The Clover House by Henriette Lazaridis Power Page A

get home to lunch and shade, but they were incapable of breaking free. She was their eldest sister, after all, and they always followed her—even when they walked ahead.
    By the time they reached the house, Thalia could bear it no longer and bounded up the front steps. She yanked one of the doors so wide open that it banged against the house, and Clio heard a cry from inside—Irini, the cook, yelling at her again. Clio arrived on the top step and stood in the doorway for a moment, exhaling and easing her shoulders back. She pulled the door shut behind her. Thalia, Sophia, and Nestor were long gone, their leather book bags in a heap in the foyer.
    Clio looked up at the atrium window, noting the direction of the shaft of light that marked the black-and-white foyer floor like a sundial. It was pointing to her left, toward the study door: early afternoon. She could hear faint sounds of clanging pot lids coming from the kitchen at the back of the house. Straight ahead of her, on the other side of the atrium, the open doors to the dining room revealed the long table already set with china and silver for lunch. A newspaper rattled in the study, and her mother said something softly, to which her father murmured a reply. Nestor burst out of the back hall, crossed the atrium, and ran up the wide stairs to the landing and the inner balcony that ringed the airy space. He went into his room, where she could hear him opening and closing his dresser drawers.
    Clio turned to face the large mirror that leaned against the foyer wall in a frame of dark carved wood. She set her book bag down and nudged it away with her foot as she adopted a pose: left hip cocked, weight on the left foot, right foot slid outwardwith the toe pointed to the side. She moved a hand to her hip and gave her reflection a hard stare, chin out like Garbo, with the same slight waves in her shoulder-length hair. She brought her face close to the glass and raised one eyebrow, letting her lips form a tiny, mocking smile. With her face this close to the mirror’s surface, she could forget about her school uniform with its cobalt-blue pinafore over a crisp white shirt. She could picture herself in that Citroën, wearing stockings and heels instead of the white ankle socks that peeked out of her brown T-strap sandals. With her face this close, all she could see was the olive skin of a young girl whose high cheekbones and straight nose were about to make her beautiful.
    She drew back from the mirror and saw Sophia and Thalia standing behind her, pulling faces. She wheeled around.
    “Hey!” she cried, and the other two fell into smothered laughter. They staggered off, giggling and thrusting their hips from side to side. It was fine for them to tease, but at fourteen and twelve they were children still, Sophia’s braids tight and long and Thalia’s curls only faintly controlled with a ribbon headband. They had no idea yet what it would mean to be grown up.
    Clio gave her book bag a kick and wandered over to the square of light coming down from the atrium.
    She turned her closed eyes up into the sun, thinking of what to do until her parents or Irini called her for lunch. She didn’t want lunch. The food would be heavy and rich, and there would be too much of it. Two main courses to choose from, then cooked vegetables like
fassolakia
or a
gratinée
, and then fruit and possibly even dessert. She wanted something else.
    “No!” Irini shouted as soon as Clio pushed through the kitchen door. “No, go right back out, young lady. The food will be out when it’s ready.”
    Clio opened a cupboard and drew out a jar full of
vanilia
, a sticky vanilla mastic.
    “I’ll be gone in a minute,” she said, reaching for a glass and filling it with water from a pitcher she took from the refrigerator.
    “You’re ruining your appetite,” Irini said.
    “Irini, nothing could make me skip a meal that you had cooked.”
    She dug a spoonful of mastic out of the jar and dunked the spoon