Four

“YOU are still a female Schumacher, goddammit!” Thera teased as she pretended to wobble after she got out of the car.

She grinned at her. “My little car may be old, but it’s a rocket!” she answered proudly as she also got out.

“Driving still your passion, baby?” she asked, her face soft and her smile remembering.

“It sure is,” she replied softly.

They were both thinking of her mother, the one who also loved driving fast on highways. The one who taught Carla to love speed and the wind.

The one who died in a car crash beside her husband in her favorite car.

She stopped driving fast for a while after her parents’ car crashed. It wasn’t her mother’s fault but the other car’s drunk driving. She avoided him and they crashed into a tree, and the other man’s life was saved.

Still, she grieved.

She grieved every time she had wanted to speed up because she could see her mother’s giddy face when she was alive and they could do this together.

Eventually, the call was too powerful, and she returned to the road when she finally realized her parents wouldn’t want her to suffer their passing for much too long.

She stood with Thera beside the car, and her friend was now looking up at the house with wonder.

“Exactly as pretty as I remember it!” Thera said, her voice a little thick with the remembrance of happy memories.

Thera had always loved her parent’s house, now hers since they passed away. It stood atop a cliff, facing the ocean, with stairs curved on the face of the rock where they descended down the beach.

The house was big, built with colorful stone and red roof tiles, with wide-frame windows in rooms at different levels all the way down.

On the front facing the roads, the grounds and upper floors were visible with the garage and their long circular driveway.

The ground in front of the house was covered by green grass, with a big umbrella in a corner, by the edge of the flower beds.

Under the umbrella was a table with a glass cover and wooden legs with four matching chairs.

The place was surrounded by a wall about two meters high, interrupted by iron gates that let in vehicles and a smaller one for people.

Carla sensed Jake stopping just behind her and she immediately tensed.

Never had she imagined, even in her wildest dreams of him, that she would witness him here, standing by her house, ever.

“You have a wonderful home, Carla,” he said in a sincere voice.

“Thank you, Jake,” she replied. “This house was my father’s baby.”

“I’m very sorry about your parents,” said Thera softly. “That was a terrible accident.”

She looked wildly at Jake. The accident happened shortly after Mykonos.

She went to Mykonos a lost child, left it more lost… and then she crashed after the accident.

Again.

She had new nightmares, and newly dead parents.

She had cried in her sleep as he cradled her during the nightmares that had come back after a very long time. Her biological parents died in a car crash and she was a lone survivor. Her mother covered her with her body. She was three and she barely remembered, but few details visited her in her dreams. The sound of glass and metal smashing, the ringing after it, and sticky blood on her face and hands from her mother’s broken body…

Jake had held her during the first and the second night. The nightmares stopped after the second night.

Who would have thought her adoptive parents would end up dying in the same tragic ending, and she would have a new nightmare to scare her barely a month after Mykonos?

Thera turned to her because she was very quiet, she realized. She quickly took her eyes away from Jake’s.

“I know,” she replied, trying to smile, as she replied to the last thing she remembered Thera said.

“You’re here at last, little lady! You took too long to arrive!”

The deep voice booming in Greek made all three of them jump.

An old man approached, looking a bit grim as he held Thera’s shoulders to look her over. Then he smiled and bent down to kiss the hair of the laughing woman.

“Thera Harris Lee! You’re finally back!”

“The flight was delayed, Mr. Gerou,” she said in Greek. Mr. Gerou was in his sixties, still well-built and strong. If it wasn’t for the white hair and mustache, he would have appeared much younger. His wife rushed from the house and immediately engulfed Thera in a tight embrace.

“Oh, Thera! Thera!” the old woman was exclaiming, then greeted the young woman profusely in Greek.

“Mr. Gerou is my caretaker-gardener and personal bodyguard,” she explained to Jake in soft English while they waited for the greetings to die down. “He is married to Mrs. Georgia—that’s her first name, she’s Georgia Gerou—and she takes care of the house and she cooks when I’m too busy to do that. It’s a big house so I have other people coming by to help them during the week, but these two live with me in a separate apartment on a lower level of the house.”

“Your house, the way it was built, is very interesting.”

“You’ll see when I give you a tour. They’ve been working for my family for thirty years and they are already on pension, but they still wanted to stay here with me.”

“Are you married, Carla?” he asked in a low voice.

She looked at him, startled.

So much for friendly conversation.

“No. Hasn’t Thera mentioned anything?”

“How about a boyfriend?” he whispered again.

“What the hell are you doing?” she asked him, also whispering.

“Just wondering what happened to you after you left me all alone in Mykonos.”

“The week was over. I expected you’d have gone back to Australia. You can’t be all alone.”

“Tell yourself that again, now that I’m here.”

“Jake, look—”

“I looked for you.”

She stared at him in shock.

Thera finally finished greeting the old couple who had been a big part of her life before she left for Australia, and they both hurriedly schooled their faces to neutrality when her friend turned to both of them.

“Jake, let me introduce you to Mr. and Mrs. Gerou. They don’t speak English at all,” she said, “so if you need something, either I or Carla can translate for you.”

“I’m good with signs. Maybe we can turn it into a game? Much more enjoyable,” he gamely said before stepping forward and initiating himself into the group with hand signs, which, indeed, made the introductions livelier, as the others laughed at Jake’s antics with his hands.

And sentimental.

He did the same in Mykonos when he didn’t want her to translate for him. He wanted to try his own awkward Greek, and when he couldn’t be understood, he opted for those funny hand signs that had everyone cracked up.

“I looked for you.”

She took a big gulp of air and slowly pushed it out of her chest.

Her heart still thudded painfully.

After that, they entered the house, helping each other with the luggage, with the elderly couple serving cool drinks and seafood lunch and fruits.

And she busied herself with playing the happy hostess to her guests…