Daphne
My brother took eleven thousand euros and the good coffee machine.
The money I could almost understand. Nik has been an idiot about money since he was nine. But the coffee machine was mine. I bought it. I named it.
Her name is Loula. She is Italian, she is red, and she cost me two summers of tips. She is also the most reliable relationship I have ever had.
This morning there is a clean square on the kitchen counter where she lived. I stand in front of it in my socks, holding an empty cup, like someone waiting for a bus that got cancelled.
“Nik!” I yell up the stairs. “If this is a joke, it’s a shit one!”
The house keeps quiet. That’s strange all by itself. This house always has something to say, a pipe or a shutter or my brother singing badly in the shower.
The safe in the office is open. I check inside three times, in case eleven thousand euros is shy.
That money was my whole summer. It was every bed I made, every breakfast, every hiker who asked me for oat milk on a Greek island. It was the new roof, the electric bill, and five months of winter with zero guests.
On the kitchen table there is a note. He wrote it on the back of a ferry ticket.
Daph. I need it more than you do. Don’t look for me. N.
I read it standing up. Then I read it sitting down, because my knees made that decision for me.
Thirteen words. This is the boy who taught me to swim. He held my hand at Yiayia’s funeral so hard it left marks. Now I get thirteen words on a used ferry ticket.
So I do the mature thing. I call him nine times in a row. On the tenth, I leave a message.
“Hi, asshole. It’s your sister. Keep the money. Bring back Loula, or I will find you and get creative.”
I hang up before my voice can do something embarrassing. It does it anyway, alone in the kitchen, for about a minute. Then I wash my face and get on with being furious.
Here is what makes me want to throw a chair. Nik borrows. Nik forgets. Nik pays me back in beer and big sorry eyes. Stealing is new.
His bed is made, which is how I know he planned it. My brother has made his bed twice in his life. The first time was for a girl from Lyon.
Yiayia’s photograph hangs over the front desk. I got her name. Nik got her luck. Today she looks like she saw this coming and is enjoying it.
“Don’t,” I tell her. “You raised him.”
By noon I have swept the same hallway twice. I have also made instant coffee and apologized to my own mouth. Outside, half the port is shuttered, and the wind is practicing for November.
Then the bell over the front door rings.
I come out of the office with my speech ready. It is a great speech. It has “Loula” in it four times and “malaka” in it six.
Two men are standing in my hallway. I know every face in Katapola in October, and these two are new.
The small one wears a gray suit jacket over a Tshirt. The big one stands behind him in a leather jacket, filling the doorway. He is looking at my walls like he’s pricing them.
“Kalimera,” the small one says. His Greek is city Greek, fast and smooth. “We’re looking for Niko.”
“Get in line.”
“He’s not here?”
“He left this morning with my coffee machine. If you find him, I go first.”
He smiles like I told a joke. “We’re friends of his.”
“Then you already know he’s bad with money.”
“We know.” The smile stays. “He has something of ours. Maybe he left it with you.”
“He left me a ferry ticket and a dirty mug. You can have the mug.”
My heart is going fast and stupid. My mouth, as usual, went ahead without it.
“Funny. Nikos is funny too.” He scratches his jaw. “He owes people who laugh less than I do.”
“How much?”
“More than a coffee machine.”
The big one walks past me to the front desk like the place is already his. He runs one finger along the shelf of Yiayia’s guest books. There are forty years of them, one for every season.
Then he lifts the Room Two key off the board, looks at it, and hangs it on the wrong hook.
It’s such a small thing. My neck goes cold anyway.
“That’s Room Three’s hook,” I say. “Out. Both of you.”
The small one looks up the stairs. He takes his time, like he’s counting doors.
“Tell Niko we came by. Tell him we’ll come again.” His eyes drop back to me. “You’re alone here for the winter, Daphne?”
My name sounds wrong in his mouth. I would love to know who put it there.
“I have neighbors with excellent hearing and nothing to do.”
“Good,” he says. “Neighbors are good.”
They leave the door open behind them. I watch them walk down to the port, slow, like men with a whole island to wait on.
I lock the front door. In daylight. Yiayia would haunt me for that.
My hands are shaking, so I give them a job. I move the Room Two key back where it belongs. It takes me two tries.
I should call the police. I get as far as holding the phone. Our one sergeant would write it on a napkin, and the whole port would know by dinner. Besides, reporting those two means reporting Nik.
I am angry enough to kill my brother. Getting him arrested is a different kind of angry, and I’m still a few hours short of it.
The late ferry comes in under a low purple sky. This is my favorite hour in Katapola. The fishing boats come home, the hill goes gold, and somebody always lights the first fire of the evening.
Tonight I spend it at the desk, adding up the winter on the back of an envelope. The number is bad.
Someone knocks. Three knocks, evenly spaced.
I pick up the nearest heavy thing, which is the stapler. I open the door.
A man is standing two steps back from the doorway, with his hands where I can see them. He has one bag on his shoulder and rain on his sweater. Black beanie, a few days of beard, sleeves pulled down to his wrists.
He is big the way men get from carrying things for a living. He has the kind of face that has already heard your excuse.
He looks at the stapler. Then he looks at me. One corner of his mouth moves about a millimeter, and it’s gone before I can prove it.
My stomach does a small, stupid flip. I blame the instant coffee.
“Kalimera,” he says.
“It’s six in the evening.”
“Aye.” The accent is Scottish, and there is a lot of it. His voice is low and rough, like he keeps it for emergencies. “Got that wrong, then.”
“Kalispera.”
“Kalispera.” He murders it. “Do you have a room?”
“I have nothing but rooms.”
“The one over the garage. If it’s free.”
Everything is free. That’s the problem. But Room Four is at the back, and you can’t see it from the street.
“How do you know there’s a room over the garage?”
“Walked round the place first. Outside stairs, its own door.” He shrugs with one shoulder, the one without the bag. “I like my own door.”
“Why?”
“I keep odd hours.”
“Doing what?”
“Holiday.”
“In October. On Amorgo. The ferries stop when the wind gets up, and the one open taverna only does fish.”
“I like fish.”
He says it like a man reading a hostage statement. I almost laugh. It would be my first laugh today, so now I’m annoyed at him for that too.
I should send him back to the boat. I let him in, because the safe is empty and the roof has opinions.
In the hallway he puts his back to the wall by the stairs. From there he can see the front door, the kitchen door, and me. Guests look at Yiayia’s photograph. This one looks at the exits.
“You lock up in the daytime?” he asks.
“Today I do.”
His jaw sets. It lasts one second, and then his face is a closed shop again.
“What do you do when you’re on a normal person’s holiday, Mr. Odd Hours?”
“Fix boats.”
“We have boats.”
“I saw.”
That’s the whole answer. He stands there, perfectly happy inside the silence. I’m a woman who talks to a coffee machine. We are going to be a problem.
“How long are you staying?”
“The winter.”
“The whole winter.”
“Till spring. If that suits.”
Nobody stays the winter. I open this year’s guest book anyway and click my pen.
“Name?”
“Callum Reid.”
“Passport?”
“Bottom of the bag. I’ll bring it down in the morning.”
The law says tonight. I’m about to tell him so when he reaches into the side pocket of his bag. My hand finds the stapler again.
It’s an envelope. He sets it on the desk between us. His knuckles are a mess of old scars, and he is gentle with the paper. I wish I hadn’t seen that.
“Three months,” he says.
Fifties, still in the bank band. I haven’t told him what the room costs.
