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She’d promised him she’d come back one year later on the same date she’d left, meeting him in their favorite café.
Only she’d returned to San Francisco to discover she was pregnant. Even then, she might have gotten away with canceling the wedding if her mother hadn’t found the sticks in the trash. Her wrath had been merciless, her insistence that Xandros wouldn’t want the baby insurmountable.
Would she have believed that now with her thirty extra years of wisdom?
She wanted to think she wouldn’t. She wanted to think she’d have been stronger. But who really knew? For eight years, she’d convinced Donald that Sienna was his child, but she couldn’t say she’d ever been happy with her decision.
Angela wiped a tear from her cheek as she left the path to head into Fira. It was hard to tell exactly where the towns of Imerovigli and Firostefani ended and Fira began. They were a maze of narrow streets, steep stairways, and white houses with blue fences. Bougainvillea hung from the balconies and climbed trellises. The restaurants and shops weren’t crowded with tourists yet, but people were out for a stroll like she was.
She wondered if Teresa would be right, that the café was long gone, that this was a fool’s errand. It didn’t matter. Angela would know the spot by the view across the sea. They had gone there every day, until she left on the ferry. She could still see Xandros standing on the dock waving her away, a solitary figure surrounded by people, until he was only a dot on the horizon.
She never saw him again. Never talked to him. Never kissed him.
From the path, she found a set of stairs and from there turned right two blocks, left along another stairway and to the right again, hoping her directional sense was good. When she found it, the café’s gate was still blue and recently painted. The arbor of bougainvillea was of bright red, faded pink, and extraordinary coral. Blue-checked tablecloths covered the small café tables, the folding chairs softened by matching blue cushions. The white terrace wall surrounded the patio, a short wrought-iron railing atop it painted the vivid blue of the sea.
The waitress signaled her to take any table. Only a few were occupied by other early risers, a couple so in love they shared the same coffee and couldn’t stop looking each other, an older man and woman entranced by the blue sea, a man with his face buried in a newspaper, another gentleman taking photographs, editing each right away.
Angela chose a table by the wall so she could see the sea as the sun rose from the ridge behind her and sparkled on the water.
How many times had she gazed out from this spot with Xandros? Every morning they ordered strong coffee and shared a bougatsa, a flaky pastry filled with custard and topped with powdered sugar and cinnamon, its dusting all over her fingers, its taste melting on her tongue.
She wondered if he’d been here thirty years ago. The anniversary was two days away, and she would come again as part of her pilgrimage. Not that he could possibly be here too.
And yet with her arrival, she was telling the universe, telling him, I made a mistake thirty years ago, but I’m here now.
When the waitress came, she ordered café au lait and a bougatsa. When the coffee and treat arrived, she savored every mouthful and licked the crumbs and spices and sugar from her fingers. She closed her eyes and imagined she was that twenty-two-year-old girl again, madly in love with her amazing Greek lover. She imagined a do-over.
When her cup was empty and the bougatsa devoured, she opened her eyes to the blue Santorini waters. She understood that people never got a do-over. Sometimes there were second chances, but you could never erase the mistakes.
And she still had to tell Sienna who her real father was.
* * *
He watchedher over his newspaper.
She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. She wasn’t young, but the lines at her eyes showed her wisdom, and they made him appreciate her more. Most older men went for the young ones, as if to prove their prowess. But this woman, with her short, curly hair, her fine-boned features, kissable lips, and beautifully full figure, was a sight no self-respecting, red-blooded man could ever ignore. Even if he was young and foolish.
But he hadn’t been young in years. And he hoped he was no longer foolish.
As she licked the custard and powdered sugar from her fingers, everything inside him tightened. Her profile was like a Roman statue, the slope of her nose graceful, the rise of her cheekbones chiseled. She was a work of art.
He could imagine her in his bed, a breeze off the Aegean, fluttering curtains over her naked body. He imagined he could breathe in her scent, the sweetness of a sugary dessert, and the light fragrance of bougainvillea.
She was the woman of his dreams.
But she had come back thirty years too late.
