After a while, Theo caught up to me, phone in hand. “Droop, listen to this. Akrotiri Lighthouse was built by a French company at the end of the 1800s and was one of the first in all of Greece. It stopped operation during World War II, but the Greek navy put it back to use in the 1940s. You see how it is shaped?”
I stood on my tiptoes to see over the top of the fence surrounding the structure. Along with the lighthouse tower, there was a full building, the back end shaped like a rectangle.
“Today the lighthouse is run by remote, but back in the day, this is where the lighthouse keeper and his family lived. That’s who your dad met. Can’t you imagine him here as a little kid?”
I sighed, resting my chin on the fence. Because yes, I really, really could. I’d seen photos of him as a child. He’d looked mischievous and energetic, and I could picture him scampering over these rocks, fearlessly approaching the edge, forming his early theories about Atlantis. He’d always been who he was, and I wished that that person had made space for me. But was he even capable of that?
“Why don’t I get you on camera telling what you know about the lighthouse keeper?” Theo said. “It won’t be the same as having your dad here, but it will give it a nice personal edge anyway.”
Like usual, Theo’s camera was collecting a lot of interested stares, and the weight of all those eyes dragged me down even further. “Hey, Theo, I’ll be right back.”
His dark eyes met mine sympathetically. “Sure, Kalamata. Take your time.”
I spent the next few minutes exploring the little peninsula. Water crashed all around me, and for a moment I stood at the very edge, face to the water, willing the ocean and spray and all that blue sky to make me forget—even for a moment—about my dad, Dax, college, everything.
It didn’t work. I felt exposed and all alone, exactly like this lighthouse.
My mom was wrong. Coming to Greece hadn’t changed anything. This trip was yet another broken promise. I found a seat on a smooth-topped rock, then pulled my sketchbook out from my backpack and began to draw.
As my sketch took shape, my feelings clarified along with it. Here was the thing: regardless of the many reasons not to want it, I did want a relationship with my dad. I wanted someone to come to my art shows and games, and give my boyfriend a hard time, and nag me about finishing my schoolwork. And I didn’t want any dad. I wanted my dad. I wanted our old friendship and easy talking and all of our adventures and the way he made boring things—grocery shopping, walking to school—interesting. I wanted it so badly that it made me feel dizzy and unsteady and achy all at once. Missing my dad hurt.
But was that ever going to be a possibility? As hard as I’d fought against the battalion of postcards marching their way into my life, the fact remained that I’d always hoped they meant something. That he felt the same way, and that maybe we’d find a bridge or some kind of common ground, something to bring us back together. For a moment on our sunset cruise, I’d thought he’d been thinking the same thing. I’d thought he’d been capable of coming back into my life. He’d asked me to believe in him, hadn’t he? Had my hesitations slammed that door shut? And if so, could it really be considered an invitation at all?
I looked up toward the hazy outline of Oia and felt the truth solidify. No matter what I had or hadn’t said on the sunset cruise, a true reconciliation would never happen. If this trip had proven anything, it was that my dad couldn’t—or maybe wouldn’t—be there for me. Our relationship was ancient history, and the sooner I could get past that, the better.
Things at home may not be perfect, but at least I’d know what the score was and how to fit in. At least I didn’t have to hope for things that were never going to happen.
I clutched my pencil tightly in my hand. I’d drawn a lighthouse. Steady, capable, but all alone.
Chapter Nineteen
#19. DOODLE OF OUR LANDLORD, MACK
This one took me a while to find. It was stashed under a pile of bills in what my dad called our “drawer of requirement,” which, despite the Harry Potter allusion, meant bills. Lots and lots of bills. That drawer was always packed full, but he kept everything in neat bundles, with rubber bands holding together the different piles. Red meant pay immediately. Yellow meant pay as soon as possible. And green meant no rush, we’ll get to it. In the months before he went away, he stopped using the rubber band system, and the drawer overflowed.
I found the drawing on the back of a medical bill, and I knew who it was immediately: our landlord, Mack. Mack is sitting in his recliner, and his eyes are big behind his thick glasses, his hands resting neatly on his chest. This drawing looked more real than if Mack were standing in front of me. But what really got me about it was the expression on his face. You could see that things hadn’t worked out for Mack the way he’d hoped they would, and it made you wish he’d had a better run.
AS I MADE MY WAY back to Theo, I SAW THAT HE WAS IN a deep conversation with a balding, dark-bearded man wearing track pants and a gray T-shirt. I wasn’t in the mood to interact, so I posted up next to the lighthouse fence, carefully out of eyesight, until I heard Theo yelling for me.
“Kalamata? Where are you? Please tell me you didn’t throw your broody self into the depths of the ocean.”
My sigh was swallowed up in the wind. This self-pitying thing was getting old, even to me. “Over here, Theo.”
He came running, jumping over all the jagged pieces of rock with his backpack bouncing against his back. The man was now out of sight. “Kalamata! You’ll never believe this!” In all of the exciting Theo moments, this was the most amped I’d ever seen him. If I poked him with a pin, he’d probably burst.
“Another door to nowhere?” I asked, leaning over to stretch my back. Maybe I could convince Theo to take me back to Cinekamari tonight. Another film would do wonders for my bad attitude.
“That man back there asked me what we were filming, and when I told him about our documentary, he said I need to go to a restaurant called Vasilios. The owner claims to have found a piece of Atlantis.” He blurted out the words so quickly that it took me a moment to separate them from each other, and when I did, my enthusiasm definitely did not match Theo’s.
I straightened. “A piece of Atlantis? What does that even mean?” I made sure to add a healthy dose of disdain to my tone. Was this entire island full of delusional people?
But he would not be deterred. Theo danced back and forth excitedly. “He said that back in the 1980s, a fisherman who lives nearby dove and found some remains of a golden city. He’s been trying to get people to take him seriously ever since.”
Who did that sound like? I bit my lower lip. “And let me guess. You want to track him down?”
Theo grabbed my shoulders, shaking me like a present on Christmas morning. “Of course I do. Best case, he actually has something for us; worst case, we have a good story and some footage of a local talking about his own Atlantis hunt. Kalamata, this is it!”
I couldn’t help but feel a little bit over Atlantis at the moment, but the thought of going back to hang out in the empty bookstore feeling upset didn’t sound all that great either. What could it hurt, besides my already battered, windswept heart?