It was the first Wednesday in February, and the world felt like a giant freezer. The week before, snow had fallen like giant puffs of frozen fluff, but Uncle D had shoveled the sidewalk, so all that was left were small, grimy icebergs lining the edge of Pappou’s driveway. If you stood to one side and squinted, they looked like a mini mountain range topped with gray and black peaks.

When we were little, Eleni and I used to stomp on snow clumps, because we thought our footprints made new ice lands that we were the queens of. I breathed a long hiss of dragon breath into the icy air and tried not to think of her, but sometimes you can’t make your brain do what you want it to do. With the wind biting my face, I jumped on a snow clump with my boot, crushing it into a hard mash of ice. Cruunnnch. And there it was. Lexieland. A brand-new country. All mine.

“Lexie!” Mom honked. “What’re you doing? Take this—it’s freezing.” She handed me an orange grocery bag from the trunk, closed it hard, and headed up the sidewalk. She was doing better now. She was grumpier than she used to be, and more serious, but at least she was up and doing stuff. It was the right decision not to tell her about the necklace. Wasn’t it?

Steaming breath was rising from her nostrils like her head was boiling and her brain was evaporating into the chilly air. I raised my boot and stomp-stomp-stomped, making three more Lexielands, and then ran up the driveway behind her.

Pappou opened the door looking scruffy and crumpled, like a used paper bag, just with white hairs sprouting from his chin. His face was saggy and gray, and his clothes looked like he’d slept in them.

We’d dropped Nicos and Kat off earlier, and I’d gone with Mom to get Pappou a prescription (which he calls a description because he mixes the words up). Mom had bought him tea and a few other things because, you know, the snow, even though only a little over an inch had fallen and he already had enough food in his house to last for fifty years.

Pappou grunted and shuffled along the corridor. Before Yiayia died, he would open the door and roar Hellooooo so loudly that the neighbors at the end of his road could hear it. Then he’d hug us one by one, kiss us on both cheeks, and take us out to show us whatever it is he was proud of in his garden that day. Sometimes a fat zucchini. Sometimes a mini lemon on his young lemon tree.

Mom frowned and followed Pappou inside. I slunk in behind her with my eyes glued to the floor, so I wouldn’t see the photos covering the walls in the hallway. There was one of Mom, Aunt Soph, and Uncle Dimitri with weird haircuts, smiling in their elementary school uniforms. A picture of the whole family at Aunt Soph’s wedding, lined up in rows in fancy dresses and three-piece suits. And one of Yiayia and Pappou at Mom and Dad’s wedding, with Aunt Soph in the background, her eyes full of tears, because she was so happy for my mom on her wedding day.

I couldn’t look. Those photos made my skin itch and my belly lurch.

It hadn’t gotten to the point yet where we walked through Pappou’s door and it felt normal that Yiayia wasn’t there. As I walked past the living room on my way into the kitchen, Nicos called me.

“Whatssup?” he said when I stood at the living room door and peered at him. He was watching TV, but he looked bored.

I shrugged and he eyed me suspiciously. “Feeling all right, likkle sis?”

Nicos talks like that because he’s fourteen and thinks he’s some bad-boy gangster, even though he’s a nice Greek boy from South London. He wears his trousers hanging down like he’s lost a ton of weight or his belt or both, which makes him shuffle when he walks like he has a big full diaper. It looks the opposite of cool if you ask me.

“As if you care,” I muttered.

“’Course I care. If you’re not feeling good, you can’t get me any cookies, can you?”

I turned and marched off.

“LEX! Get me cookies! PLEEEEASE! YOU’LL BE MY FAVORITE SISTER!”

I ignored him and went into the kitchen.

Pappou was at the counter turning down the radio. He listens to LGR (London Greek Radio), which is always crackly.

“What’s wrong, Dad?” Mom asked as she placed the shopping bags on the counter. She had no makeup on and her face looked like the sky in winter, or a ghost. Which I didn’t want to think about. She watched Pappou like a detective, but she must have been a bad one who couldn’t find any clues because she asked, “You OK?”

“Euh,” Pappou said, sitting heavily in his chair. Pappou’s armchair has buttons to make the back lie flat and the footrest go up. It’s so cool, but we’re not allowed to sit on it and pretend we’re at the dentist or piloting a spaceship. Nicos and Elias played on his old chair a few years back and broke it, so this one was a no-grandchildren zone.

“What does euh mean, Dad? Maybe you can give me a little more detail?”

“Euh.”

“Ohh-kay,” Mom said, not taking her eyes off him. “Let me put this stuff away, and I’ll come and talk to you. Did you eat? Got some stifado and souvlaki for you.”

He nodded. Kind of. More of a head flick.

“Good. You need to eat, Dad. Lexie, come.”

I didn’t want to, but I sat down at the table—the one covered in the giant doily—and Mom fixed me a pita stuffed with souvlaki and salad, even though I’d rather have had spaghetti with Halloumi. l peeked a look at Pappou because he wasn’t himself, and it was scaring me. He was rubbing his forehead and staring at the wall.

“Pappou?” I asked. “You OK?”

He lifted his arm and waved it like he was sending a servant out of the room. I knew what that arm wave meant. It meant euh. Poor Pappou. I understood him. Of course he felt euh.

He wasn’t the only one, either.