Next door, the bed creaked softly, the headboard knocking against the wall twice.
Dressing quickly, I headed out to the garden to have a cigarette. Smoking was my guilty secret. I only indulged a few times a year, strangely feeling like I was regaining a little of my former self when I did. The cigarettes were my dirty little touchstone.
I found a secluded spot inside an olive vine grown wild over a trellis. I smoked two cigarettes in quick succession, just for good measure.
Someone jumped in front of me.
Gray. He must have had a two-minute shower to be out here so fast.
“Caught ya red handed,” he joked, his hair soaking wet and plastered to his head.
I felt fourteen again, when my father had found me smoking in the back shed. “I don’t normally do this. I don’t even know why I bought a pack. I haven’t smoked for at least ten years.”
He shot me a broad smile. “Quit explaining. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. Hey, where’s Jennifer? I didn’t see her in the house. She hasn’t run out on us, has she?”
“She’s . . . busy.”
“Mind if I have one of your smokes?”
I held the pack out to him. “You, too?”
“Yeah.”
“I felt like one as soon as I got to Athens. I’ve never seen so many people smoking. It was kind of freeing. I guess that sounds ridiculous.”
“No, it doesn’t.” He paused to light the cigarette from my lighter.
I sighed. “I feel bad about being so persistent with Jennifer. I’m not like that normally.”
Blowing out a stream of smoke, he threw back his head, nodding. “People like us, we don’t do things like this. We don’t run about interrogating people and tracking people down. I almost feel like I can’t get a grip. Do you know what I’m saying? Like whatever Jennifer tells us is just going to send us further down the rabbit hole. And things are going to get crazier, but we’re not going to get any closer.”
In that moment, Gray sounded like the twenty-four-year old that he was. He’d held up a front since I’d met up with him here in Greece. But he wasn’t much more than a kid, just seven years older than Kara.
“I know,” I sympathised. “I’m on edge every second.”
Gray found himself a seat on a log and launched into a set of stories about his two girls, as though trying to ground himself. It was easy to tell that he was besotted with them.
Jennifer and Sethi walked out into the garden, carrying trays. They’d made sandwiches on sourdough bread, piled high with different cheeses and tomatoes.
“Hope you’re hungry.” Jennifer set her tray of drinks down on a nearby table made of the same stone as some of the walls of the house. Sethi placed his tray beside hers. “I brought the bread and tomatoes with me today. I didn’t know Jenny would have visitors, so it is good timing.”
“Count me in.” Gray picked up a sandwich. “Hey, ef-ha-ri-sto. I hope that means thank you. I’ve been hearing people say it here.”
Sethi raised his eyebrows, smiling. “Almost right. Say it with more gusto and I’ll know you meant it. And, hey, you’re welcome.”
We ate while Sethi talked about the catch and life at sea on a fishing trawler. Jennifer was clearly entranced by him, watching him closely as he spoke.
The humidity out here was making me sweat. Already, I needed another shower. I realised that I was barely ever in humid environments at home. Everything was air conditioned: the house—all five thousand square feet of it, the shopping malls, my car. I jogged around the lake in winter and autumn and swam in our heated pool during the summer. I was never really uncomfortable. But here, it was a different world. I could imagine sleeping in the shade outside during the hottest part of the day and then staying up late at night chatting and socialising. I could step into a different mood, like stepping straight into one of Jennifer’s paintings. It was a vision that stood outside of everything else—a life that only someone who wasn’t me could lead.
Jennifer sipped on a glass of iced lime and soda. “I guess we should start.”
“I’d like that,” I said, my vision of lazy Greek days dissolving in an instant.
“I’m not so sure that you will like it when I’m through,” she said in a quiet tone.
Gray took a wary, sideways glance at Sethi, and Jennifer caught it.
“Sethi knows all that I do,” Jennifer told us quickly. “You can feel comfortable talking in front of him. He served in the Hellenic Army for six years—all Greek men have to serve about a year. He saw some of the worst things people can do to each other.” She paused then, glancing briefly at him as if for confirmation that she could continue. “But the worst thing that he experienced happened back at home, when a thief broke into his house and murdered his wife, right in front of their child. Sethi was away in the army at the time. He was left with a burning hate of those who treat human life so cheaply.”