Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood (Sisterhood 4)

“We should get some sleep,” Lena said. “That’s the smartest thing to do. That way we can get up early and get to work.”

They did get to work in the morning. And yet, preoccupied as they were by their loss and their mission, they couldn’t help being awed by what the sun showed them.

“This is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. A thousand times more beautiful than the next most beautiful place,” Carmen said.

Lena thought that too. She felt a great giddiness along with a deep satisfaction at getting to share it with them. Another unexpected gift, courtesy of the Pants, she thought.

She told them about the formation of the Caldera, really a giant crater left by what was possibly the hugest volcanic explosion in the history of the world. It sank the whole middle of the island, leaving sheared cliffs around a center of water.

“And what about those islands?” Bee asked, squinting over the water to three masses of land floating in the Caldera.

“Patches of lava left over,” Lena explained.

Lena led them along the sloped paths where they thought the wind could have carried the Pants from Valia’s patio. The whitewashed houses and crumbling churches, the dazzling blue of the domes and doors, the blinding pink of the climbing bougainvillea, all of it was so intoxicating to the eyes it was hard to stay focused on the job at hand. After a few hours in the sun, they took a break in the shade and tried to strategize.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if someone found them,” Tibby said.

“That’s a good point,” Lena said.

They went to town. Luckily, most of the shopkeepers spoke at least a little English. Lena went armed with a picture.

“We’re looking for something,” she explained to a man in a clothing shop. She pulled out the picture of the Pants as worn by Tibby last summer at the beach. She pointed to the Pants. “We lost these.”

The shopkeeper looked alarmed. “You lost this girl?” He put on his glasses and held the photograph up close.

“No, she’s right here,” Bridget explained. “We lost those Pants.”

They found a copy shop in town. Using the photograph, they blew up the image of the Pants, beheaded Tibby, and circled the Pants with a thick black marker. LOST PANTS, Lena wrote in English and Greek. The copy lady helped with the translation. Lena put down her grandmother’s address and number. REWARD!, she wrote in Greek.

While they waited for fifty copies to be made, Lena gave them a little tour.

“This is the forge that belonged to Kostos’s grandfather. I think he sold it in the last year or two. That’s where Kostos used to work,” she explained. “That’s where we kissed the first time,” she added as an aside.

She took them down to the little harbor. “Did you ever see the picture I drew of this? It was one of the first ones I ever liked. Kostos and I went swimming here.”

“There’s a certain theme to this tour, I think,” Tibby said.

“Ha ha,” Lena said. As they stood on the dock she pretended to push Tibby into the water.

“How could you not fall in love here?” Bee asked.

Inspired by her thoughts of love and of beauty, of ancient places and dirt floors, Bee lifted her arms to the sky and did an arcing dive off the dock into the sea. It was thrillingly cold. She popped her head through the surface and screamed with joy.

Because they were her friends, and perfect friends in nearly all ways, the three of them screamed back and dove in after her.

They all shouted about how cold it was. They swam around screaming in their wet, billowing clothes. Bee hauled herself out first and helped the others, who were laughing and shivering so hard she was afraid they might drown from elation and harebrained stupidity.

They all lay side by side on the dock so the sun could dry them. The sky was the most perfect and cloudless blue.

Bee loved the sun. She loved her heavy, dripping clothes. She loved the water lapping against the pilings beneath her. She protested aloud at the encroachment of Tibby’s cold toes against her shin, but she loved that, too.

She belonged to her friends and they to her. That much she knew, even if the Pants were temporarily mislaid.

“I think our copies are probably ready,” Carmen pointed out dreamily.

They posted their signs all over the place. Throughout Oia and its environs.

“I think we should cover Fira, too,” Lena suggested.

So they went to Fira that evening with fifty more. They were fanning out, posting them around the crowded tourist spots, when Bee came running.

“Lena! I think I just saw Kostos.”

Lena felt the zzzzt of electrical current up her back.

“You never even met Kostos,” Tibby said, appearing next to her.

“Well, I know, but I saw his picture,” Bee insisted.

Lena looked around, trying to feel calm. She did a slow, calm survey. “My grandmother said he’s not here. He hasn’t been around all summer. Where do you think you saw him?”

Bee pointed to a corner with a café and a bike shop.

“What are the chances? You probably imagined it,” Carmen said. She stood protectively by Lena.

“Carma, he does live here,” Bee pointed out. “It’s not like I’m claiming to have seen him in Milwaukee or something.”

“Whether he was or wasn’t, he does kind of haunt this place,” Lena said diplomatically. “I am the first to admit that. Anyway, let’s keep going.”

They posted their signs until it was dark, Lena distractedly imagining she saw Kostos everywhere.

“Now we’ll go home and wait for people to call us,” Lena said.

At home Lena stepped into the kitchen, where Valia had cooked up a huge feast. “Grandma, Kostos isn’t on the island, is he?”

“I heard he’s traveling all this summer. I don’t see him vunce. I talk to Rena, but I don’t know vhere he goes.” Valia was pretending to be dismissive of Kostos. Like Lena, she’d spent too much time hoping.

They had a long, cozy night at home. Valia went to bed early but left them a bottle of red wine. They sat on the floor drinking and talking and talking and talking.

It was magical, but by the time they dragged themselves up to bed they realized that in spite of one hundred signs, not one person had called.

Lena was the only early riser of the group, and her body seemed to adjust most quickly to Greek time. At sunrise, she decided to take a walk.

She took a long, slow walk. First she thought about Effie and then about Bapi, and after that she let herself think about Kostos.

It was fitting, in a way, to walk and see all these ruins. Here, on this island, the place where she’d both given away her heart and seen it broken, there were ruins all around, though not all of them ancient.

Ruins stood for what was lost, and yet they were beautiful—peaceful, historic, intellectual. Not tragic or regrettable. Lena tried to keep hers that way too, and she succeeded to some extent. Why not celebrate what you had had rather than spend your time mourning its passing? There could be joy in things that ended.

Still, it surprised her how much she was thinking of him here, how often she thought she saw him. Around the corner, looking out a window, sitting at a table in a café. Not a ghost or a memory of Kostos, but Kostos as he was now.

“It’s weird. Now I keep thinking I see him,” she confided to Bee later that day when they were canvassing people around the Paradise and Pori beaches.

“What do you think when you do?” Bee asked.

Lena considered this question as she showered before dinner.

After the scene in the motel in Providence, Lena knew she had changed. She knew she had destroyed whatever remained of her and Kostos. God, what must he think of her now?

She wasn’t who he thought she was. She wasn’t who she thought she was. She had displayed an ugliness he hadn’t imagined was there. But it was a relief, in a way. If that was part of who she was, he should know it. He shouldn’t be tricked. And there was

a perverse, childlike part of her that wanted to get to be ugly sometimes.

She wondered about him. Had he ever really been able to love her? Did she really love him? There was undoubtedly something beautiful in longing and wishing. Their love story stayed perfect because they couldn’t have it.

But could he love her imperfection? Would he accept the fact that she wasn’t always beautiful? Could he allow imperfection in himself? Would he give up being lovable for her sake?

They had their imagined love. It had been wrenching and beautiful. But she wondered now whether either of them had ever had the stomach for the real thing.

The following day they tried the port of Athinios, where the ferries came in. They posted signs and they went shop to shop and restaurant to restaurant. Valia had by now trained them how to ask “Have you seen these Pants?” in Greek. They even learned to say it in French and German.

There was one moment of excitement when an ice cream scooper said, “Oh, I saw those.” But after all four of them closed in on him, they realized he meant he’d seen the signs.

“We aren’t getting hopeless, are we?” Tibby asked. She couldn’t hide her worry.

“No,” Bee reassured her.

“We’ll find them. They want us to find them,” Carmen said.

Tibby sensed that none of them was willing to think about it any other way. Or at least, they weren’t yet willing to say so.

When they got home from Athinios, Lena’s grandmother was waiting inside her door. She practically tackled Lena as soon as she saw her.

“Kostos is here!” she said. Her fingers were pressing a little too hard into Lena’s shoulders.

“What?”