In Oia, we rented an apartment that turned out to be less than advertised. It was supposed to have a view of the caldera, and it did, if you leaned out over the edge of the roof. The rest of the panorama was blocked by a grocery store with a second-floor restaurant. From our bedroom, we could see tourists enjoying the view we had been promised.

I was cranky about that, but Mimi had been undeterred. “It’s not a big deal,” she said. “If we want to see the caldera, all we have to do is walk along the main street.”

We toured Oia. We wandered the main street, stopped at the shops, ate at small restaurants recommended in the guidebook. We walked the three hundred steps down to Ammoudi, dodging tourists mounted on mules and stepping around piles of mule shit. We caught the bus to Fira and hiked the trail along the edge of the volcano.

“Athens won’t be as touristy,” Mimi promised. “We’ll check on Uncle Leroy and the Wild West show, and then we’ll go up to Kymi and look for your grandfather.”

We weren’t going to find my grandfather. He had died when I was three. I only knew him through the stories my mother told.

The time I tried to follow him up the ladder.

The day I put on my cowboy hat and robbed him at gunpoint.

The afternoon I sat with him in the garden and ate tomatoes right off the vine.

“Maybe you’ll find a great aunt,” said Mimi. “Or a cousin once removed.”

“He left Kymi in the early 1900s. We’re not going to find anyone who remembers him.”

And even if we did find relatives, what was I going to do? They would be strangers. Family is not just about blood. We wouldn’t have any stories to share. We wouldn’t have any memories to polish. We would have a single individual in common, loose change in a pocket, and nothing more.

“Are you excited about going to Kymi?”

“It’s a fool’s errand.”

“And we’re just the fools to do it.”

THE WOMAN SEATED ACROSS from us is wearing a light wool suit, windowpane plaid, the lapels too wide to be current, a faint smell of moth balls floating on the fabric, something she’s had in the closet or a trunk for a while.

I wonder if Mimi notices these sorts of things.

I decide to call her Olga. She’s middle-aged. Her skin is clear, her hair neat, her teeth straight. A fastidious person.