Cheek against the glass, I stare at the glimmering coast. Avery doesn’t like oranges, and was thus spared from The Staphening. Had, in fact, no idea it even occurred: she went to bed early, jet-lagged, and woke up to a decimated wedding party. I’m glad she’s healthy, but when she makes Conor laugh with a joke on cash flow management, I decide to sing a sea chantey in my head and block them out. By the time we reach the Greek theater, however, my excitement is bubbling up again. I’ve seen some Roman ruins in the UK, but this might be the oldest piece of architecture I’ll ever step into, and I’m fully ready to be spirited away in a time travel–type situation.

It’s Conor who buys our entrance tickets. Avery stands next to him as he hands a few bills to a bored-looking boy in a booth that looks on the verge of catching fire. When they come back with a few paper slips, she’s chuckling.

“Everything okay?” I ask. My eyes find Conor, who’s not laughing. He is, in fact, inscrutable.

“The guy over there was trying to figure out the total, and…did you hear the word he used?”

“Nope.”

“Figlia.”

“And it means…?”

“ ‘Daughter.’ He pointed at you and asked if our daughter was older than eighteen?” She shakes her head, still laughing, but I turn to meet Conor’s gaze.

There is a challenge in his eyes, a hint of I told you so. After all, he’s always had the burning need to remind me that our age difference was an insurmountable obstacle to my presence in his life. “He sure did,” Conor drawls slowly, and I know that he wants to make a big deal out of this. A teachable moment.

So I flash him my cheekiest smile. “I hope you lied to him and saved those five euros, Daddy.” I step into him, pretending not to notice the thick swallow in his throat, the way his entire body seems to cease to function. Still holding his eyes, I pluck one of the three tickets from his fingers and slowly walk toward the entrance gate.

“I bet this happens all the time,” Avery tells me while we make our way down the steep tribunes. The staircase is treacherous, and the steps narrow. “With you and Eli, I mean. People assuming he’s your dad?”

“Sometimes,” I say, to get the conversation over with. Truth is, whenever it does happen Eli loves to play into it, pretend that I am his daughter, embarrass me with dad jokes.

But my brother and Conor are fundamentally different. Eli feels young, with his boyish, openhearted, carefree energy. Conor, less so, and it has little to do with graying hair, and everything to do with the half a dozen walls twining around him at any given time.

“How old are you, Maya?” she asks.

“Twenty-three.”

“Nobody likes you when you’re twenty-three,” she says, and Conor snorts out a laugh.