Seven Days of Friday (Women of Greece Book 1) by Alex A. King Read Free Book Online Page B

done and her girl is gone.
    Too late. Too, too late.
    “Mel – ” she starts.
    “She is a better daughter than you deserve right now,” Eleni says.
    Vivi turns on her. “You just had to meddle, didn't you? You had to bring us here and poke with that sticky beak, instead of just asking. You have no empathy, Mom. I really hope you're happy.”
    Off in the (increasingly less distant) distance, sirens wail. Probably a fire. House fires are popular in winter, all those fireplaces puffing smoke and creosote into the air, all those people too cold to go outside for a smoke.
    Except there’s no fire this time.
    The dime drops when a couple of police officers push into the store, slap bracelets on Vivi’s wrists.
    “You have the right to – ”
    “Remain silent, I know,” she says.
    Eleni says, “My daughter doesn’t know how to be silent.”
    Pot. Kettle. Black.
    Melissa’s outside, watching, crying. And the cashier is suddenly interested in everything.
    “Thanks a lot, asshole,” Vivi says, because who else could have made the call?
    “Child abusers get what they deserve,” he says.
    “I'm not a child abuser,” Vivi says – to him, to her mother, to her daughter, to the cops herding her out the door.
    Palm raised: “Talk to the hand, crazy lady.”
    Humiliating, being dragged away from a liquor store in handcuffs, flanked by cops twice her size. Lots of people outside, more than one holding up a phone, ready to make Vivi a YouTube “star.”
    The worst part? Melissa was right. The second she said it a bell tolled in Vivi’s soul. John is different, their marriage a sham; deep down, below the itchy, uncomfortable surface, she has known it all along.
    She’s not unlovable, undesirable, after all.
    It was always him.
    A firm hand shoves her head.
    “That's my daughter!” Eleni shouts. She appeals to the swelling crowd. “Look at the police, they are brutalizing her because they are prejudiced against the Greek people! What, you don't like baklava and gyro ? You people owe everything to Greece. It is the birthplace of civilization!”
    Vivi climbs into the police cruiser. It’s an Eleni-free zone.
    “That your mother?” one of the cops wants to know.
    “Yeah.”
    “Apple doesn’t fall far from that tree.”
    Ha-ha.

9
    Max
    G oodnight , Max. Miss me while you're gone,” the nurse says. She’s giving him that look, the one telling him she wouldn’t mind a rerun of their brief affair.
    Ha. Some affair.
    He fucked her one night in his Jeep, after a staff party. First and only time he touched a hospital employee.
    Bad idea.
    She got weird and clingy after that, started telling everyone they were dating. Left cute cards in his office. Invited him to meet her parents.
    He was kind, but honest about no possibility of a future.
    Now he gives her a polite, dismissive, “Have a good night,” and he’s out of there.
----
    I t’s a shitty night . The Pagasetic Gulf is its usual calm self – it’s Max who is the storm.
    All week, he’s been hoping for a disaster. A pandemic or a huge earthquake. Maybe a good war. Anything to stop this night from happening.
    One night, one dinner, he tells himself. He’ll do this once, but that’s it. And he’ll make Mama understand.
    Yeah right. Good luck with that. Mama doesn’t understand anything she doesn’t like.
    He finds a parking space in a side street near the Volos promenade.
    Warmish out, not cold. But the cold is coming. Summer’s had enough of Greece for this year, and soon it will swap places with winter. It’ll change its mind, be back again, when it gets bored with the southern hemisphere.
    He walks like a kid on his way to detention. Hands shoved deep in his pockets. Eyes on the ground. He means to walk slowly, but old habits have a tendency to fight for their lives.
    A smart man would have parked one street over, so he could see them before they see him.
    Too late. Mama’s there, waving her black handkerchief his way.
    He picks up the already fast