2019
Some of the media reports about the events at Pure Heart also discussed Andreas. Once journalists discovered there’d been a death in our community only a few weeks before our night of bloodshed, they did some digging.
They didn’t find the scandal or intrigue they were hoping for. Only a police report confirming Andreas had died of natural causes – a heart attack – and that his death was not being treated as suspicious.
Not that I needed the police to tell me his death was accidental. None of us had a motive for killing him. Our certainty about this united us as we tried, in those first terrible days after his death, to come to terms with what had happened. We knew Andreas would never have spoken to the police. Doing so might have made Sofia look bad, and Andreas wouldn’t do that to Eva’s daughter. In retrospect, we could see he was still obsessed with Eva. Still consumed by grief for her loss and guilt at his perceived part in it. We hoped, without his obsession fuelling hers, Sofia might finally let go of the past.
There’s no doubt that for Sofia, the incident brought back painful memories of her mother’s death. She never expressed regret for asking Andreas to speak out against Quinn, but I’m sure she felt it. I hoped his death would be a turning point for her. True to her promise, she broke the news of Andreas’ death to his mother. Nikoleta’s dementia prevented her from fully registering the loss of her son. A blessing I suppose.
The following week passed in a grief-stricken blur. Dmitri organised for engineers to come and repair the Wi-Fi connection and fix the alarm system. As soon as the police verdict on the death was confirmed, we dismantled the sweat lodge. None of us wanted to sit inside it ever again.
Ten days after his death, Andreas was buried in a Greek Orthodox cemetery in Kakopetria by his maternal aunt and several of his cousins. We’ve always opposed organised religion, so instead of attending the burial we held our own memorial for him. We planted an olive tree on the site of the banished sweat lodge and, sitting in a circle around it, shared our memories of him.
Doing this gave us some kind of closure. Quinn said we’d see him again in another lifetime when our soul family was reunited.
After the memorial, Sofia announced she would extend her stay at Pure Heart for a month. To give us more time to consider her offer, she said. We knew that was just bravado. Deep down she wasn’t ready to leave us. Deep down, she knew Pure Heart was where she belonged.