When the Cypress Whispers Read Free

main city of Corfu, as they pointed out special places to Evie.
    “You see that tiny little green island out there in the water?” Daphne asked as she pointed out the window.
    “Yes, I see it,” Evie answered.
    “That’s Pontikonisi.”
    “ What does that mean?”
    Popi interrupted. “Cousin, I know she’s not fluent, but don’t tell me she doesn’t know any Greek?” She took her eyes off the road just long enough to look at her cousin.
    Daphne ignored Popi’s question and answered Evie’s instead.
    “ It means Mouse Island in Greek, honey. You see that long white path that leads to the old monastery? People say that path looks like a mouse’s tail.”
    Daphne laughed, remembering how as a young girl she thought the island’s name meant that it was home to giant mice. But as a teenager, she had been delighted to learn that instead it was where Odysseus had been shipwrecked in The Odyssey . She had loved visiting the island, walking its ancient paths, daydreaming under its majestic cypress trees—wondering if they would finally whisper their secrets to her. But the cypress whispers, like the story of Odysseus’s travels, proved to be nothing more than another island legend.
    “And over there, that is my café.” Popi pointed to a sprawling outdoor café located along the water’s edge where she had worked as a waitress for the past ten years. The tables were packed with tourists and locals. “Evie, you will come, and I will serve you the biggest and best ice cream in all of Corfu. It will be as large as your head and topped with not one but two sparklers for you.”
    “Really, as big as my head?” Evie touched her hands to the side of her head to measure just how big this special ice cream would be.
    “If not bigger.” Popi laughed as she glanced at Evie in the rearview mirror.
    “Is that a castle up there?” Evie bounced in her seat, pointing up at Corfu’s old fort on top of its craggy gray peninsula.
    “Yes, it is our Frourio,” Popi answered. “It was built many, many years ago to protect our island from pirates.”
    “Pirates!” Evie shouted, her long dark lashes fluttering. “Are there pirates here?”
    “No, there are no more pirates, Evie mou ,” Popi told her. “But a long, long time ago my mama told me that if you walk through the Frourio at night, sometimes you can hear the ghosts.”
    Daphne coughed in an effort to get her cousin to stop, but it was no use. Popi continued with her story.
    “She said that sometimes you can hear souls crying for mercy, begging for their lives. Even little children crying out for their mothers.”
    Evie whimpered.
    “Evie, honey, those are just silly old island stories,” Daphne said. “Don’t worry.” She was already concerned that jet lag would keep Evie awake all hours. And now, thanks to Popi’s eagerness to tell ghost stories, she’d probably have nightmares to contend with as well.
    Daphne had never told Popi about the nightmares that had haunted Evie’s sleep these past few years. How could she, a single woman, understand what it was like to comfort a frightened child each night? How could she understand the loneliness of having no one to nudge awake and murmur, “It’s your turn to go to her”? Daphne had longed for someone to share her bed and keep Evie’s as well as her own nightmares at bay. For the longest time, when she heard Evie’s nightly cries, she’d reach her arm across the bed, but she felt only emptiness and the faintest dip in the mattress where Alex used to sleep.
    It still didn’t seem real—one night Alex and Daphne had been standing side by side, holding hands over their daughter’s bassinet, and the next, he was gone. Taken too soon. Daphne found herself alone, wondering how she would ever survive, how she would ever raise Evie without him. But she had managed somehow. The past few years had been so lonely and difficult. But that was then. She was getting married now. She would soon become Mrs. Stephen