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“My name is Aphrodite, and I work in the Athens police department. I have some questions regarding someone we have in custody. Although his real name is Eli, you probably knew him as…”
“Kostos,” Nancy finished, her throat tight. She sat in her office in the Katama Lodge, overlooking the beautiful bay that glistened beneath an eggshell blue sky. Athens felt like several dimensions away. “I’m happy to answer any questions you have.”
Nancy was glad to learn through Aphrodite that Kostos was being tried on twelve counts of scamming. The women he’d encountered and stolen from over the years had come out of the woodwork, grateful to do whatever they could to ensure he never seduced and ruined anyone ever again.
“You got lucky,” Aphrodite finished toward the end of their call. “He made a fortune off of lonely women across the world. You were his match, and you took him down.”
“The treasure he was after never really existed. He was like Don Quixote, fighting a monster that wasn’t there.”
“Well said.”
Nancy hung up the phone, sighed, and stretched her arms over her head. If she thought long and hard about the previous month of her life, she was apt to drive herself crazy. It was better to take each day as it came.
At six that evening, Nancy had another yoga class to teach, after which she planned to head back to the Remington House. With a few minutes to spare, she breezed past Janine’s office to find her daughter leaning over her desk, her glasses pressed low over her nose as she read a patient’s file. As Nancy studied her, hard at work, saving so many patients’ lives, Nancy’s heart swelled with love for her. Naturopathy was an under-appreciated corner of the medicinal world, but Nancy understood Janine’s promise: she was enthusiastic with each patient, eager to listen, to accommodate their needs. She understood that everyone came from a different background and was armed with a different range of stories that ultimately influenced their health.
Janine sensed Nancy’s gaze and lifted her eyes, smiling. “Are you spying on me?”
Nancy laughed. “Just waiting for you to finish. I didn’t want to interrupt.”
Janine set down her pen. “Okay.”
“Will you be at home tonight for dinner? I was thinking about making lasagna now that it’s not so gosh-darn hot.”
Janine hesitated.
“If you planned to be with Henry tonight, don’t worry,” Nancy hurried to add.
“I was just going to ask if I can invite him over,” Janine said.
“Oh! Of course.” Nancy laughed gently. “Henry’s always welcome. I’ll text Maggie that she should invite David, too.”
“Did you see Alyssa before you left the house this morning?” Janine asked, her face marred with worry.
Alyssa had more-or-less holed up at the Remington House since their return from Venice. With her due date in November right around the corner, she’d taken to nesting, organizing a nursery for the baby, texting and calling Nico regarding the newly founded Teresa Cacciapaglia Museum, and insisting that she was “totally fine” when it came to all things Nico. “It was just a little fling. Not even a fling! We were basically just friends,” she’d said. But there was a sorrow in Alyssa’s eyes that made everyone walk on eggshells around her.
“I made her some breakfast,” Nancy said. “But she wanted to eat in her room rather than at the table with me. I assume she wanted to call Nico about that diary he wants to put in the museum.”
Janine sighed and rubbed her temples, as though she pushed off an incoming headache. “If my memory serves me correctly, seven months pregnant isn’t the most comfortable feeling. I hope she’s getting enough rest.”
“She’ll be okay. The museum is a worthy distraction from her heartache, I think,” Nancy offered. “We just have to make sure she remembers how much she’s loved.”
Nancy padded upstairs to the yoga studio, beside which ten women were already lined up, their yoga mats under their arms, their ponytails swinging. Nancy greeted them quietly, unlocked the door, and turned on the lights as they flattened out their yoga mats and prepared for the next hour.
Just before Nancy asked them to quiet down, a familiar face appeared in the doorway.
“Stan?” Nancy’s heart lifted, and she bounced toward the door with more enthusiasm than she’d felt since they’d gotten back.
Stan Ellis wore a pair of sweatpants and a black t-shirt, and he carried a yoga mat under his arm, just like the women in the class. Nancy remembered that he’d previously attended her yoga classes when he’d lived at the Lodge, which had resulted in less back pain and a better posture. She’d pestered him about coming back, but he never had until now.
“Your secretary said I can just book classes online whenever I want to,” Stan told her, his voice wavering. “But I couldn’t figure out how to work the dang website!”
Nancy laughed. “I can understand that. You should have told me, though. I would have booked you in earlier.”
Stan stood nervously for a moment, blinking out across the room, now filled with women.
“Why don’t you set up over there in the corner?” Nancy suggested. “We’re about to get started.”
“I’m not sure if I’m half as flexible as I was when I was coming all the time,” Stan told her.
