through, but Anna’s new mattress was sticking