Seven Days of Friday (Women of Greece Book 1) (33 page)

V
ivi says
, “I think
by dose is broken.”

Then she falls at his feet.

Max picks her up.

He doesn’t mind her falling at his feet. What he does mind is that someone did this to her. Right now he’s rethinking that whole Hippocratic Oath. Thinking about breaking some bones. Thinking about Anastasia and her threats.

He sits her on his desk. Her nose is a big, black balloon. The rest of her isn’t in much better shape.

“What did this? A boulder?”

“Close: Effie.”

“Is anything else broken?”

“I want to shake my head, but it hurts.”

He gets a wheelchair, rolls her down to radiology.

N
othing broken but her nose
, and that will take care of itself with time.

“They can shoot you up with something good to dull the pain,” Max tells her.

“Is it chocolate?”

That’s a no.

“I’ll pass. I really want some chocolate.”

“I can get you some chocolate on the way home.”

“You’re taking me home?”

“What else can I do with you?”

She (almost) smiles.

He says, “We could hit Effie on the head and donate her body to science. I know people who could really use her organs.”

She (almost) laughs. “Effie’s probably taking a vinegar bath.”

He punches the elevator button. “Vinegar and rubbing alcohol are sound remedies for some things. I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss them.”

“Like what?”

“Alcohol is good for a fever. It evaporates and –
boom
– lower body temperature. But dilute it first – a lot. Otherwise you cool down too fast. Vinegar can soften calluses, and it's good for nausea.”

The elevator doors ping and they’re down and out. Vivi’s riding in her super cool wheelchair.

Max takes the VW. Vivi looks in the mirror and gasps.

“My nose is huge.”

“It’s okay,” he says. “You just look more Greek.”

M
ax makes a stop
. “You have to do this,” he says.

“Effie’s my cousin.”

“So?”

He parks and walks her into the police station.

Quiet afternoon. Two cops hunched over their desks, and a woman in the corner, waiting.

The cops look up.

“Hey! Did you come back for more bread and cheese?”

“Ha-ha,” Vivi says. “I’m here about that anonymous tip.”

“What about it?”

“My cousin called it in.”

“Proof?”

Max says, “There were two other witnesses present when she confessed.”

The cop glances back at Vivi. “Which cousin?”

“Effie. Eleftheria.”

“Which one is that?”

Vivi looks up at Max. “I don’t even know her last name, to be honest.”

The other cop says, “The one whose husband is boning your sister.”

“Oh, her. Let’s bring her in, scare her a bit,” he says. To Vivi: “Why would she do that?”

“She hates me. And the right situation walked into her hands. That poor woman died and – ”

“Vivi?” The woman from the corner stands. “Are you Elias and Eleni Pappas’s daughter?”

Vivi squints at her. “Only if saying “Yes” won’t land me back in jail. Otherwise, no.”

That’s his woman, Max thinks. Not today, maybe. But she will be.

“Hello, Vivi,” she says. “I think perhaps we are supposed to be sisters.”

W
ow
. What do you
say to a bombshell like that?

Vivi takes the high, classy road. Says, “Hello, I’m Vivi. I’m sorry about your mother.” Offers her hand and an appropriate smile for the somber occasion.

She’s looking for similarities, differences, clues that they crawled out of the same gene pool. But there’s nothing. All they have in common is dark hair, dark eyes. Not a rare bird around here.

The other woman nods. “Thank you. I’m Nitsa Lambeti.”

Vivi analyses, analyses, but the only thing familiar about Nitsa’s smile is its sadness. Wasn’t long ago when Vivi’s face was set to grief.

A door slams in the guts of the building. A moment later, Detective Lemonis appears.

He says, “Your sister – or not – has something she wants to share with us. If you two can delay the family reunion, I think she has something that might affect you both.”

Vivi’s got nothing but questions, and now they have to wait. Meanwhile her broken nose is beating along with her heart. She’s trying to be tough, but . . .
goddamn
.

Nitsa retrieves a piece of paper from her very nice handbag. Vivi knows the brand – it’s expensive and hard to get. Now they’re standing side by side, she can see they’re the same height, a similar build. But Nitsa is more polished, fashionable.

Everyone leans over to look.

“It's a letter,” she explains. “From my mother. You may read it aloud.”

Detective Lemonis clears his throat and reads the words of a dead woman.

M
y daughter
, my love,

I cannot love you with my whole heart in this life because it is full to the brim with hatred for the woman who denied you a father. She took away that which I loved above all (before you came along, of course). Therefore it is fitting that that the one who caused me so much pain will be blamed for my death, at least for a short time. It will be her turn to walk around, accusing stares piercing her weak shell, wondering how deep her sins truly run.

Nitsa, you have a sister and brother. They are only half, but blood is blood. While they carry the bad blood from their mother in their veins, do not forget that their father's also flows through them, and he was the best of men. Perhaps there is still time for you all to create a bond that goes beyond that of blood. Perhaps they will help you to know your father. This is my sincerest hope.

It is time for me to go. I am old, I am sick; my heart has been cracked for too many years. I am dying, yes, but it is I who will choose my time, my place. Do not cry.

You are my heart,

Mama.

PS: When you receive this letter, take it to the police. I would not deprive your sister and brother of a mother the way their mother deprived you of your father.

I
t’s a Hallmark moment
, the two sisters hugging.

“So we’re sisters,” Vivi says.

Nitsa says, “Uh, no.”

T
urns out Nitsa Lambeti
is a woman with resources and curiosity in abundance. She has an excellent job at a television network, and she knows how to ask the right people the right questions the right (productive) way.

All her life, she heard Elias this, Elias that. Her mother was like a parrot with a one-word vocabulary. Nitsa was raised by half a mother and the shadow of Elias Pappas.

She spent her teens poring over photographs of her alleged father, searching for proof or rebuttal. Growing up in Agria, there was no way she could sidestep the gossip about her mother and potential fathers. Her mother denied the others, of course, said Elias was the only one. And Nitsa, who grew to recognize an obsession when she saw one, nodded and said she believed her mother.

Because there’s nothing else to be done when you love your mother and she loves you.

Nitsa dug in secret.

Digging in secret became easier when she relocated to Athens for work. She found Elias Pappas, his wife, his two grown children. She called and spoke to Elias, and he was as good as her mother said.

Too bad he’s not her father.

The DNA test was clear about that.

L
azy afternoon on the
porch
. Summer is taking its pound of sweat and salt. Nobody is sleeping; nobody wants to waste this one perfect day.

“I knew it,” Eleni says. “I knew she could not be your sister. Now I have proof that her mother was a madwoman.”

Melissa is sprawled out on the patio, flipping through a magazine. The words are for her, the pictures for Biff.

Vivi’s scraping her espadrille along porch’s edge, her back flat against the support post. She’s alternating between balancing a bag of frozen peas on her nose and draping it with a vinegar soaked cloth.

“You have proof of nothing,” her husband says.

Vivi looks at her father and remembers the box. Now she knows it was the test Nitsa sent. Mystery solved.

“But – ”

“Eleni, leave it alone. The woman is dead.”

“Yes, and that is a good – ”

“Eleni!”

Vivi says, “Nitsa’s lovely. If you speak out against her mother now, you’ll only hurt her more.”

Eleni scoffs. “Just put that ice on your nose and be quiet. The swelling will go down faster if you do not speak.”

“Now that I think about it, Nitsa was always a good girl,”
Thea
Dora says, without lifting her head from her crochet.

Melissa looks up from her magazine. “Do I have to call her
Thea
?”

“Of course not,” her grandmother says. “She is not your aunt.”

Vivi doesn’t bother pointing out that everyone here calls everyone Aunt or Uncle or Mr. or Mrs. if they’re more than five or so years older. “You'll have to ask her what she wants you to call her,” she says.

“What is the world coming to? My daughter is a traitor.”

“Nitsa has no one,” Vivi says, “and I like her.”

“Then she should get married,” Eleni says.

“Not everyone wants to get married,” Vivi says.

Thea
Dora lowers her crochet. “Why not? All women want to get married. It is the natural order of things.”

Vivi waves. “I'd just like to point out that, except for Melissa, getting married didn't work out too well for me.”

“Yes, but you married a
pousti
,” her mother says. “It will be different when you marry Max.”

Thea
Dora jumps up. “Vivi, you are getting married? We must celebrate!”

“Sit back down,
Thea
. I'm not getting married – to Max or to anyone else.”

“If you're sleeping with him you must marry him,” she says. “Eleni, are they doing the sex?”

Time for Vivi to crawl under the porch and die. “Mind your own damn business,” she says.

Eleni says, “I think so.”

“Be quiet, Eleni,” Elias says.

“About Sofia I will be quiet, but we are discussing Vivi's sex life now.”

Oh really? How about no?

“By the way,” Vivi says, “Nitsa’s coming over this evening.”

S
he finds
Takis sitting
beneath an olive tree, smoking one of his hand-rolled cigarettes.

“Did they put her in the ground yet?”

Using her foot, she kicks away the rocks and sticks, and then she sits beside him, cross-legged. “Tomorrow.”

“Good. Even in that tree, she was starting to stink. July is a witch. But August will be a bigger witch.” He nods at the purple-green patchwork on her face. “Wrestling donkeys again?”

“More like a gorilla.”

He grunts. “I hope the gorilla looks worse than you.”

It hurts like hell, but she smiles.

Takis says, “What have you got to smile about?”

“Everything, apparently. Turns out I'm pretty happy here.”

She expects questions, but what she gets is laughter. It starts with a chortle, than erupts into a guffaw. Then he’s coughing all over the place, spraying the parched air with wet flecks.

“You!” he says, once his spluttering stops. “I never knew a
xena
could be so funny. You should have seen your face when the donkey kicked you. You wanted to cry, but you didn't. And look at you now. Someone kills herself on your land, your mother goes to jail, you go to jail, you take a beating from your cousin, and what do you do? You tell me life is good.”

“You forgot the part where my ex-husband is gay and my daughter tried to kill herself.”

He laughs again, and Vivi laughs, too. Yeah, it’s been the year from hell, but she survived, didn’t she? They survived – she and Melissa. That’s got to be worth at least a few cosmic brownie points.

Takis stands, squashes his cigarette. “Get up,
Xena
. We have work to do.”

“More cheese?”

“You want cheese, we will make cheese. But not today. Turns out you are strong, like these trees of yours. The world gave you rocks and dry dirt, and still you survived. Maybe you even grew a little, eh?”

She holds out her hand for him to pull her up. “Are you saying you're going to help me?”

“No, I'm saying that I'll teach you what I know about olives, then you can help yourself.”

I
n the end
, Vivi
stands behind Nitsa as she commits her mother to the ground. St George’s bells have been weeping all morning.

They’re all there: Vivi, her parents, Melissa, and
Thea
Dora.

Most of the town is there, too – partly out of morbid curiosity. But Vivi is there because she cares.

It’s been three days since the police ruled Sofia Lambeti’s death a suicide, but Vivi and her family are still the hot gossip.

Eh, it won’t last. Soon enough there will be fresh meat. Someone will steal a goat, flash a tourist, and the great gossiping mouth will swing away to chew on the fresher story.

Eleni is on her best behavior. She’s managing to ratchet her melodrama from Gabor down to Mercouri. Vivi’s father is same as he always is; with no woodwork to do, he’s betting ten euros here, ten euros there, on the
Pro Po
, always favoring his beloved Niki – the local pro soccer team.

Melissa is beautiful in her black dress, her long golden hair tied back in a low ponytail. School’s not far away now. Her scars will fade. A year from now, no one but Vivi will remember how close she came to losing her favorite person.

Melissa isn’t alone, and neither is Vivi. Max is beside her. Tall, strong Max. He’s here – his choice.

A somber situation, yes, but every so often he looks down at Vivi and smiles.

It’s real, what they have. He is for her, and she for him.

She knows it with as much certainty as she knows they belong in Greece.

His mother is coming for dinner tomorrow night.