Grekisk Skymning

The ice in my glass had melted an hour ago, leaving a ring of water on the tavern table that I kept tracing with my thumb. Anna was still in the shower. Lisabeth and Johannes had gone for a walk along the harbor, which meant I had the small balcony to myself, a half-empty bottle of retsina, and a view of the Aegean that looked like a postcard I'd never sent anyone.

I heard her before I saw her. The screen door slid open with that particular scrape it made, and I didn't turn around. I knew it was her by the way she paused in the doorway, the way the air changed.

"You're drinking alone," Lisabeth said.

"Not anymore."

She came out and leaned against the railing, her back to the sea. Twenty-eight years old, and she still had that way of looking at me like she was solving a puzzle she'd already solved once. Her hair was down for once, dark and damp at the ends from swimming. She wore a thin cotton dress, white, and her feet were bare on the tile.

"Johannes went to buy cigarettes," she said.

"He doesn't smoke."

"He's trying to quit. He buys them and doesn't open the pack. It's a whole thing."

I laughed, and it felt strange in my throat. I hadn't laughed much this trip. Not real laughter, anyway.

She reached over and took my glass, drank from it without asking. The retsina had gone warm and resinous, but she didn't flinch. She set it down and looked at me.

"You've been avoiding me," she said.

"I haven't."

"You have. You sit at the other end of the table. You find excuses to go to the bakery. Yesterday you walked to the other beach, the one with the rocks, just so you wouldn't have to swim with us."

She was right, of course. She was always right about things like this. That's what made her dangerous.

"It's not about you," I said.

"Then what's it about?"

I didn't answer. Below us, a fishing boat chugged out of the harbor, its engine a low throb that I could feel in my chest. The water was that impossible blue, the kind that doesn't look real until you're in it.

Lisabeth sat down in the chair across from me. She didn't cross her legs or fold her arms or do any of the things people do when they're trying to look casual. She just sat, and she watched me, and I felt like I was back in that summer ten years ago, standing in her mother's kitchen at two in the morning, both of us pretending we weren't about to do something we couldn't take back.

"I was nineteen," she said. "You were thirty-four. I know what you're thinking."

"I'm not thinking anything."

"You're thinking that you were the adult and I was the kid and you should have known better. You're thinking it was your fault."

"Wasn't it?"

She shook her head slowly. "I kissed you first. Remember?"

I remembered. God, I remembered. The kitchen light was off, and the only illumination came from the hallway, and she'd just come back from a party, still smelling of cheap vodka and someone else's cigarettes. She'd stood in front of me and said something I couldn't hear, and then she'd reached up and pulled my face down to hers.

I'd stopped it. That's the part I hold onto. I'd put my hands on her shoulders and pushed her back and told her to go to bed. She'd looked at me with those eyes, clear and unblinking, and said, "You'll regret this."

And I had. Not because I wanted to kiss her back. Because I'd seen something in her face that I recognized. Loneliness. The kind that doesn't care who it hurts.

"I'm not nineteen anymore," she said now.

"No. You're not."

"And you're not my mother's husband. Not really. You're just the guy she married after my dad left."

"Lisabeth."

"I'm not saying anything. I'm just stating facts."

The screen door scraped again. Anna came out with a towel wrapped around her hair and a beer in her hand. She looked at us, at the space between our chairs, and something flickered across her face. Not jealousy. Something older than that. Recognition.

"Am I interrupting?" she asked.

"Not at all," Lisabeth said, and stood up. "I was just heading down to meet Johannes."

She touched my shoulder as she passed. Just a brush of fingers, light enough to be accidental. But we both knew it wasn't.

Anna sat down in the chair Lisabeth had vacated. She didn't look at me. She looked at the sea, at the fishing boat disappearing around the point, and she drank her beer in long swallows.

"She's beautiful," Anna said.

"Yes."

"She's also my daughter."

"I know."

Anna turned to me then. Her eyes were the same grey as Lisabeth's, but softer. More tired. She'd been married to me for eight years, and she still looked at me sometimes like I was a stranger she'd invited into her house by mistake.

"I'm not blind, Niklas. I see the way you two are around each other."

"There's nothing to see."

"There's everything to see. That's the problem."

She finished her beer and set the bottle down hard enough that it rang against the table. Then she stood and went back inside, and I was alone again with the melted ice and the warm wine and the sun sinking toward the water like it had somewhere better to be.

I stayed on the balcony until the sky went purple. I thought about the summer ten years ago, about the way Lisabeth had looked at me in that dark kitchen, about the fact that I'd said no and she'd never forgiven me for it.

I thought about the way she'd touched my shoulder just now, and how I hadn't moved away.

The screen door scraped. I didn't turn around.

"Niklas."

It was Anna. Her voice was flat, controlled, the way it got when she was holding something back.

"I booked a room for Johannes and Lisabeth," she said. "At the hotel down the street. They leave tomorrow."

I turned. She stood in the doorway, her arms crossed, her jaw set.

"Why?"

"Because I love you," she said. "And I don't trust you."

She went back inside and closed the door. This time, she made sure it latched.