The Summer House in Santorini. Samantha Parks
Anna had been watching her future crumble with every thrust. Anna was just a gallery assistant, and one with ambitions to become a photographer at that. Girls like her were a dime a dozen for Marcus. And despite the fact that she had worked for years to get a job at MarMac, if she wasn’t useful to him anymore, she would simply be cast aside for the next girl waiting in the wings. At least, that’s what she feared. After a few minutes, Anna crawled up onto her bed, settling on top of a pile of clean laundry, tears still streaming down her cheeks, images of that woman’s boobs pressed against Marcus’s window burned into her mind, and cried herself to sleep.
Anna awoke what felt like seconds later to find her elbow buzzing. As she opened her eyes, she was confused to find that the sun was streaming brightly through the window, and she quickly snapped them shut again. The buzzing stopped for a few seconds and then started up again. Anna used the hand that wasn’t pinned underneath her body to feel around on the bed for her phone. She dug through the pile of clothes and pulled it out, swiping to answer her sister’s call.
“It’s so early,” she said with a croak. “What do you want?”
“Nice to talk to you, too, dear sister,” Lizzy said, barely audible over the noise of other people talking and what sounded like cutlery scraping against crockery. Anna could imagine the mess hall of the farm as it had been the one time she’d visited: crowded and sparse, but full of suspiciously happy people. “And it’s nearly nine, Banana. Not exactly the wee hours of the morning.”
Anna jumped a bit at the realization of what time it was, but them images of what she had seen last night came back to her, and she instantly lost all motivation to go into work.
“Hey, that’s still early for some people. What do you want?”
“Touchy, touchy.” The noise behind Lizzy died down as she presumably stepped outside. “You okay, sis? You sound like you’ve been up all night crying.”
Anna knew there was no point hiding anything from her sister, but she didn’t want to get into it with her. She had somehow managed to keep it from Lizzy that she had been seeing her boss for the last eighteen months. “Not all night,” she said, “but I don’t really want to talk about it. What’s up?”
“Well, it’s probably better that you’re not at work now,” Lizzy replied. “I have some news.”
Anna sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed, her breathing shallow. Those were the four most terrifying words in her sister’s vocabulary. “What happened?”
“Well,” she said, “some lawyers called from Greece.”
“Greece?” Anna asked. “You mean Santorini?”
“Well, actually, the law firm is based in Athens. But yes, it was about Dad.”
Anna took a deep breath in. Talking about her dad was not what she needed this morning. “And?”
“And it turns out we have a bit of an inheritance on our hands.”
“What kind of inheritance?” Okay, this was actually possibly good news. Anna’s mind immediately went to all the things she could do with inheritance money. But as quickly as the visions of buying a loft apartment and a shopping spree on Fifth Avenue and a first class ticket to a far-off destination came into her mind, they were replaced with a feeling of resentment for her father.
“A house,” Lizzy said. “In Santorini.”
“I think it’s on Santorini,” Anna said reflexively. “Santorini is an island.”
“That doesn’t even remotely matter,” Lizzy said. “The point is that you and I now share a house in Greece.”
“How much is it worth?” Anna asked, apparently too quickly.
“How is that your first question, Anna?” Lizzy asked, her voice raising. “Not about Dad, or why he left it to us? Not even ‘when can we go there on vacation?’”
“Sorry,” Anna said with a laugh. “But you know I’m not the number-one fan of Greek exports, so I doubt I’ll be headed there on vacation any time soon.”
Anna swore she could hear a wicked grin in Lizzy’s voice as she responded. “That’s just it, baby sis. Looks like you’ll be going there sooner than expected.”
“What? Why?”
“One of us has to go accept the inheritance in person.”
“To Athens?”
“No, actually to Santorini. There’s a Greek law that says you have to accept real estate in front of a notary public in the region where the property is.”
“So one of us has to go to Santorini. Why does it have to be me? Why can’t you go?”
Lizzy sighed. “I really wish I could, Anna. You know how much I’ve wanted to go back since Dad’s funeral. But it’s asparagus season, so I can’t.”
Anna couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Asparagus season?” she said, almost shouting. “Are you kidding me? You want me, the one who didn’t even go to Greece for her own father’s funeral, to go now because you have to harvest some asparagus?”
“Anna, that’s not fair,” Lizzy said. “You know I’m responsible for the well-being of this farm.”
“It’s a cooperative farm! You don’t even get paid!” Anna was definitely shouting now. “Surely, it’s not the end of the world if you take a few days off to do something this important.”
Lizzy was quiet for a moment, then responded softly. “I’m really sorry, Anna. I know how much you hated Dad and everything to do with him. But for us to get the house, you have to go accept it.
“As for the farm, I hope that one day you understand what it’s like to be a part of a community – a family – that has each other’s backs. But, until then, don’t pretend to know what sort of obligation I should or should not feel to the people here.”
She was quiet for a long time, but eventually Lizzy sighed, and Anna knew then that she wasn’t too angry.
“I’m sorry, Liz. I didn’t mean to get mad. I just don’t want to go. I know you’d like to have a vacation home in Greece, but that’s just not important to me. Plus, I have work. And it’ll take me months to accrue more vacation time.”
“I’m sure if you ask your boss and explain the situation he’d let you have the time. He likes you, doesn’t he? What’s his name? Martin?”
“Marcus,” Anna said, wincing as she said his name. “I don’t know, Liz.”
“I’ll tell you what…” Lizzy said. “If you go there for a week and still hate it, we can sell the house. How does that sound?”
Anna cringed at the idea of having to spend a week in her father’s house, interacting with his family, sleeping in his bed. It felt weird after hating him for so long. “I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it, okay?”
“That’s all I ask,” Lizzy said over the sound of a bell in the background. “Now I have to go. That’s last call for breakfast. But let me know soon. There’s a bit of a deadline on us accepting, and the grandparents are not making it easy for us. I don’t think they expected anyone other than Dad to ever have it.”
“Okay. Good to know, thanks. Love you.”
“Love you, too. Bye, Banana.”
Anna held the phone up for several seconds after the call disconnected, so unsure of what to do that she felt paralyzed. But regardless of her family drama and what happened with Marcus, she did still have to go to work, so she got up and got dressed. She took noticeably