Their Greek Island Reunion. Carol Grace
his dig. But I want to be out there in the field like last time. Otherwise we lose too much time going back and forth. You’re with me on this, aren’t you?”
Like last time. The words echoed in her brain. It wasn’t going to be like last time. Last time they’d shared a tent as well as their hopes and dreams. Those times were gone for good.
Did she really have a choice of accommodations? Sure, she could stay at the hotel with the oldsters, taking hot baths every night and letting Jack get first crack at the contents of the tomb, maybe even discovering whose it was.
Or she could even board with a family in town the way the students did. That way there would be a large distance between them. It would definitely be easier on her psyche. But that would be counterproductive. It didn’t make sense. She’d come all this way to take part in a major discovery. She wasn’t going to let her emotions get in her way. Jack didn’t. This was work. It wasn’t supposed to be a vacation.
“Of course I want to be out there. It won’t be just you and me, will it?” She gnawed at a broken fingernail.
“What are you afraid of?”
“I’m not afraid of anything.” Except being alone with Jack out on a grassy field, under a blazing sun by day and a starry sky by night. Afraid wasn’t the word for it. She was terrified. She’d have to pray others would give up their comfortable beds here and choose the field option, too. Of course, this time she’d have her own tent and sleeping bag that had been sent on ahead. How hard could it be to keep her emotions under wraps?
“The only thing I’m afraid of is gossip,” she said. “Already people are talking about our relationship.”
“That doesn’t bother me,” he said. “As long as we’re clear on us.”
“I’m clear. We’re not a couple anymore. We just have to be sure everyone else knows it, too.”
He sent her a sharp look. Obviously, their muddled status didn’t bother Jack. He never had cared much what people thought. And still he didn’t bring up the divorce.
“Anyway, tonight the bed’s all yours,” he said, quickly dropping the subject of them.
He was resting his head on the back of the chair and he just looked extremely tired, while she was tied up in knots. For him, he was merely sharing a room with a fellow scientist. It was the way things were. Perfectly normal procedure. Except when the fellow scientist was your wife.
“After what you’ve been through, you deserve the bed,” she said. If she let Jack make all the decisions, even the small ones, she was in for a long summer of frustration. He loved being in charge. She did, too.
“I’m taking the floor,” he said firmly.
It was clear she’d have to pick her battles. This was one that wasn’t worth fighting, and she wasn’t going to win anyway.
“Okay, if you won’t take the bed, out of some misguided sense of chivalry, I will. But don’t complain when your back hurts in the morning when we start digging.”
There was a long silence. The last time he’d thrown his back out was at a small hotel near the pyramids in Egypt after making passionate love, and he’d had to call in a local masseuse so he could even get up on his feet. Olivia wished she hadn’t brought it up. She was beginning to think there were no safe topics. Nothing to say that didn’t bring back painful memories.
“Never mind,” she said, hoping he didn’t remember what had happened that night and what had caused it. “I don’t want to argue with you.”
“Oh, come on, Olivia, you’ve always argued with me. Don’t quit now. First it was the bodies of the Bog People of the late Iron Age. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten you thought that girl had died of natural causes a few thousand years ago.”
“She did.”
“With a rope around her neck? It was clearly a ritual sacrifice.”
“It might have looked that way, but it wasn’t.” Olivia sighed loudly. “Did you read my analysis in Archaeology Today?”
“Did you read my rebuttal in my letter to the editor?”
“No, I must have missed it,” she said blithely. Instead she’d seethed when she’d read it. He knew just how to annoy her. He knew where she was vulnerable. She sometimes ignored little details to make her point. So Jack had poked holes in her thesis. The editor was delighted she’d caused some controversy in the ranks. He didn’t know it was partly personal.
Jack would never let her get away with anything. She would never admit it to him, but she missed that. He’d made her be more careful, he’d made her test her theories before exposing them to view. He’d made her a better scientist than she was. He’d made her a better person, too.
But she was on her own now. She liked being on her own. No more hurt feelings, no more arguments, no more feeling inadequate taking those home pregnancy tests. It wasn’t easy month after month to stifle the tears and hide her disappointment at the results.
“Liar,” he said, turning his head to grin at her. “You never miss anything.”
She refused to let him goad her. He knew how hard she’d worked on that paper. She didn’t appreciate his attacking her in print. It was as if he’d stabbed her in the back. After that she didn’t write any more papers for a while. He called her and left a message apologizing and telling her she was too sensitive. She didn’t call him back.
She hoped they could stop talking about the past. Tomorrow when they were out in the field at least they’d each have their own tent and their own sleeping bag. There’d be other people around. They’d work together as they had in the past, but that was it.
“Are you going to take a bath or not?” she asked, standing with her hands on her hips.
He waved an arm toward the bathroom. “You go ahead.”
Jack sat alone on the deck and stared out into the dark night. Far out to sea were the lights of fishing boats like the ones that had rescued him and Olivia. He wasn’t lying when he’d told her thoughts of her had inspired him to keep going when the waves threatened to overwhelm him and fatigue was beginning to overtake him.
As he struggled in the cold water not really knowing if he’d make it or not, not knowing if he’d ever see her again, he thought about how sweet life had been when they were together. The memories kept him going. The ones he’d been trying to keep at bay, like how beautiful she was when she got mad at him, her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright.
How she’d stand up to his wildest plans, his far-out ideas, cutting through his rambling theories with her bright insight, always spot-on. No one else could do that. No one else was willing to criticize him, not since he’d been named department chairman at his prestigious university.
Before he got rescued tonight, he was terrified he’d never have another chance to joust with her again, never even see her again. Never be able to tell her how much he’d missed her.
Now, of course, he couldn’t tell her that. Not when she felt just the opposite. She hadn’t missed him. She was doing just fine without him. In fact she wanted a divorce. If he couldn’t convince her to change her mind this summer, that was it. It was over.
These days she was publishing regularly, she had a book in the works and she didn’t need him to make her life complete. Or a baby. It was just as well they’d stopped trying. What would they have done with a baby on this dig? What about when the ferry went down? Who takes care of the baby? Not Olivia. She didn’t even want to share this room with him.
Now here they were, under the same roof for the first time in years, almost the same as when they first got married. At that hotel in Italy above the harbor. Tomorrow morning she’d be here, hair tousled, cheeks flushed, nightgown rumpled, just as she once was. When life had seemed so perfect, so full of promise. How could he get those days back? How could he make her