“No.” For a moment she looked distant and then she smiled.
“A beautiful girl like you? That's a waste.” He wagged a finger and she laughed, and then she asked him another question.
“Does she look anything like me?”
He looked at her closely, and then shook his head. “Not really. There is a kind of impression. It's more in the way you move, the shape of your body. Not the face, or the eyes, or the hair.” He looked at Vanessa very hard then and she felt his eyes bore through her. “Do you want to see her, Vanessa?”
She was honest with him as her eyes met his. “I don't know. I'm not sure. I want to, but… what then? What will it do, to both of us?”
“Perhaps nothing. Perhaps you will meet as two strangers, and part the same way. Perhaps you will meet as sisters. Or you will grow to be friends. It is difficult to say.” And then, hesitantly, “Vanessa, you should know, she looks a great deal like your mother. If you remember your mother at all, it may upset you to see her.” It was odd to think of it, why should this girl she had never seen look anything like her mother? The whole idea of having a sister was suddenly almost more than Vanessa could understand. She felt suddenly exhausted again as she sat there with Andreas, and he saw all the emotions crossing her face and reached out a hand for hers. “You have time to think it over. She is away for two weeks. On a cruise with some friends.” He looked sheepish. “She is supposed to be in school, but … it's a long story, but she talked me into it. My children say I spoil her rotten, but she's a good girl.”
Vanessa thought about what he had said. “When will she be back?”
“Two weeks from today. She left last night.” Vanessa thought it over with exasperation. If she hadn't lingered in Rome, she could have come to Athens the day before, and it would be over. She would be on her way back to the States by now, with whatever impressions she had gathered and the deed done. Now she would have to wait for fourteen days.
“I suppose I could go somewhere else, and come back.…” She mulled it over and he watched her. When he thought there was no one looking, there was something unbearably sad in his face.
“Wouldn't you like to stay here, in Athens?” He smiled the smile of a host. “You could move into the house, if the hotel is a problem.” But Vanessa smiled and shook her head.
“You're very kind, but it isn't that. I'm just not sure what I'd do sitting here for two weeks. I could go to Paris, I guess.” But she really didn't want to. She wanted to take a look at Charlotte and go home. She had decided that much now, but wait another two weeks?
“Why don't you try waiting here?” He inclined his head in a gentlemanly fashion. “I will do my very best to entertain you.”
“No, really, I couldn't impose on you—”
He interrupted her. “Why not? You have waited sixteen years for this moment. May I not share it with you? May I not help you to live through the fears, to deal with the anticipation, to have someone to talk to?” As he said it she wanted to let him take care of her forever, he had that kind of way about him, a way of giving in every way he could, so that one felt as though one had been given a part of his very soul.
“You must have better things to do.”
“No.” He looked at her very strangely. “I don't. What you are doing is much more important than anything I was attending to when you arrived. Besides,” he said, shrugging easily, “October is a slow month in Athens.” He laughed in his husky way. “Athens is slow all year.” And then he smiled as he asked a question. “And what do you do in New York, Vanessa? Your uncle is a doctor, I believe.”
“He is, and so is his wife. I'm much less respectable than they are.” She smiled at Andreas. “I'm a photographer.”
“Are you?” He looked pleased. “Are you good at it?”
“Sometimes.”
“Then we'll have to take pictures together. I enjoy photography too.” They began to talk then of a recent exhibition that had come to New York