My Brother Left Me With the Man He Told Me to Stay Away From, and Then Didn't Come Back novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: The Cloth Is Laid

Thalia's POV

I opened the storeroom behind the church hall at six o'clock with my brother's key.

The door stuck, the way it had stuck every August since I was a child, and I put my shoulder to it.

Inside it smelled of starch and candle wax.

The white cloths lay in long tissue-wrapped rolls on the shelves.

I took down the longest one and carried it out into the light in both arms.

Nikos was waiting at the bottom of the church steps.

He had shaved, and he wore a borrowed dark suit that hung off his shoulders.

He took the other end of the cloth without a word, and we walked it down the boulevard between us.

I had told him not to look at me.

He didn't.

He looked at his feet and at the cloth, and when we reached the docks he knelt to smooth the corners.

I saw his hands shake.

By noon the whole of Tarpon Springs was there.

The boats along the sponge dock had been hung with flags and strings of bulbs.

The women had brought trays down the boulevard on their heads and in their arms.

Lamb on spits.

Spanakopita in sheet pans.

Plates of baklava as tall as a child.

The priest in his gold vestments blessed the bread at the head of the table, and hundreds of voices sang the hymn to the Mother of God.

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