Chapter 75
Chapter 75
D espite the fact that Gunner and I had enjoyed our lazy afternoon in the Count’s hidden cove along the craggy coastline, I could feel the tug. It was time to go home. I scheduled the plane for later that evening. Putting me back in Colorado sometime tomorrow. Dinner with my family. S’mores around the fire on Main Street. The thought prompted a question I could not answer: Was I headed back to the return of the life I had once known, or the beginning of one yet to be born? I didn’t know. Regardless, I knew something, and someones, awaited me. And I missed them. I missed them a lot. As the sun began to drop behind the cliff, casting long shadows along the beach, I freed our moor line and was about to crank the engine when I spotted a small S-shaped canal of sorts leading out of the protected side of the cove. Maybe fifteen feet wide, it looked to have been carved out of the rock by an ancient river that no longer flowed. Smooth walls reaching some sixty feet in the air. A cliff diver’s dream.
We poked our nose into the beginning of the S-turn and marveled at the water and sea life below us. Bells sounded somewhere in the distance. Beautiful. Signifying something undefined but signifying it nonetheless. Making the last turn, we spotted a private beach. Less than eighty yards in length. A true private beach. On one side sat a worn and ancient stone bench. Hundreds of years in the wearing. Long ago caves had been cut into the base of the rock. Whether they were homes at one time or just someplace to get out of the sun I knew not, but given the soot marring the walls, they’d been here a long time. Across the beach, a single set of footsteps imprinted the sand. Some in the water. Some not. Once a meandering figure eight, now a faint half of a three. I studied this place. How it felt so far from my life. What I wouldn’t give to set up two chairs and watch the sun rise and fall over Summer’s shoulder as she fussed over sandcastles and nonexistent cellulite and stared up at me from beneath that ginormous straw hat that flopped around and swallowed her beautiful face. Also carved into the stone wall were stairs, zigzagging to the top of the cliff some seventy feet above us. Other than the bells, I knew not what waited there.
When I glanced up for the first time, I lifted my eyes toward the rock cliffs above me and found a setting sun, trees growing out of the rocky crags high above, and dozens of large white birds circling in the updrafts. Eden on earth. That’s when it caught my eye. The glisten. The reflection. A single pole, spiraling up and out of the trees along the cliff. At first I confused it with an antenna, but then I saw the rope. Adding to my confusion. What surprised me was the illusion. The rock wall closest to me actually sat twenty feet out from the actual outer cliff wall, providing a natural hidden cove inside a hidden cove. In directional terms, we had exited the bay through an S-turn into a larger cove, turned left into the private cove with the stone bench, then turned left again where I spotted the mast . The optical illusion had been created by the trees that had grown out of the false wall and reached across to the actual wall.
I hopped out of the boat and walked the beach in shin-deep water, craning my neck, Gunner at my heels. Reaching the far end of the beach, a walk of about thirty yards, I was able to peer behind the lesser of the two rock walls. The distance between the two might have been twenty feet, but the natural cave made the perfect berth for a sailboat. Which was exactly what I found. And if I had to guess, I’d say she was about forty-two feet long.
Moored to several stainless anchor bolts drilled into the rock, as if that were her home and had been for a very long time, the Nun Taken sat quietly, water lapping her light blue hull. Oddly, I sat there staring at her hull like a monkey admiring a Rubik’s Cube. Just behind me and standing on the water’s edge, Gunner perked his ears and jerked his head as if he’d been shot with electricity. Before I could say, “No,” Gunner bounced and hit the stairs at a dead run. In three seconds he was topside and out of sight.
The only thing that would make him disappear like that was a girlfriend he could smell but had yet to meet. I grabbed a shirt and began climbing the steps, trying to figure out how to apologize in Spanish for the fact that my dog just had an unsanctioned date with someone else’s. Never an easy conversation.
My legs were burning when I reached the top of the stairway to heaven. Staring down at the more than one hundred steps I’d just ascended, it hit me that someone really had to love sailing to make that trip. Trying to find my dog before someone shot him, I was met by a world I’d not expected. Meticulously manicured landscape, a sprawling lawn made up of the type of grass used on golf courses, hundreds of roses in bloom, a grape orchard along a hillside, all of which was stretched out below a massive stone building that looked to be a thousand years old. Surrounded by smaller outbuildings. Castle and fortress might be one description. Cathedral might be another. Atop sat a bell tower. Whatever it was had been here a minute, and I doubted seriously these people received many guests. I had a strong sensation I needed to find Gunner and get gone and do so quickly.
Too late. Behind me, I heard a female voice ask, “May I help you, sir?”
I don’t know what I expected, but as with everything else here, when I turned I was met by another surprise. She was midfifties. Tall. Slender. Crazy beautiful. Bronzed Spanish skin. Jet-black hair. A pair of pruning shears in one hand. Couple of roses in the other. None of which was unusual. But what was unusual was her dress. While most folks I’d seen in the last day or so were wearing skimpy bathing suits or no suit at all, she was wearing a habit. As in, she was a nun.
Which might explain Nun Taken . Which meant I was now trespassing in a convent. I wanted to crawl under a rock.
I stammered, “I’m so sorry. I lost my dog.” I began illustrating with hand signals. “’Bout this tall. Dirty yellow. Goes by the name Gunner. Was once obedient. Now, not so much.” I wanted to say something about him being rather uncontrollably attracted to females in heat but figured it might be wise to skip that part.
She laughed and waved me on.