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‘Your paintings must be selling quite well,’ she said to her father, realising they were strangers. But maybe they’d always been such.
At first, he stared at her as if he knew he should recognise her, but didn’t—then he looked to choke, and then he stared at Warrington and back at Melina.
‘You.’ Her father’s voice filled with accusation. ‘What are you doing here?’
His eyes—his eyes flashed something darker than when his work was disturbed. They showed the same emotion from the day her sister knocked one of the wet paintings into the dirt and that day had lasted for a fortnight.
He was her father, but not the same man from Melos. His hair, even more streaked with silver than before, surprised her with its perfect grooming. The points of his collar were starched and even the flowing covering he wore over his clothes had been cared for—even though it sported a palette of its own.
She wanted the tension in her body to fade, but she shuddered deep within her heart. The man she’d known on the island was gone for ever. He might have never lived.
Her father looked back over his shoulder and spoke to someone in the hallway who Melina couldn’t see. ‘Leave us.’ He tossed the paint-splattered cloth to the floor. ‘Why...’ The words came out as if jerked from his soul. ‘Why are you in my home?’
She could see the next words forming in his mind to tell her to leave, so she sat. Warrington stood beside her, staring at the other man.
‘My muse will be destroyed for days because you have disturbed me.’ Her father raised a hand, as if orating for a crowd. ‘The stem is not quite right on the dog roses and the honeysuckle is lifeless. But my bee orchis is perfect. It truly looks like little bees clinging to the stem and I have captured that.’ He turned to her, smugness in his eyes. ‘No. I will not let you destroy my work today.’
‘I know your work is everything to you, Father. I have no quarrel with that.’
‘You shouldn’t, Melina.’ His grey hair fell across his brow.
‘Truly. I never cared painting came first in your life. Mana didn’t, either. It was the natural order for us. The art came first to you. Always. But she should have been second. I hope you received my letter saying Mana died. She did not recover.’
His eyes flashed, perhaps guilt, but then he shuddered, shutting away the emotion. ‘I knew she was to die. And it would have hurt me too much to see her suffer.’
Darkness clouded Melina’s vision and stole her voice. The image of her mother, eyes hollow, cheekbones with only flesh across them, lying in bed, and the whole world around her falling into nothingness, flared into Melina’s memory. ‘It would have hurt you?’ She controlled her words. ‘How do you think it was for her? To be abandoned when she needed you most.’
‘She understood. She told me to go.’
‘She might have understood. I understood. You would not waste a moment on something or someone if it was not to your advantage. And she may have told you to go, but she wanted you to stay. It would have showed you cared.’
‘My art is from my core spirit. It cannot be interrupted.’
‘But...’ she tilted her head to the side and forced her words calm ‘...think how much your work would have improved if you had had an added measure of grief to draw on. Now you have lost that chance for ever. Your work can never be what it could have.’
His cheeks reddened and his voice rose. ‘That is ludicrous. I have felt grief. I know the emotion well and my paintings show the depth of the human soul.’
‘No. They don’t. They show the depth of your soul and it doesn’t go very deep.’
He jabbed one finger towards her face. ‘You are lying. You are not to speak so to me. I am your father.’
‘Father?’ She filled the word with derision. ‘Father? What does that word mean? Tell me.’
‘I gave you life. And you must respect me for it.’
‘No. I do not. I may have respected you when I was a child, but then I knew no better. I esteemed Mana. The only mistake she made in her life was in caring for you.’
‘I was the best thing for her. She was a Greek peasant.’
‘Worth ten—ten thousand more paintings than you could ever create.’
‘You have no true knowledge of art. You are here crying to me because you are weak. Did you not take care of her as you should? Did you not see that she had what she needed? Are you feeling in the wrong because you did not do what was necessary at the end?’
