Dachshund Through the Snow Page 8

  She perched there and watched him take a piece of paper from a pile and frown, reading it. “Today I make the flowers and deliver,” he said. “I am promo…higher up.”

  She smiled. “And you’ve only worked here a month?”

  He gave her a sideways look from his worktable. “I work hard.”

  “I bet you do.” A hard worker, a good provider, and no doubt he’d be faithful, too. Oh, sad lessons learned.

  And soon, when the word got out that she was back, maybe he’d come to meet Agnes Mastros, and he’d need to know the truth about her. Then he could have his uncle find another, more pure and innocent Greek girl to be his wife in his new country.

  There was really only one thing to do.

  “My name is Agnes,” she said softly.

  “Good Greek name.”

  “Agnes Mastros.”

  His hand froze in the act of putting a red rose in a vase. “Oh.” He inched back and blinked at her, then something crossed his face she couldn’t quite read. Surprise, then disappointment, maybe. She was about to make that worse. “You’ve been…gone.”

  “I have been. You’re Nikodemus, aren’t you?”

  He nodded, still scrutinizing her, nodding slowly. “I saw your picture, but not…the same. You are different.”

  She sure was. “Did they tell you anything?”

  “That you are pretty.” He tipped his head, the slightest smile pulling. “They not tell truth.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “You are…omorfi.”

  Beautiful.

  She felt a flush warm her cheeks. “Not really,” she said, looking down. “I am…” Spoiled. Used. Damaged. “Not good for you.”

  His laugh brought her gaze back to him. “I will decide that.”

  His optimism was sweet, but she wasn’t going to take advantage of him, only to let his heart be smashed when the truth came out. And it always came out, as she’d learned today.

  “Nik, I…I don’t know where my family told you I was for the past month, but you should know the facts.” At his puzzled look, she added, “The truth? The honest truth?”

  He nodded, silent for a long moment. “We were betrothed,” he finally said. “That is the truth.”

  She swallowed hard. “In this country, in this day and age, that is debatable.” She knew he didn’t have any idea what that meant. “We can only be betrothed if we both agree.”

  He nodded quickly. “I agree.”

  Oh sweet Lord, could he be any better? “But I…” Should have agreed. Sight unseen. No questions asked. This man would make someone very, very happy. “I was in love with another man.”

  She waited until his brain translated that. “Love?” he asked. “Another?”

  “Yes. I went with him. Far away. For the past month.”

  A little blood left his cheeks. “Is that who you wait for?”

  “No,” she whispered. “He betrayed me.”

  “Be…tray?”

  “He cheated.”

  He shook his head, still not getting it.

  “He was married.” She held up her left hand and squeezed her ring finger. “To another woman.”

  His eyes widened as comprehension dawned. “He should die.”

  For some reason, that made her laugh. “Yes, he should.”

  “Why he do that to you?” He closed his large hand around a rose stem, cracking it.

  “‘Why was I so stupid?’ is probably a better question.”

  He put down the broken flower and turned to her, taking a step closer. “You did not want me.”

  “I didn’t know you,” she said softly. “And I…I thought…” Her voice cracked as the pressure of the day, the month, and a mountain of regret hammered her down. “I thought I knew what I wanted, but…” A sob escaped. “I was wrong. So wrong.”

  He stared at her, silent, judging, no doubt, and counting his blessings for narrowly escaping a life with a woman as scorned and scarred as Agnes Mastros. He looked hard with his near-black eyes, so dark she could see her own reflection in them.

  His square jaw was set with anger and what she assumed was disgust as he had to realize what she’d been doing with a married man for a month. A vein in his neck pulsed, his chest rose and fell, and finally he looked down to the ground.

  “I’m so sorry,” she rasped.

  Before he could say another word, she shot off the stool, grabbed her bag, and launched out the swinging door, marching right into the rain to let it wash away her tears.

  She’d done her duty and told him the truth. Nikodemus Santorini was off the hook. Now she had to face her family.

  Oddly buoyed by the exchange she’d just had, Agnes headed home to the three-story brick house just off Crescent Street, not bothering to knock before she opened the door.

  Mama was in the kitchen, visible from the door, and Baba sat in his big chair in the parlor, reading a newspaper, which he lowered to reveal a silent, furious, shocked expression.

  “I’m…home,” she said.

  “Agnes!” Her mother flew out from the kitchen, a wooden spoon still in her hand. “Agnes, you’re—”

  Agnes held up her hand to stop her hug, not wanting her sweet mother to touch her wretched daughter. “Please. I have to…I have to tell you what happened.”

  “We know what happened.” Her father slammed down the newspaper with a scary amount of force.

  “Are you married?” Mama’s voice rose in fear, as if she already knew the answer.

  “I am not.”

  “You ruined yourself and this family!” her father exclaimed, agony in every word.

  She turned and met his gaze. “I did. I don’t suppose saying I’m sorry will change anything.”

  “You’re not welcome in this home. Get out.”

  Even though she fully expected this, Agnes sank with the blow.

  “Wait, Estevan,” her mother said. “Let her talk. She hasn’t told us anything.”

  “She wrote it all down. She gave herself to a man outside of marriage.” He ground out the words as if they hurt coming out of his mouth. “Like a…” He rooted for the word, which they all knew, but even he couldn’t utter it.

  “He was married,” she whispered.

  Her announcement was met with dead, shocked silence.

  “I left when I found out.” Not that leaving saved her from the enormous shame she could feel filling the entire house. Nothing could save her from that.

  “You will leave,” her father said, much quieter now, no doubt rocked by this new blow.

  “I will,” she agreed.

  Her mother let out a soft sob.

  “I’m sorry,” she said and finally put her hand on Mama’s shoulder. “I don’t expect you to forgive me. I don’t expect…anything.”

  “What will you do?” Mama asked on a ragged sigh.

  Agnes answered with a tight smile, tapping the hotel logo on her chest. “Work. I have some experience as a maid.” With that, she hoisted her bag and headed for the stairs to her room. Surely they’d let her change and get more clothes.

  No one followed, but she heard her parents’ harsh whispers in her wake.

  Her room looked the same, smelled like her favorite cologne, her bed neatly made. She sat on the edge of it for a moment, waiting for tears that didn’t come.

  She changed her wet clothes, brushed out her hair, and opened the dresser drawers and packed, much slower this time, moving like her body was in a bowl of molasses, heavy and nearly paralyzed.

  When she’d repacked her suitcase and hoisted it over her shoulder again, she took one more look around, pausing to decide what else she’d like to bring from home. A small painting of St. Agnes that her yiayia had given her for her twelfth birthday? The patron saint of girls and chastity? She almost laughed at the rich irony there.

  There was a doll her mother had made her perched on a shelf, a necklace her father had given her for her eighteenth birthday hanging on a hook, a tattered copy of Five Little Peppers and H
ow They Grew, her favorite novel as a young girl.

  But that girl was gone forever, taken by Norman Anderson and never to—

  She heard the sound of a man’s voice coming from downstairs, not her father, since he responded. Oh Lord, who was here now? Did she have to face someone from the family? Uncle Spiro?

  Her father’s voice was hushed, unusually so. Her mother said something, too, but then the man spoke again, and Agnes was drawn to the door and into the tiny hall, needing to hear it.

  Instantly, she recognized the broken English, the accent of a very recent arrival. Someone who’d been in America for only a month. Someone who thought she was…omorfi.

  What is Nikodemus Santorini doing here?

  She took a few more steps, clutching the strap of the bag on her shoulder, listening to the exchange, getting only bits and pieces of the conversation, mostly because the blood in her head was thumping like a drum.

  “It is my decision, sir.” De-see-sian. The Greek inflection sounded like music on his lips. What was his decision?

  “No, I’m sorry, young man,” her father said. “Your uncle would not forgive me.”

  Would not forgive him for what? What did Nik Santorini want? Why had he come here after she told him exactly who and what she was?

  She put her hand on the banister rail and tiptoed down the attic steps, her legs quaking like they were made of Mama’s jelly candy.

  “May I see her?”

  “No,” her father said.

  “Yes.” Her mother’s sharp response was just as fast and accompanied by her footfalls at the bottom of the next flight of stairs. “I’ll get her.”

  “I’m right here, Mama,” she whispered as they met almost in the middle.

  “He’s…here,” her mother said, breathless. “I think he said he saw you? He met you? He…”

  “He knows everything,” Agnes said, almost strangled by the hope that gripped her throat. “So why is he here?”

  “He wants to—”

  “Give flowers to my betrothed.” He stood at the bottom of the steps, holding a massive bunch of roses and greens. “A boo…boo…”

  “Bouquet,” she whispered.

  “Bouquet.” He smiled, and suddenly it felt like the dimly lit stairway was bathed in sunlight.

  “To welcome her home.”

  She floated down the last few stairs, not sure if her feet actually touched the wood. Her gaze was locked on his, her heart pounding so loud it should have echoed in the hall. She let the suitcase slide down her arm and thud to the step.

  “Nik…” She stopped on the last step, eye to eye with him. “Did you understand what I told you? Was I clear? Should my father say it in Greek? I am—”

  He put a hand out and touched his fingers to her lips, silencing her. “You are my betrothed, Agnes. I will have you. I will love you.”

  “But…will you forgive me?” How was that even possible?

  His smile was slow, dear, and so very genuine. “I already have.”

  She managed a slow, unsteady breath, taking the flowers and letting their fingers touch for the first time. The first of many times, she hoped.

  Her father appeared in the doorway, his scowl firmly in place. “Agnes is not welcome in this house,” he said.

  “Baba!”

  “Estevan!”

  Even Nik gave him a look of utter dismay.

  “Out.” He pointed to the door. “You have brought disgrace on this home.”

  All the joy that had bubbled up seeped out of her like a slow leak in a balloon. How could he? Nik had forgiven her. Couldn’t her father do the same?

  “You cannot do that.” Nik ground out the words, an undercurrent of anger in every syllable.

  “I can and I will. I am the father.”

  “And I will be the husband,” he said without taking his gaze off Baba.

  “You will leave and never come back,” Baba said. “To take her is to excuse her.”

  Nik shook his head, then turned back to Agnes. “You will live with my aunt and uncle until we are married,” Nik said, gesturing toward the door. “I’ll take you there.”

  Behind her, she could hear her mother sobbing. Next to her, she could see her father fuming. And in front of her stood the man she knew that she would someday love, if she didn’t already.

  He reached for her suitcase with one hand and her arm with the other.

  Without a word, they walked out into the sunshine to begin a life together.

  Chapter Eleven

  “I can’t stop thinking about your story, Agnes.” Finnie leaned over after handing a little boy a sizable box, knowing the toy inside would meet his request to Santa for a tractor that made noise. “It takes a very big man to forgive like that.”

  “He was big, and great, and as he got older, he had a temper that occasionally flared and a booming voice that scared children, but deep inside, he was kind.”

  “A saint,” Finnie agreed. “Did you ever know why he did that for you?”

  “He claimed he loved me at first sight, but I think he was just one of those men who has a tender heart for the broken. I was very, very lucky.”

  “I can’t believe you never told anyone, not even your son.”

  “Why would I?” Agnes adjusted the itchy beard that stuck to the remnants of her lipstick, ready to be done with the story and get back to Christmas. “Now how did you know that the last gift had a tractor in it. Are you sure of that?”

  Finnie picked up another box from the pile and pointed to tiny letters hidden in the wrapping that said baby doll. “’Tis a secret,” she said, shaking the strip of sleigh bells she held to greet each child. The ringing matched her laughter. “And why I spent much of November wrapping presents at church.”

  “Now it makes sense,” Agnes muttered. “I thought you’d taken a lover in your Bible study.”

  “Speaking of taking lovers, did your father ever come around?”

  Agnes sighed. “He didn’t, no. He refused to attend our wedding, and about a year later, Nik and I moved to Chestnut Creek, because seeing him in Astoria just tore me apart. Not long after we moved, my father had a heart attack and died.”

  “He died because his heart didn’t work properly,” Finnie said with a wry look. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m happy to say that my mother and my sisters, once free of his heavy hand, reconciled with me and came to Nico’s christening. My in-laws moved from Greece, too, and lived in Chestnut Creek. They were wonderful grandparents to my son.”

  “Did you ever see Norman Anderson again?” Finnie asked, a little tentative as if the answer worried her.

  Agnes nodded, remembering the day she saw him shopping at the perfume counter at Macy’s about fifteen years ago. “I did,” she said. “I had gone up to Astoria to visit my sister Irene, and we took a shopping trip to the city. I didn’t even recognize him when he said my name.”

  “No!” Finnie’s mouth dropped. “What happened to him?”

  She gave into a wry smile. “Fifty pounds, no hair, and he was shopping for a gift for his third wife.” She snorted. “That’s what happened to Norman Anderson.”

  “Then you were lucky in so many ways,” Finnie said, jingling her bells with happiness at this news. “So it all worked out in the end.”

  Until…the real end. Agnes put the thought away as the next child came forward. Pyggie and Gala, looking fine in their elf sweaters and knit caps, got up to greet the little boy with their barks and get the treat that Agnes offered.

  “Merry Christmas, laddie.” Gramma reached out her white gloved hands, welcoming as always, tender in touch and voice. It was a gift, really. “Come and sit on my dear husband’s lap. Tell him what you’d be wantin’ him to bring you this year.”

  The boy narrowed his eyes at Agnes. “I think that’s a lady Santa.”

  “’Tis the only Santa out here in Bushrod Square givin’ away gifts,” Gramma quipped. “But you don’t have to sit on Santa’s lap, child. Just tell us what you
’re hoping for this Christmas.”

  “I want to be on the Little League team,” he said, kicking the ground. “But the coach doesn’t like me.”

  “Well, we can’t make him like you,” Agnes said with a shrug.

  With a quick look to quiet Agnes, Finnie leaned in and said, “But we can help you get so good at yer game that he’s beggin’ you to be on the team.”

  “You can?” Brown eyes widened.

  “Hand me the long one, Santa,” she said to Agnes. “Right there with the red-and-white striped paper.”

  Agnes reached into the pile and nearly dislodged one of her fat pillows, clutching her fake stomach with one hand and pulling a long skinny box from the bottom. On the side was written bat with ball.

  “That’s the one,” Finnie said, taking it and handing it to the child. “I think this might help your game, lad.”

  His eyes widened. “Is it a bat?”

  “Don’t spoil your surprise,” Agnes said.

  But Finnie waved her hand to quiet Agnes’s reprimand. “The surprise is going to be on your coach’s face when you hit home runs!”

  “I’m not that good.”

  “But ye will be. That there is a magic stick, lad. The more you swing it, the more it hits. Try it.”

  He took the package gingerly, a smile threatening. “Magic?”

  “Christmas magic,” Finnie assured him.

  “Thank you.” He clutched the box to his chest and turned to run to his mother and announce he’d been given magic.

  “How do you do it?” Agnes marveled. “How is it that being kind comes so naturally to you?”

  Finnie laughed. “’Tis a bit difficult to be churlish with a child at Christmas, Agnes, even for you.”

  She put her hand on Finnie’s arm. “Why can’t I change? I’m trying so hard.”

  Finnie put a hand on Agnes’s velvet-clad arm. “Sweet lass, you carry too much shame. The Lord forgives you, your husband forgave you, and your life went on, better than before, despite what Norman Anderson did to you. Let go of your shame, and you’ll find it much easier to smile. Here, try it on this next boy.”