In Between Frames by Judy Lin Page A

approves, of course.”
     
    “Of course.”
     
    “She didn’t like you as much as she liked Stephan at first, you know,” Sam said.  
     
    Miles laughed.   “I’m not surprised.   I’m not exactly an exciting character.”
     
    “But you understand her so well.”
     
    He made a small bow on his way to the sink with their bowls. “Like I said, three little sisters.   What about you?” he asked.   “Wait, let me guess—you were an only child.”
     
    Sam laughed.   “Yes—“
     
    There was a knock and the door swung open before Sam had time to get up from the table.   At first, she thought he was a delivery man, but then she remembered that nothing was ever delivered in the mornings, and these days, with the new rounds of austerity protests, it was a miracle that anything was ever delivered, at all.   He was as large an imposing as a bear, standing in the door with his arms folded across his chest, his face florid under his mustache .   She hadn’t seen Stephan’s father since the second time she went to his store, and his name was slow to come to her.   “Jon,” she gasped, at last.   “What are you doing down here?”
     
    “Where is Stephan?” he asked.  
     
    “I don’t know,” she said.  
     
    “Don’t lie—“  
     
    He stopped when he noticed Miles at the sink, washing their breakfast dishes.   Miles waved and smiled, which annoyed him, but then she remembered that he didn’t know very much about Stephan, only that Stephan believed that they had a connection.   “So, is true,” Jon Ionides said, after a long and ominous silence.   “You are whore.”
     
    Sam sighed.   “I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head,” she said.   “And I never, ever, promised anything to your son other than money and dinner.”
     
    He waved aside the flurry of words—he probably couldn’t understand her, she realized.   It didn’t make her feel any more inclined to help him find his son, though.   “You break his heart, ruin him for good, woman,” Jon said.   “Now he run away.”
     
    Sam glanced at Miles, wondering what he was making of this.   “I never said I loved him,” she said.   “I never gave him any…”   She could see he wasn’t listening, not to her words.   There was nothing she could say that would change his mind—he was, as she remembered Stephan telling her, terribly old-fashioned and didn’t approve of her at all.   It was almost comical, really, the irony of it all—neither she nor Jon wanted Stephan to date her, and yet here he was, calling her a whore because she wasn’t sleeping with his son.   “What makes you think he’s here, Mr. Ionides ?” she asked.
     
    “He said he come see you.”
     
    “I was with Miles all night,” she said, gesturing towards him.   Miles was watching the exchange, his eyes not missing a single errant blink.   “I can assure you that Stephan did not come around.”
     
    “He said he come here!” Jon insisted.
     
    “Maybe he lied,” she said.  
     
    “He no lie!   He’s a good boy!”
     
    “Maybe,” Miles said, the calm in his voice cutting through the rising tempers, “he changed his mind.”  
     
    Jon stared at Miles, and Sam could see him working through the complicated emotional calculus to respond appropriately:   this was the man the woman his son loved had chosen to bed, so how civilly to respond was a delicate balance of how much he despised her and how much he loved his son.   “No,” he said, finally.   “Is not like Stephan.”
     
    Miles looked at Sam.   “Mister—“
     
    “— Ionides ,” Sam supplied.
     
    “Mister Ionides ,” Miles said.   “Your son is a strong man, who will fight for what’s his.”
     
    “Yes, is true.”
     
    “What makes you think I’d still be alive, if he came around?”
     
    Jon considered that.   Finally, he relented—his face relaxed, and so did Sam, now that she was certain that he wasn’t going to hurt her.