A Boutique Relocation Service

TW: Holocaust

I stood by the farmhouse entrance and watched a lace curtain flutter past the second-floor window.

I didn’t have time to wonder who was parting the curtains. Yanis had already arrived, moving with a speed uncharacteristic of someone his size. He held out his right hand, a heavy ring of keys dangling from a single index finger, keeping his arm fully extended and the keys as far from his body as possible.

“Già sou, Eva.” Yanis’s face lit up.

He was thrilled to see me, mostly because my presence meant he could stop touching the keys. I smiled back. His eyes didn’t share the kindness of his face. Yanis was a shrewd Pelion real estate agent with decades of experience, but this listing had completely broken his peace of mind. Before I could blink, he turned and retreated toward a slick white Mercedes.

The un-Greek lack of hospitality suited me just fine.

That was the first rule my late Bobe drilled into me when she showed me the trade: Never chat with the locals, and never explain the logistics of a post-mortem relocation. Bobe ran the business from her grave, co-managing it with her next-grave neighbor, Miriam Silverman. She always said that, to the living, we’re just a boutique estate clearance service, so the living neighbors don’t ask questions. To the dead left behind, we’re the only licensed movers keeping them from getting trapped when a deed changes hands.

I grabbed my gear from the car. The suitcase was empty. It was a cheap, fluorescent plastic thing I bought online. In a tourist village on Mount Pelion, a woman dragging a heavy black trunk looks suspicious. A woman wheeling a neon-pink suitcase looks like a clueless influencer hunting for the nearest beach bar.

The kitchen was spotless. The house was a traditional, century-old stone house typical of Mount Pelion. In the center rose a large, crudely crafted wooden table, scrubbed down to the grain. Logs were stacked evenly in the open hearth, ready for a fire. A braided loaf of white bread sat under a clean linen cloth on the counter. It looked exactly like a Friday night setup, minus the wine.

Anna’s evacuation had to happen tonight. The immaculate kitchen bothered me—either Anna was a compulsive cleaner, or someone else had been helping her play house since 1943. Either way, I didn’t have time to solve her housekeeping mysteries. Tomorrow morning, the new owners arrive. If Anna hears German in these hallways, she will freeze and fuse straight into the floor panels. Then I’ll never get her out, and the listing will fail.

Anna isn’t an eighty-year-old woman. She’s seventeen, and if she’s still here when that rental car pulls in, this Boutique Relocation turns into a public haunting, and I lose the job.

I went upstairs. The rooms were small, and the paint was flaking and peeling. My coworkers, Manos and Stavros, had done a flawless job of emptying the second floor in accordance with protocol.

A mangy grey tabby was observing me from the left corner. How did he get inside? He was a complete physical wreck—missing an eye and half his fur—but he sat there with the absolute majesty of a royal court.

He watched me carefully, waiting to see if I knew my place. I checked the windows—all tightly closed.

The cat didn’t blink, decided I wasn’t a friend, and lost interest. He trotted down the stairs like he owned the place. Most cats think they are the kings of the earth; this one clearly was.

I wasn’t sure if he was alive or dead, but when he snuck into the pantry, I followed.

Before I could cross the threshold, the front door popped open. Heavy footsteps sounded on the concrete and stone floors. With no time to reach the pantry, I crawled under the massive kitchen table like a terrified toddler, hoping to blend into the shade.

Naturally, my phone chose that exact second to beep.

It was Sarula—her fifth call since I arrived at the farmhouse.

“Eva, what’s going on there?” she growled.

“I was following a cat, but now I’m under a table, my knees are locking up, and there’s a man in the kitchen who will probably kill me if I move,” I said softly.

“Eva, is the man dead or alive?”

“Hang on, Saru. Allow me to crawl out and ask him for a selfie so you can verify.”

“Anna?” the man called out, ignoring my whisper. “It’s Petros. Ti kanis, koritsi? We have a visitor, so stay hidden if you prefer.”

Petros stared directly at my fluorescent pink suitcase. He wore faded wool clothes and carried an old bolt-action rifle slung carelessly over his shoulder.

“Kyria,” Petros said, pointing the barrel loosely at my luggage. “Are you with the Nazis?” Are you here to stay?

I crawled out from under the table, attempting a level of dignity my joints couldn’t support. “I am Eva. I’m not with the enemy. I’m with the Boutique Relocation Service.”

“I am Petros Kilaidis,” he said proudly, squaring his shoulders and leaning against the clean wooden counter. “An andartis with the ELAS partisans up here in the peaks. We don’t just blow up fascist supply trucks. If a Jewish family needs to vanish off the coast of Volos, my unit holds the compass.”

Right. Riddle solved. Petros was definitely a ghost, and he had been guarding this kitchen since the winter of 1943.

I needed a breath of fresh air to think, but first I had to clear the roadblock.

“Listen carefully, Synagonisti Kilaidis,” I said, hoisting the pink suitcase with absolute authority. “You think you’re the only one here on official business? I am a regional inspector from the Secretariat of the Mountain Government. My orders come straight from the central committee in Viniani.”

Petros froze.

“Your unit’s job was to hold the perimeter, Kilaidis,” I snapped, pointing to the spotless table. “My operative unit has been contracted for the special clearance of this property before the sector is compromised tomorrow morning. We are clearing the estate. This listing is closed. Stand down, keep the exterior secure while I finish my inspection. Clear?”

Petros flattened himself against the stone wall, pulling his rifle tight to his chest to give me a wide, respectful berth.

“Understood, Synagonistria Inspector. Forgive me. The kitchen is clean. Long live the Resistance.”

I didn’t want to drag the pink suitcase around the block, but I couldn’t leave it behind either. Petros was still eyeing it like it contained an enemy radio transmitter. If I left him alone with it, he’d probably shoot a hole through the plastic before I made it to the corner.

So I wheeled my neon-pink cargo out the front door into the cool air, the little plastic wheels rattling loudly against the stone path.

The village air was sharp and cold, smelling of smoldering wood and the sea a few miles below. It was the kind of heavy quiet that makes your own footsteps sound too loud. There wasn’t a single soul on the street, only a pack of ragged village stray cats falling into formation behind me, tracking the pink suitcase from the dark.

And then, listening to the measured rhythmic clack-clack-clack of the suitcase wheels on the brick road, the answer meowed inside my head.

I called Sarula.

“Sarula, the cat, is also moving to Larissa.”

Sarula shrieked so loud I had to pull the phone away from my ear. I could picture her waving her hands wildly in her living room. “No! Absolutely not! I saw a photo of that thing. It’s sick, it’s missing an eye, and it’s alive, Eva!”

“Fine,” I said, leaning against a stone wall. “Then Petros is moving to Larissa instead. He has a rifle and still thinks it’s 1943. He’ll love the kitchen and the guest room.”

A long, heavy silence stretched over the line. “Bring the stupid cat,” Sarula hung up without a goodbye.

I stood on the cold brick road, the stray cats watching me from the dark.

Moving Anna to Larissa was Sarula’s decision. The property sat in what used to be the old Jewish quarter, a neighborhood where literally no one was left after the 1943 transports to Auschwitz. Every other century-old building around it had either been demolished or left to rot, but Sarula’s family had spent eighty years fighting the city to keep this one standing.

I went back inside. The kitchen was empty. There was no sign of Petros under the massive table or by the cold hearth, which suited me just fine. Real partisans didn’t hang out indoors anyway; they held the perimeter. Through the small kitchen window, I could hear the faint, rhythmic crunch of gravel out in the courtyard, right where the driveway met the main road. Petros was out there in the dark, still pacing the line, waiting for a supply truck that was never going to show up.

The one-eyed cat blocked my path to the pantry. I pushed past it anyway. Below the pantry floor, floorboards strained under the weight of a hidden human. It was now or never.

“Anna,” I called down to the floor. “It’s Friday night. Sabbato. The bread is on the kitchen table. Did you light the candles yet?”

The wood groaned slightly as someone shifted weight directly under the iron latch, but the bolt didn’t move.

“I know,” I said, checking the time on my phone. “It’s past sunset. I’ll do it.”

Nobody believed in God in my childhood home—growing up around the living ghosts of the Holocaust tends to ruin the mystique of the afterlife—but specialized professional logistics require flexibility. I found two half-burned candles on a clean pantry shelf, fished a lighter from my pocket, and lit them.

I cleared my throat and read the blessing text straight off the lit screen.

“Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha-olam, asher kid-de-sha-nu be-mitz-vo-tav, ve-tzi-va-nu le-had-lik ner shel Shabbat.”

The trapdoor opened. A young, beautiful, dark-haired, and hazel-eyed young woman slowly entered the pantry, holding the satisfied-looking cat against her chest. “Amen,” she said, and nodded.

“We’re going to Larissa, Anna,” I said, keeping my voice flat and professional. “To Marcel’s house. Your niece’s granddaughter runs the place now. It’s clean, and it is ready for you.”

Anna flinched at the name Marcel, then gave a single, tight nod. The eighty-year freeze finally broke. Anna was here, and the moment was fixed in place.

I picked up the pink suitcase—now packed with the few old silver candlesticks and linens my crew had left behind as anchors—and nodded toward the door, because once Anna was fixed in place, my job was done.

I carried the pink neon plastic trunk out to my car, buckled it carefully into the passenger seat, and got behind the wheel. I started the engine and looked back into the empty rear seat.

“Let’s go,” I said. “Tell his majesty to stop scratching the back seats.”