The Summer House in Santorini. Samantha Parks

4

       Santorini

      The front of the house was positively quaint, Anna thought. It was nestled between two hills in a sort of mini valley. Three white stone arches covered in vines framed a door in the center and two windows, one on each side. A stone wall extended from each side of the front, with a gate several meters to the left and another beyond that. Anna walked through the center archway, looking around as she went. The front of the house was covered in climbing vines, crowded at the bottom by weeds. The wooden front door was beautiful and weathered; it looked like it had been there for hundreds of years, but it was still strong and sturdy.

      Eirini called for Anna to follow her through the first gate, bringing her into a square courtyard, about fifteen feet on each side with a table in the middle. The walls were covered in the same climbing vines as the front of the house, nearly obscuring the white paint underneath.

      As she followed Eirini through the next gate to the back garden, Anna found herself looking at the most beautiful little cottage she could imagine. It was made of the same whitewashed stone, but it was covered in gorgeous pink flowers. It was small -- Anna imagined it couldn’t have been more than one or two rooms -- but it was the kind of place that Anna would have booked immediately if she’d found it online.

      “Is that…?” Anna pointed at the cottage and looked at Eirini, not wanting to make another mistake but hoping dearly that this was the summer house.

      “This is your father’s cottage,” she said, “so, yes, I guess it is legally yours now. For some reason.”

      Anna ignored the last part and walked up to the cottage, peeking through the window next to the door. It was dirty, but she could see a bed, and another door further on. She turned around to look at the garden, but she couldn’t see where the entrance was. “How do you get back here?”

      Eirini sighed. “You can go through the courtyard, or you can use the far gate. But that’s difficult to get to. You will need to put in a path, eventually. The courtyard is the only part of our property you have access to.”

      Anna nodded in understanding. She wasn’t about to try to cross this woman, though she would have to see about getting that path put in. Maybe a fence between the houses as well.

      Eirini extended a set of keys to Anna, so she moved a few steps closer to her and took them. With that, Eirini turned around and walked back into the house, closing the door behind her.

      Christos was sticking his head around the door from the courtyard, and he stepped into the garden after Eirini had gone. “Is Giorgos house,” he said, slowly and deliberately. “Eirini love Giorgos… very much. Is hard.” And then he turned and followed Eirini inside.

      Anna watched her grandfather go inside, wishing he spoke better English so she could avoid Eirini. She turned around to inspect her new home, and as she saw it she felt giddy yet again. This would definitely make a great rental property. Maybe there was a rental agency they could work with, and they wouldn’t have to sell it. Then she and Lizzy could come whenever they wanted, and…

      … and nothing. After her icy reception from Eirini, Anna knew that she would never be welcome here. She would have to part with the summer house. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy a few days in it. She’d just have to find somewhere to spend her time where she could fit in with the other tourists.

      Anna unlocked the door and went inside. As she had expected, it was just one big room with a bathroom in the corner. It was immediately obvious, however, that it was in no state to rent out or sell as it stood. The small kitchen in the far-right corner was filled with rust-covered appliances, and one cabinet door was hanging by a hinge. The mattress on the bed looked like ones Anna had seen in back alleys in Manhattan. The wooden floor was almost completely covered in a thick layer of dust. And while the bathroom had a lovely freestanding tub in it, there was no flooring and no sink. This must have been what Nikos meant when he said she wouldn’t have it on the market in a week. The summer house was going to need a lot of work. She just had to determine if that work was her responsibility.

      Anna pulled out her phone to ring Lizzy, and, after taking a moment to connect to the Greek network, a flood of messages came through. Unable to leave the notifications alone, Anna went through each one: a confirmation that the room she was subletting would be held for her; a text from the pizza delivery near her apartment in New York offering “15% off” for the next three days, and a notification that she had beat Lizzy in their latest round of Words With Friends.

      Next, she reluctantly opened her work emails, with the intention of just checking there was nothing important waiting for her, but saw a message from Marcus’s assistant waiting in her inbox. The subject line was “Moving forward,” so she clicked into it.

      Hi, Anna. Due to your recent tardiness, the second documented offense of its kind …

      The first had been the morning after she found out her father had died. She had only been twenty minutes late. As for her second offense, she didn’t even realize she had been written up again. The email continued:

       … we no longer feel you are a good fit for MarMac. We would like to give you your two-week notice, which will begin immediately. We are aware that you are away on personal matters, so while we will pay you for the two weeks, you should consider your employment with MarMac, Inc. to be complete. Please return the attached paperwork in order to be eligible for the next two weeks’ pay.

      Anna couldn’t believe what she was reading. He was firing her before she could send in her notice. This was a new low for Marcus; not content with sweeping Anna under the rug because he was done with her, he had to have the last word, too. She set a reminder for the next morning to fill out the paperwork before tapping out her reply.

      Really classy, Marcus. Thanks for the heads up.

      His response came quickly:

      Don’t be a child, Anna. At least I gave you severance pay. Just remember that you’ll never be a photographer if you can’t take your work seriously.

      Anna groaned and slammed her phone down. He was so infuriating. At least this meant she would be able to stay a bit longer to get the house sold. As she looked around again, she began making a mental list of everything that the new owner would have to do: replace the mattress, tile the bathroom, buy a sink, repair the cabinets, replace the oven, clean the refrigerator, clean the floors, clean the windows… okay, clean everything. And replace a lot of things. Or maybe she was supposed to do all that before putting it on the market? If so, this was going to cost her a lot of time and a lot of money. But, then again, she had a little bit of both to spare.

      She picked up her phone again, this time to call Lizzy.

      “Hey, Banana!” Lizzy shouted. “You there yet? I was beginning to worry about you.”

      “Yeah, I’m here,” Anna said. “I fell asleep for a while. Sorry. But I’m at the summer house now.”

      “How was your journey from the airport?” Lizzy asked, and Anna could tell that she was smiling mischievously on the other end of the line.

      “Horrible,” she said. “Some guy named Nikos picked me up and we had to walk all the way to the resort where Christos works.”

      “I told him to drive you!”

      “You told him?” Anna asked. “How do you know Nikos?”

      “I met him at Dad’s funeral,” Lizzy said. “I thought you might enjoy having him as your escort.”

      “Very funny,” Anna said. “I’m not really in the market for a Greek booty call. A Greek summer house is about all I can handle at the moment.”

      “Fine, fine, fine,” Lizzy relented with a sigh. “And what do you think of the summer house?”

      “Well… it definitely has potential…”

      “Potential? That’s how they describe absolute dumps on home-improvement