Page 81 of Rhodes

"You eat yet?" he asks.

"No."

"There's bread and about nine kinds of jam in there. Somebody left a whole basket." He nods at the villa. "I could bring some out."

"You could sit down and let me get it."

"I could." He sits down.

I bring the basket out, and we tear pieces off the loaf, and I try three jams. I end up liking the fig the best. He disagrees on purpose, I think, to watch me defend it. Below us, the sea's doing that hard bright blue that doesn't look real, cliffs dropping straight into it, lemon on the air.

Cain and Greer left at the crack of dawn, apparently. They are going to Greece for their honeymoon. Must be nice to have more money than God.

Two days ago, this view did nothing but make me miss my mother. Same water today, and it doesn't feel like something she's missing. It feels like something I get to have.

I send Helen a picture of the lemons. She's the one who taught me about the sparkling water and a lime. That's her signature drink, except with lemons.

"That town," Rhodes says. "The clear water. You still want to see your feet?"

"I do."

I look at the coast, at the road threading the cliffs toward wherever we're going, and I count without meaning to. We have four days before we fly home and turn back into sensible people with rooms down the same hall and a story we don't tell.

TWENTY-ONE

Rhodes

Deferred Maintenance: Everything a building needs and does not get is still owed. The bill does not go away while it waits. It only grows.

The rental guy has six scooters lined up in front of the little office by the gate. Banksie is standing beside one like he's giving it real thought.

"No," Granger says.

Banksie doesn't turn around. "Nobody asked you."

"I'm saving all of us the trouble of scraping your body off the pavement."

"I'm seventy-one, not dead."

"Those aren't the only two options."

Tallulah laughs next to me, and I look before I can stop myself. Her sunglasses are on now. Her hair is knotted at the back of her head. She's got the same canvas bag from breakfast slung across her body. She looks the same as she did yesterday, yet different in a way that is only noticeable to me.

"Grandbank." She steps in between the two of them. "I'm begging you to rent one. I want to watch Daddy have an aneurysm before lunch. I believe in you."

"Traitor," Granger says.

"We've got one life, Daddy."

"See?" Banksie points at her. "At least one of mine respects me."

"She only wants to watch you wreck," Granger says.

"Daddy!" She smacks his arm. "Never say that again."

The rental guy watches all of it with the flat patience of a man who has probably seen this a hundred times with multi-generational family outings. He doesn't even raise an eyebrow that they are joking about an old man driving, and likely wrecking, a scooter.

I put my hands in my pockets.