The Clover House Read Online Free Page A

one of his inappropriate comments?”
    I compose my face. “Nope. You just caught me cooking the books,” I say with a big smile.
    She shakes her head in amusement. They think I’m a card here at the office.
    I wait until she’s gone and let myself fall back into the chair, still thinking of what Nestor said to me that day five years ago. I left Patras suddenly that time, shot out of the city by cruelthings my mother said. If Nestor had told me then what he wanted me to know, I wonder if I would have gone back to see him again. I wonder if I would have learned something that would have made it easier for me to return. But now I’m just making it someone else’s responsibility. Isn’t it my fault that I haven’t seen my family in years? Wasn’t it my decision that very same summer to walk away—not only from my mother but from Greece, and even from family members who had done nothing to hurt me?
    A fter work, I park the car in front of our building and run upstairs to drop my stuff off before I head out to meet Jonah.
    The answering machine is flashing. I stab at the button and walk away while the computer voice tells me there’s one message. The only people who call our landline are Jonah’s parents and my mother. Still, it catches me by surprise to hear my mother’s melancholy tone on the machine. I come back into the room, red lipstick in midair, and listen. My jaw is tightening.
    “Calliope. Your uncle’s funeral was today.” She makes it sound as if I deliberately stayed away instead of not having enough advance notice to make the trip. “Everyone was there. Everyone who is still alive, anyhow. Aliki told me she called you. But there’s no need to come. I can make arrangements for Nestor’s things to be given away or …” She trails off, her tone signaling disdain. “Call me so I can tell you what you need for the power of attorney. I don’t know why Aliki called you. She should have stayed out of this. There’s no need to make you come. All right?” She pauses, as if waiting for a reply.
“Geia,”
she says. To my health.
    “That’s nice,” I mutter to the apartment.
    I replay the message. It’s a virtuoso performance. Guilt, sympathy, scorn, and ingratitude all rolled into twenty-six seconds. Nestor’s words ring in my head: “There are things you need to know. But not now.” Something new is going on with my mother, and I need to find out what. I finish my lipstick, grab my shoulder bag, and lock the door behind me, ready to tell Jonah I’m definitely going to Greece.
    I step into the deep entrance of The Sevens and stomp my feet free of snow before tugging on the heavy wooden door. Even for a bar, The Sevens is dark. People don’t go there to be seen; they go to shout and laugh and drink. That’s what our crowd is doing when I find them in prime position beneath a television showing the Bruins game. Jonah is standing squarely on both feet, smiling, ignoring the game. Ted is telling him a rugby story, miming the action with his hands. All around Jonah, everyone is moving, gesturing, swaying, but Jonah is still. I feel a tiny gasp of recognition and relief when I see him and hope it doesn’t show.
    I wind carefully around the cluster of darts players, nod to Ben at the tap, and swing through the crowd to take hold of Jonah’s arm.
    “Hey,” he shouts, turning. People have started yelling at a fight in the Bruins game. It’s too noisy to say much, so I kiss him.
    I look for Marcus, whose first day at his new job we are celebrating.
    “Still employed?” I ask, straining over the subsiding voices.
    “Yup.”
    “But tomorrow they’ll bust him for insider trading,” Jonah says.
    “So soon,” I say. “Such a shame.”
    “He’s been giving out stock tips all night.”
    Marcus rolls his eyes, tolerant. He has a new haircut for the occasion, an extreme short-back-and-sides. I run my hand up the back of his neck, feeling the nap of his dark buzzed hair.
    “Looks good,” I