Page 46 of Bluebell Promises

Wren stopped breathing. For some reason, she’d allowed herself to forget that Celia had tasked herself with this mission. She’d decided to let it go.

“You don’t have to reach out to them if you don’t want to,” Celia said, removing a piece of paper from her purse and setting it on the table between them. It had their names—Maria and Andreas Skandali—along with their phone number and current address, which wasn’t anywhere on Santorini. “But you have that option if you want it.”

Wren pocketed the note and quietly thanked her sister. She wanted to change the subject. Soon, Ivy suggested they carry the nachos into the next room so that everyone could eat, and their conversation flowed easily to other things. Wren cozied up next to Ben and ate nachos piled with cheese, onion, and black olives, watching as basketball players charged up and down the field, arena, court, or whatever they called it.

“You hate this, don’t you?” Ben said, laughing and touching her hair.

“I don’t,” she said, smiling at him. But still, her mind was elsewhere, focused on her baby’s Greek grandparents, who still didn’t know her baby existed.

24

On November 1st —the Mexican Day of the Dead, a day meant for remembering and honoring those we’ve lost—Wren got up the nerve to call Angelos’s parents. She wanted to do it alone, without her sisters or Ben around—not because she felt she had anything to hide, but because she didn’t want to complicate her own emotions by pretending anything around anyone else. She didn’t want to have to smile through the pain.

But she realized right before she made the call that this attempt to contact them was illogical for many reasons. Most especially, Angelos’s parents didn’t speak very good English. It meant she needed an interpreter of some kind.

The internet provided a perfect and quick solution for this. She could use a translation service to type everything she wanted to say to Maria and Andreas, which would, in turn, translate it and use a computerized voice to “speak” those words back to Maria and Andreas in their native Greek. The voice they would hear wouldn’t be her own, of course, and would feel much less personal. But it was the best solution she could come up with quickly, without hiring someone.

It took her longer than she’d planned to write everything she wanted to say. It needed to be specific and precise, and translate as much emotion as she was willing to show.

Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Skandali. Please know that this is not my voice. I’m using an online translation service to translate what I need to say into Greek. I hope that is all right.

We don’t know each other well. My name is Wren Harper, and I stayed at your family’s inn in May of this year. While there, I met your son, Angelos. I fell for him almost immediately. He was dashing, smart, funny, adventurous, loving, and kind. I know that he avoided his tasks at the hotel to meet up with me, travel from island to island with me, and show me how incredible your culture is. We were falling in love and couldn’t help ourselves. I know, too, that he was coming back to the hotel to help out when he got into a terrible accident. My heart goes out to you. I cannot fathom what it means to lose a child in this way, and I have thought of you endlessly since I learned.

But I must confess something to you, something that may come as a shock. I am pregnant with your son’s baby. I need you to know that I am not calling because I want anything from you. I don’t want money or any help. I’m in Maine with family, and I am building a life in the town where I grew up. But I do feel it’s your right as my baby’s grandparents to know that she will be born next year. She has no grandparents living on my side. You are the only grandparents she would ever know, if you want to know her. Please let me know if you’d like to know more or if you’d prefer to cut contact now.

Wren stopped writing there, wondering if it was enough. It occurred to her, as she dialed their number, that they wouldn’t be able to respond in English unless they knew how to use a similar translation service. Maybe they’d cross that bridge when they got to it.

As it rang and rang, Pierre the dog came and sat on her lap, as though he knew she needed support. “It’s going to be all right,” she told him, while really telling herself.

On the fifth ring, a man answered. Wren could tell almost immediately that it was Angelos’s father, Andreas. She asked, “Andreas Skandali?”

He answered in Greek, but it sounded like he was affirming that it was him.

“Hi,” she said. “Any English?”

“No,” the man said in English. “A little bit.”

Wren’s heart pumped. “Stay,” she said. “Please. Listen.”

She put the phone on speaker, then played the translation service, so that Andreas Skandali heard everything she needed him to. She held her breath until the online service had translated everything she’d written into Greek. Then she put her phone back to her ear and asked again, “Andreas?”

The other end was quiet, save for the sound of someone, a man, crying. “Andreas?” Wren said again.

“Wren Harper,” he said, his voice heavily accented. “Wren Harper.” It was all he seemed able to say. And then, a moment later, he hung up, leaving Wren alone in the chaos of herself.

Wren didn’t know what to make of this. All day, she kept watch on her phone and tried and failed to finish other tasks. There were photos to edit, and she’d tentatively planned to come by the nearby gift store to take photographs for their social media. An hour before their appointment, she wrote them to ask if she could come tomorrow instead. “I don’t feel well today,” she said, which was entirely true.

When Ben came over for dinner that night, Wren tried to keep a brave face before bursting into tears and explaining what happened to him. Ben held her while she cried, then told her she was very brave for reaching out to them. “Maybe they’re too damaged after what happened,” Ben suggested. “Maybe they can’t find it within them to love their grandchild. As crazy as that sounds.”

“They hate me,” Wren whispered.

“They don’t know you,” Ben told her. “Please remember that.”

But the following morning at a little past five, Wren’s phone rang. She jerked out of bed and checked to see that the number belonged to Andreas and Maria. Tiptoeing down the hall so as not to wake Ben up, she answered it. “Hello?”

“Wren Harper?” An accented Greek man’s voice answered her. “My name is Christos, and I’m an interpreter of English. The Skandalis have hired me to help them speak with you.”

Wren’s heart thrashed. “Oh, that’s so good. Thank you for calling.”