“Opa!” I threw back my shot of ouzo in unison with the other people gathered around the table in the Bonaparte House. I smiled, warm with the glow of the anise-flavored drink and the company of the people I loved. Jack was seated next to me and he took my hand. Gladys was on the other side of him.
Small plates lined the table, filled with fat Kalamata olives, slices of the last ripe tomatoes of the season, chunks of briny feta, and grape leaves stuffed with rice and lamb. The Greeks call these nibbles mezedes. I called them delicious.
Inky had hitched up his smartphone to a speaker, which was currently broadcasting bouzouki music. It was impossible not to feel happy listening to the notes wafting through the air. Later, after dinner, even though there were only two native Greeks in the room, the tables would be pushed back for dancing.
A gold bracelet—eighteen carat—shone on my wrist. I glanced over at Melanie. She wore an identical one. Unbeknownst to me, she’d commissioned Roger at the jewelry shop to make three. One for herself, one for me, and one for Cal, the granddaughter she hoped to get to know soon. I thought about having one made for Liza.
Dolly sat a few seats away from me, talking intently to Paloma, who’d been hired as the new cook at Spinky’s. With training from Dolly, I knew she would do well. And she could keep her job at the school, with benefits. As Melanie would say, win-win.
Sophie presided at the head of the table, our guest of honor, with Marina next to her. Their bags were packed and loaded into the cavernous trunk of the White Whale. In the morning Spiro would drive them both to the airport in Syracuse for the first leg of their journey back to Greece for the winter. She’d taken it surprisingly well when I told her I was staying here for the winter. But when I delivered the news that I was seeing Jack, she set her lips in a hard line and gave me a gentle swat with the gossip magazine she’d been holding. “You dum-dum,” she said, not unkindly. “You think I don’t know? He’s very good-looking. Does he have a father?” I’d answered that his parents were both still alive and married to each other. She took it in stride. “How about an uncle?”
My heart beat in time with the music and swelled as I heard the laughter of the people I loved best. Almost all of them anyway. I understood, in a way I never had before, that being part of a family doesn’t necessarily mean being related by blood.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out and looked at the screen, then got up and went to the hallway to take the call.
“Callista? Is that you? We’re just having a farewell party for Yia-Yia.”
“Mom, I miss you and Daddy. I’m coming home.”
Gratitude and joy bubbled up inside me. “My love, you can’t get here soon enough for me.”