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“Hmph.” Spiro cut a meatball with the edge of his spoon and ate it. “Well, I don’t see my brother as weak because of his condition. Quite the opposite. You know they say depression is like a broken limb that you can’t see? That’s exactly how I view it. Lambros used to call him lazy for not being able to walk around on it. Bastard,” he muttered. “We were all injured emotionally when my father died. You give people some grace when they’re grieving. You don’t make it worse.” He tried to contain the old rage, but it flared up anyway. “He had the gall to pretend he was helping us. He said Khristos needed to get over it. That there were too many reminders of our father in the house and that’s why he took over and erased our father from our lives.” Spiro hadn’t been able to do anything to stop him, and there was Khristos falling deeper into his personal pit.

“He took your father’s things?” She was as baffled and outraged as a normal person ought to be, not shrugging it off the way his mother had. “What did he do with them?”

“Sold them? Threw them away? I don’t know, but anything that belonged to him disappeared. He stole my father’s watch, which my mother had given to me to wear to the funeral. She said my father had wanted me to have it because his own father had given it to him, but she didn’t say a word when Lambros took it from my room. He was so petty, too. He took the gaming console that our father had bought for Khristos. Photos were gone from the walls when we came home from school. The family dog was given away.” At least he hadn’t been put down. That was the only silver lining Spiro had ever found in all of it. “He took our mother.” What they had of one, anyway. She’d always been ambivalent about being a parent. “He bent her into repeating his criticisms. I was an insolent punk with anger issues. Khristos was manipulating her and faking his depression.”

“That’s really horrible. I’m so sorry, Spiro.” Her expression made his chest tighten.

“It is. But don’t pity us.” He’d fought hard to take back what was his and would win this current battle.

No matter how hard he fought, however, he still felt he’d lost on some level. Like he’d failed to live up to what he’d needed to be. He’d failed to keep his own mother on their side, hadn’t he?

“What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger?” she murmured. “I hate platitudes like that. Sometimes what almost kills us leaves us scarred and broken.”

“We’re fine,” he insisted. “Now. Khristos still has his challenges, but he found a way to keep Lambros from getting the better of us, didn’t he?” He waved his spoon at her. “My brother is not weak.”

It bothered Spiro that he’d had to rely on Khristos, though. She was right about his frustration with any lack in himself. He was stung that the board would even think of pushing him aside, especially for a leech like Lambros.

He strove to rise to any occasion. Sufficient to every task and moment. Self-contained and impervious.

With the stakes as high as they were, he couldn’t allow himself to be anything less.

* * *

Alia admired how Khristos had found ways to navigate his dark spells. She had never been so lucky. Resources had been scant in the village, mostly online articles or remote counseling that she hadn’t really had time for anyway.

“I know I have to deal with my fear.” She closed her lips over her spoon. “It holds me back. I know it does.”

Spiro could say that weakness in others didn’t bother him, but she was already relying on him for so much. She didn’t want to be having panic attacks and becoming more of a burden.

She had always had the paradoxical thought that she would conquer her fear once she had fewer responsibilities around Yaya’s care and running the pension, but the thought of losing Yaya fed her fear. It was circular logic that kept her from making progress. From growing up and becoming the whole person she needed to be.

Spiro studied her, seeming to consider his words, then disclosed, “Khristos told me that Julian found you on a beach. Is that where your fear comes from, do you think?”

Alia flinched, wishing she wasn’t still The Baby on the Beach, but she always would be. She was the orphan. The mystery child. The one who didn’t belong to anyone.

Her story was so well known on the island, it was common for tourists to book into their pension because they wanted to see the oddity for themselves, and ask her probing questions about something she didn’t even remember.

Which meant she was able to talk about it in a very blithe fashion, even when the talons of abandonment still pierced very deep.

“You’re asking if that’s my broken limb? The first one, I suppose.” She swirled her spoon in her soup, knowing she’d have to tell him the rest, which wasn’t as easy. “I was always a bit of a limpet, wanting to be with Yaya or Julian. I was growing out of it by the time Julian left for high school. If I’d had other friends, I probably would have been fine.”

“Julian was your only friend? I find that hard to believe.”

“Why? You don’t like me,” she pointed out.

“I don’t dislike you.”

He could try a little harder to convince her of that, she thought dourly.

“Well, the other girls hated me. I was very cute,” she admitted.

“With those dimples?” His gaze swept her features in a way that made her skin prickle, as though the sun had come out and shone warm and bright on her cheeks. “I believe it. The boys noticed, I presume? That made the other girls jealous?”

“The boys thought I was cool because I was friends with Julian.”

He made a skeptical noise and his gaze flickered to the scoop of her pajama top where it was revealed by the open collar of his shirt.

“This was back when I was still an ironing board.” She took another taste of soup. “Whatever the other boys thought about me didn’t matter. Being close with Julian was my crime. Handsome young men with ambition were a rare commodity. Everyone knew he wanted to be a lawyer and had the brains to make it happen. That’s why his parents paid for him to go to that fancy prep school on the mainland. Whoever married him would have a golden ticket.”