Chapter Ten

Remy burst out laughing. Of course it was eighteen forty-six. What else would make sense? It made more sense than a theme wedding gone too far. Her giggles dissolved into full-blown hyperventilation. Bieito, not caring who saw, gathered Remy up in his arms and clutched her to him.

From a very faraway place, Remy heard Bieito order his father to fetch Remy something cool to drink. Then, he resumed murmuring sweet Spanish endearments into her ear, begging her to breathe and to tell him what was wrong.

Remy gasped for air, both her mind and body betraying her at the same time. She couldn’t get control of her lungs or the thoughts careening around as her brain tried to make sense of it all. As with Bieito’s cottage, when Remy tried too hard to analyze the village and any confusing events, her thoughts refused to connect. It was like trying to read Shakespeare while drunk. No matter how many times she went over the facts in her head, they slipped through the cracks like sand. It was futile to try and hold onto any sort of logic.

But she was determined to figure it out this time. And by focusing totally on her mental state, she released her physical body completely and let herself fall limp against Bieito, eyes unfocused. With her attention less divided, this strategy seemed to work, and allowed her to put all of her energy into figuring out what was happening to her.

I’ve apparently gone back in time. This is also not the first time. Either that, or I’ve completely lost my mind, this is a psychotic break, and none of these people are here. It is all just a figment of my imagination.

Remy decided she would much rather it be the first choice than the second, even as impossible as time travel might be.

Oh God, I might be stuck here forever. I haven’t had any control over when I come and go here, past and present. It just always sort of…happens. When I’m upset or feeling strongly about something. Does that influence on how and when I get back here? Have I ever done this before, somewhere else?

Plenty of weird things had happened to Remy, but she was firm in her belief that she had never time traveled before. What was the catalyst?

The village. It only happens when I’m alone in my village. Well, that didn’t bode well for her “it’s not a psychotic break” theory.

But why here, and now? Why this time? The village had been around for hundreds of years, yet brought Remy here to this particular snapshot in time. What was so important about these wonderful people? Her experiences had only gotten more powerful and sustained the longer she resided in her new property. What began as a chance meeting with Bieito on the beach for an hour had lengthened each time Remy had been “brought back.” Her fears and doubts had been soothed by time, wine, and company as the past drew her away from her everyday concerns. The longer she was back in the past, the less important her life in the present seemed. It was harder to remember small details about her normal life while she experienced the village in full glory.

Now that she was more attuned to her strange reality, Remy became aware of an underlying pull on her emotions. It was the same yearning that she ached to fulfill when she threw caution to the wind and bought the village. Something had been manipulating her. The choices Remy had been making since coming to Ortigueira had not been entirely her own.

A shiver went up her spine, and Remy’s thoughts were cut off by a blinding migraine that made her cry out in pain. White lights flashed behind her eyelids and she couldn’t feel her limbs anymore. Cool darkness washed over and released her from agony.

****

When Remy came to, she was buckled in to the front seat of a car. I don’t own a car. She blinked and squinted through the windshield, trying to discern where she was parked. The clock on the dashboard glowed, informing her that it was close to midnight.

I’m in the middle of the square. At the village. This is Anita’s rental car. Details started to come back to her, but they didn’t explain why she would have no memory of driving the car into her home. I thought I parked at the top of the drive?

Remy unbuckled her seat belt and opened the door, a musical dinging reminding her to remove the keys as well before getting out of the vehicle.

Why am I here? she wondered, looking around. It felt wrong. The square looked wrong. What was missing? Lights. There should be lights. And food. And a gazebo over here…

Remy gasped as it all came pouring back. The wedding was just here. It should still be here. The memories of Bieito were sharp, clearer than her previous encounters with him. The ghost of his embrace still wrapped around her arms, protecting her against the night’s chill. One minute she had been with him, and the next she was here. He had told her that it was eighteen forty-six. I went back in time.

But there had been something else, something important that she had been thinking about before the fairy tale night had been ripped away from her. It had been so hard to realize, she remembered that much. It was an epiphany within a dream, one she couldn’t remember when she woke up.

However, she felt grounded in the certainty that whatever she had experienced, it was real. Bieito was real, he just wasn’t here. Well, he was, in a sense, but not in this time. They were connected through the village. The village had brought them together.

A sense of deep loss and emptiness hit her, but she couldn’t determine if it was coming from within her or some external force. A tear rolled down her cheek, and it was accompanied by a scattering of raindrops falling from the sky. The village was crying with her.

Do you see? it seemed to say to her. Do you see how lonely it is?

Instead of relief at not being stuck in the past, Remy only thought, I need to go back. How do I get back?

Remy was being torn in two. Her current plans of an art school and trying to resurrect her career just didn’t seem as important any longer. The present only held a bitter ex-husband, an angry ex-best friend, an embarrassing career slump, and hemorrhaging finances. The only thing she loved about her current situation was the village.

Maybe the past is the real future for me. Maybe a simple, happy life was all that she needed. Her escape. The village was either her Miracle of Santiago, or her undoing, unraveling her mental state beyond repair.

Exhaustion dropped over her, and she needed to sleep before doing any more theorizing. Without thinking twice, Remy turned and headed for the cottage. Home. Dark red skirts swirled around her ankles, the soft swishing the only sound that accompanied Remy as she made her way down the empty path. Wherever she had been pulled from—eighteen forty-six or some parallel universe of it—would still be celebrating the wedding in full swing.

Experimentally, Remy kicked up her feet just like she had when dancing with Bieito and danced her way to the cabin door. She pulled the handle, and a note on the door caught her eye. For a wild moment, she thought maybe Bieito had found a way to reach her. However, she felt more than foolish as she read the note, followed by a deeper sense of guilt.

Remy,

I have tried calling you many times over the last few days. Maggie informed me that you left her apartment three days ago and she has not heard from you since, either. We do not know what has happened to you. The police have been unable to find your rental car, but your friend Anita told us not to file a missing person’s report yet. She said you have a tendency to disappear, and that we should wait for you to contact us when you are ready. But please, please call me or Maggie when you have returned.

Your friend,

Sebastian

Remy hated to think she had put Sebastian or Maggie through any sort of ordeal. She reread the note and wondered how she could excuse her behavior. It had been selfish of her to make them worry…Wait, did he say a few days? How was that even possible? Remy had woken up at Maggie’s apartment that morning and driven back from Madrid to Ortigueira. Though it was the middle of the night, Remy was certain she had only been gone in the “other” time for a few hours.

She recalled how Anita yelled at her for disappearing for an extra day. She assumed she had lost time because of the alcohol, but there was no way she had disappeared for three days. Each time she went back to the “other” village, she lost crucial periods in her real life. As her trips got longer and the more time she spent away from the present, it was progressively more difficult for her to adjust.

There is always a cost, Remy reminded herself. It worked that way with wishes, why not with time travel? Am I aging faster here now? There were so many technical questions running through her head she needed a sci-fi geek to explain things to her. I need to move away from the ‘how’ and focus on the ‘why’.

But, before she could even begin to tackle that, she needed to call Sebastian and tell him that she was alive. Shit, I don’t have my purse or my phone, Remy realized. Everything was up in the car, which seemed miles away at the moment. I’ll call him in the morning. It’s too late now anyway, Remy thought, as she clutched Sebastian’s note and walked inside. At least my sleeping bag is still here.

As her eyes drifted closed, she suddenly remembered the drawing plans she had made with Maggie were still in the rental car, too, and it was almost enough to motivate her to get up. All of her dreams for the village, laid out on paper. The surrounding bare walls called to her to fix them and promised new life inside the cottage. She still had a lot of work to do in the present, and maybe she wasn’t quite ready to give it all up to live in the past just yet.

Please let me wake up in my own time, she thought, on top of her sleeping bag, still fully clothed. I need to sort out my mess on this end. I owe it to my friends, and I can’t afford to lose any more time.

If Jack and Anita still weren’t speaking to her, then that was probably for the best. She wouldn’t have to explain herself or her random disappearances, which was a relief. Instead, Remy just had to come up with a way to apologize to Sebastian and Maggie. It was very disconcerting being yanked back and forth, but at least she knew for certain that the present was real. She hoped.

Lying there, she missed Bieito with a starving longing.

She couldn’t control or even anticipate what was happening in the past, or if she would ever find her way back there.

Could I have both? If Remy could figure out a way to control her travel, could she have everything she ever wanted? The village and the career in the present, but the love and acceptance she found in the past? Was it even possible?

She had never been able to reconcile her family dreams with her career aspirations, but what if it was because the two were never meant to coexist in the same time? The strangeness of the village, its removal from the laws of time and space, might just be the very miracle that she was waiting for from the Camino de Santiago.

Remy’s heart lurched in her chest as it filled with hope, before the negative side weighed in. What if I can’t control it? That would be even worse. Her life would be split in two, at the whim of forces outside of her control. She would be forced to live a half-life, unable to be secure in either of her realities.

The only factor she could be sure of was that the village had to remain the central part of this equation. Her fate and her life were inextricably tied to it now. The village would never be abandoned again.

Mind spinning with so many scenarios, Remy’s thoughts kept circling back around to Bieito. If I dream about him, will that take me back? The temptation to test it out was overwhelming, but the persistent urge to do the right thing and talk to Sebastian and Maggie first was still on Remy’s mind. If it worked, great, then she could go back to Bieito, but there were no guarantees when she might make it back into her own time again.

I can’t sleep yet. I can’t risk it. Not until I can control these time hops. Shaking off her fatigue, Remy got up and left the cottage.

I need something more to ground me to the present, she realized. Crumbling buildings and far-off dreams of reconstruction were not enough, the pull to be back with Bieito was too strong. If there was nothing for her to pull her back to the present, how would she go back and forth?

Fire and determination raced through her veins as she paced the streets of her village, seeing it both as it was and how it should be. The urgent need to do something great and impact the village at that very moment overpowered her, and a familiar itching started behind her eyes.

Remy stopped in her tracks, letting her eyes glaze over as she waited for the flash of inspiration that was about to pop into her mind. It was almost like preparing to sneeze. Think about it too hard, and the urge goes away, but the itching doesn’t stop. A very unsatisfactory result. The best thing to do was to wait quietly for the inspiration to take over on its own.

Don’t over think it. It had been so long—forever, it felt like—since Remy had felt the itch. Her sketch in the sand with Bieito was child’s play compared to the drowning visions that used to inspire her artwork back in New York. The tickle that teased her mind was so close to surfacing, and Remy could already tell that the picture would be the accumulation of patiently waiting for months for her skill to come back.

A minute passed, and then two, as Remy paced the dirt path outside the cottage. When her feet did an abrupt ninety-degree turn and started walking toward the main house, she didn’t fight it. Her arms swung free of their own accord, feet almost dancing as they had with Bieito just hours ago—or was it days? Remy’s mind floated free from her body as she released the iron grip of control.

Remy had missed this feeling with a painful ache. A deep exhaustion from trying to be rigidly in control all the time melted off her shoulders and she realized how much it affected her day to day happiness. She hadn’t been truly happy since she had painted her last collection. Sure, there were fleeting moments here and there, in the village and with Bieito and her friends, but there was something singular and special about the moments she spent with a brush in her hand, the real world closed off by canvas as she created her own.

Light as a feather, Remy climbed the front porch stairs to the main house and found the tool she was looking for—a can of black spray paint, used weeks ago to mark the other possibly dangerous areas inside.

Remy always used color, no matter how dark the theme of her paintings. She also only ever used acrylic paints that she mixed herself. The can in her hand, cold and industrial, was an artistic medium she had never considered before.

Its weight in her hand felt right, filled with the color of shadows, paint that appeared and disappeared in the blink of an eye, activated by the lightest touch of a finger. The tool of degenerates and rebels, gang bangers marking territory, or sending a message. However, spray paint had also launched the enigma that was Banksy, forcing people to see his perspective of the world in a way that everyone could connect with.

No, spray paint was not Remy’s typical choice for a painting, but neither was the side of a building. In a bold jump from canvas to one hundred-year-old walls, Remy decided to make her mark. The piece would have to be big and meaningful enough in order to pull her back here, a symbol of past and present merged. A metaphorical gateway.

She considered all of the possible walls for her mural and settled on the wall at the back of the main house. The one outside, underneath the window where she saw Bieito standing on the street before the wedding. There were some crumbling parts, but as a whole, the main part of the structure was smooth and intact.

As she raised her hand to start, Remy hesitated. It was one thing to be able to return to her art, it was quite another to return in such a large and new way. But the longer she stared at her life-size canvas, the greater the itching behind her eyes became, until her eyes watered in protest. The image was there, in her brain, and she just needed to let go of self-doubt and press her finger down.

The soft shhhhh of the can in the silent night made her fumble it in surprise. It was hard to see the black paint in the dark, but Remy could see the results clearly in her mind. She was painting blind, but her fingers and hand knew what to do, so she let herself go.

With bold strokes, she passed over large swaths of the wall, never letting go of the picture she held in her mind. She was painting the shadows, learning to create figures and emotions using the empty space that emerged from them. It was backward to what she usually did. She was looking to reveal the life using the shadows, not using the colors as a way to force life into her work.

Remy worked the balance from the other end, discovering a side of herself she hadn’t known she was capable of reaching. She had never approached her art, or life, from the side of the darkness before. Hours passed, and as pink light tinged the horizon, Remy finally started to slow down.

When the sun hit the wall with a golden glow, she stepped back and shook herself from her fog. With a sob, Remy dropped her now-empty can onto the ground.

Two figures, neither male nor female, intertwined in a connected embrace. They appeared to be floating, either in the air or under water. They spiraled around each other, no end and no beginning, locked in place, one not being able to exist without the other. All brought to life in the negative of the shadows.

Who are these people? Remy had created them from the deepest and most intimate part of herself, but she had no idea. For an instant, she pictured having to explain the piece at an auction or come up with a title for a gallery display. Something that would get the people talking and speculating, all while Anita buzzed around the party and added kindling to the fire.

No, she didn’t have to worry about any of that. For the first time in a long time, she could let the piece just be what it was, a snapshot into her psyche at that given time. Something beautiful that didn’t need to be analyzed or sold. It was just for Remy, and she was proud of it. There was no paint left in the can even for her to sign the bottom corner of it. It was hers, but she didn’t need to take credit for it.

She almost laughed when she thought about Sebastian or Anita or Maggie stumbling upon it. Would they know it was her, or would they think some vandal had trespassed on the village while she was gone?

No, Maggie would know that I did it. I was here, and okay. The older woman would connect instantly with the artwork. The mural was the first truly meaningful way that Remy had tried to make the village in this time period her own. A part of her soul was now up on the walls for all to see, that she could belong in both this time and the past. It was the first real step to taking control of her situation.

Now, should I test it out? There were a million things that Remy should be doing, including reassuring her friends that she was not, in fact, a missing person, but it was still early, and the urge was too strong. I know what’s happening to me now, she reasoned. I can get back to this time. I know I can. I just want to check on Bieito and the family. They are probably really worried about me right now, too. I’ll just pop in for a second, to see if it works, see if I really can control it.

Remy sat on the ground in front of her mural, took a deep breath, and closed her eyes. She thought hard about Bieito, the way his arms felt around her, his lips on her wrist, the joy she felt when his eyes lit up when she spoke.

Holding onto all the memories, she popped open her eyes and looked around expectantly. No change. She was still in front of the mural.

Panic set in almost immediately as her mind automatically jumped to the worst-case scenario. What if the wedding was all I got? What if I can never get back to him? Remy squeezed her eyes shut and tried again, but this time there were doubts infringing on her concentration.

When the mural appeared in front of her again, Remy realized what she was trying to do. I’m actively trying to go back in time. Ridiculous. She burst out in a half-laugh, half-sob and started to doubt Bieito’s actual existence. What am I doing here? As always, the dark option floated its temptation—you could wish for it.

In the harsh light of day, her decision to paint a mural as a portal through time seemed like a bad dream. “I need to get out of here,” she said aloud. But as soon as she said the words, dizziness overcame her and the earth lurched underneath, like a rug pulled out from under her butt. Remy fell over backward and looked up at the morning glow.

Then, like a miracle, Bieito’s concerned face appeared above her, perfectly framed by a cloudless blue, late-afternoon sky.

“Remy?” he said, and, throwing away all self-imposed inhibitions, took her face in between two callused hands, and leaned down.

It wasn’t a slow-motion, epic-music, movie-climax kind of kiss. It wasn’t the gentle, hesitant touch of a man brought up in a traditional society. There was nothing old-fashioned or demure about Bieito’s kiss, and it wasn’t at all what Remy had expected from him.

It was raw. Urgent. Filled with panic, but not at the thought of her possible rejection. More like he was afraid she was going to disappear any second. Bieito wasn’t taking any chances this time as his lips found hers, desperate to keep hold of her for as long as he could.

Remy’s lips parted as she molded her mouth to his, inviting him to go deeper. Bieito’s hands moved from her cheeks to the back of her head and neck, clutching her to him. Remy’s fingers found his hair, and she tangled them in his dark curls. Nothing was going to tear them apart this time. Bieito’s body crushed into hers, leaving no space between them.

Air didn’t matter, nothing mattered but the magic Bieito’s tongue was working in her mouth. Who cared if he was real or not? This was what pulled Remy across time and space. Him.

With a groan, Bieito pulled himself off Remy and sat up, face flushed. He stared at her through dark eyelashes, afraid to look away in case she vanished again, but also waiting to gauge her reaction.

“Why’d you stop?” Remy struggled to form words, drunk from the unexpected kiss.

“Where did you go?” Bieito asked, dodging the question but reaching out to help Remy sit up. His hands didn’t pull away even after her butt was firmly planted.

“How did I get to the beach?” That seemed like the more pressing question at the moment. Remy’s fancy red dress was completely covered in salty wet sand, her hair a caked mess. “Huh. I thought for sure I’d end up in the square again. But you’re here too! Why are you at the beach and not at the wedding?”

Bieito’s eyes narrowed with concern. “Mi amor, the wedding was a week ago. I have been searching for you since that night. I even feared that the revolutionaries—” Overcome, he leaned forward and locked his lips to hers once more, hard and fast. He released her and took a deep breath.

“My apologies. This is not proper.”

“Hey, I’m not complaining!” Remy said, and moved to pull his face back down, but the look in his eyes stopped her.

Their foreheads gently rested together, and he asked again, “Where did you go? You are making me crazy, Remy.”

“If you’re insane, then so am I. I don’t know what’s happening, either.”

“Promise me you will not leave like that again.”

Remy swallowed hard. “I can’t promise that. I’m sorry, but I can’t. But I don’t want to leave you, either. I-I don’t have control. I wish I did.”

“Just stay with me. All the time. Stay in my village, do not return to your home. I want us to be together.”

“I want to be with you all the time, too, Bieito. But I am—literally—torn between worlds right now. Can we just be thankful right now that I’m here with you? I’m so relieved I could make it back.” Short of telling Bieito the rest of the story, she changed the subject. “So, I lost a week, huh? Interesting.”

Now that Bieito knew Remy was safe, his worry turned to anger. “Interesting? I’ve been searching for days, in all the surrounding villages. The beaches. The port. I thought something terrible had happened to you.”

“I’ve been home, technically. Bieito, please don’t think too hard about it right now. I couldn’t explain, even if I wanted to. And I don’t know if you’d believe me.” True regret reflected in her eyes, and Bieito immediately softened.

“The tide is rising,” he said. “We will get wet soon.”

“Where do you suggest we go?” Remy asked, determined to live in the moment and appreciate the time they had together. Bieito wouldn’t be placated forever, but it bought Remy a little time to come up with some sort of explanation. “You know, I really should get out of this dirty dress.”

Bieito’s eyebrows shot up with surprise, and he let out a booming laugh. “Mi amor, you certainly have an American way about you, but with the passion of a Galician woman.”

“I think I can wear this a little longer, if you don’t think it will get too ruined.”

“I will take you home, and you can be comfortable,” Bieito insisted. “Though I am flattered to see that you like the dress so much you have continued to wear it.”

She didn’t want to go back to the village just yet, in case she got yanked out again to her own time. Part of her experiment, in addition to controlling her jumps, was to see if she could be in the past but remain outside of the village. To break out of the bubble and see more of Bieito’s world, to understand if it was just the village itself that held the power or if Remy had it within her.

“Let’s go to the port,” she said.

Bieito pulled back, horrified. “I should think not!”

“I want to see where you work.” And there seems to be a lot of interesting activity around there, but she didn’t say that part out loud.

“It is much too rough to bring you there. It is not safe.”

“Because of the revolutionaries?” Remy asked with wide, innocent eyes.

Bieito jumped at her words, and instinctively looked around. He lowered his voice to answer. “Yes, because of the revolutionaries. But we cannot speak of them.”

“Why?”

“The wrong people may be listening.”

“Bieito, you’re being paranoid! We are the only people on this beach. Please just explain to me what’s going on.”

He set his jaw and turned away. “There must be no suspicion turned on my family. You are putting me in a difficult place.”

Remy flushed red, seeing how scared and uncomfortable her causal questions were making him. “You know you can trust me, right?”

“Your life must be much different in America,” Bieito said, and looked like he wanted to continue, but stopped himself. Remy watched him struggle to find the right words and jumped in to interrupt him.

“You know what? Never mind. We don’t have to go to the port.”

Bieito bowed his head and wrung his hands, hating to disappoint her. It was starting to get awkward. Couldn’t they just go back to the kissing part?

“Ah!” Bieito said, brightening. “I know what we will do.” He offered his hand to Remy. “Come with me.”

Considering her dress a lost cause, Remy didn’t bother hiking up her hem. “Is it a surprise?” she asked, interlacing her fingers with Bieito’s callused ones. Not that walking hand in hand down the beach with a handsome Spanish man wasn’t a romance novel in itself, but Remy was hoping for a bit more action.

It had been a long time since Remy had felt this part of her come alive. A very long time since she and Jack had been intimate. Even longer since she hadn’t associated physical closeness with the stress of trying desperately for a baby. Once they decided not to try anymore, and attempted to separate sex from the heartbreaking devastation of either a miscarriage or another month of failure, they found that they couldn’t go back to the carefree early days.

Jack’s closeness, or attempt at physical connection, was just a sad reminder of an anxious time. It held no hope or fun, just tinged with a sadness that Remy knew they would never move past. That was why Jack had been so surprised the final time Remy seduced him, after making her fateful wish. When she came to him that night, there had also been a spark inside of her that he hadn’t seen in a long time. The spark of hope and fire that had been missing from their marriage.

He had given into her advances without protest, hardly willing to believe his good luck. He asked her afterward, as they lay on their bed without space between them for the first time in years, if they should go away together, and take another honeymoon. A rebirth of their marriage.

Remy, in order to placate him, had agreed noncommittally, but already her mind was spinning with the possibilities of what the next few months would bring instead. The line had been crossed that night. She had made her wish, and there was no going back. She wanted to confess at that moment, as her head rested on Jack’s shoulder, held up in his arms but weighed down by her decision. It hadn’t been on purpose. She hadn’t meant to give Jack that amount of hope for them, the assumption that the two of them could go back to normal, but she was unwilling to crush and bring him down to her level of desperation. For her, it was the exact moment where she betrayed herself, and everything fell apart.

So she said nothing, and that was the last time between them. Remy knew that they probably remembered it quite differently, given their difference in context. Maybe that was why he had had such a hard time letting go and signing the divorce papers, following her all the way to Spain because of a different interpretation of their last close memory together.

Seeing him in her village had put her into a tailspin, and the physical temptation to re-explore the familiar reared up, but Remy was grateful she had resisted. A rebirth wasn’t been possible with Jack, but she could start something new and pure with Bieito.

A cool breeze whipped across the bay and Remy shivered. Her feet and dress were covered in salt spray and wet sand. She was raw, exposed, and possessed nothing from her former life, not even the clothes on her back. Fresh and untainted by the past, she felt ready to try again.

The feeling of Bieito’s urgent kiss still tingled on her lips, and Remy risked a glance over at him. He gave her an easy, uncomplicated smile, eyes lit up in excitement for her surprise. Instead of feeling like a wanton, experienced woman approaching forty, Remy found herself as shy as a teenager, too nervous to make the first move. Deep down, was Remy afraid she would curse him like she had cursed Jack, and everything would blow up in her face the moment she decided to take that next step?

Being with Bieito wasn’t like dating in the twenty-first century. There was something about him that told her if she took the plunge, then there was no going back. She felt strongly for him, sure, and the thought of being without him or unable to get back to him made her panic, but was she really ready for a ‘forever’ type of thing? This was a different kind of line than the one she faced with Jack, but a line all the same, and Remy had to be certain this time before she crossed it. That would lead to a free-fall, and Remy still wanted to hang onto her control, even if she was clawing at it with her fingernails.

She had painted that mural in her own time for a reason. It wasn’t time yet to let go. But oh, how she wanted to. But the last time she had let herself do what she wanted without regard for consequence, her life had imploded. Walking this tightrope was exhausting.

“You are quiet, mi amor,” Bieito said, breaking Remy from her destructive thought cycle. “I hope I did not frighten you earlier.”

“It has just been an overwhelming last few hours,” Remy said.

“For me, it was an anxious few days,” Bieito admitted. “But now, I feel calm. You are by my side, so nothing will go wrong.”

If only you knew…Remy squeezed his hand and stepped closer to him, so her shoulder brushed his arm. “Will you tell me where we’re going?”

“Around the bend a little farther. I would like to share something with you.”

“Do you want me to guess?”

He chuckled. “You can try, but I think this is something new for you.”

New for me? Well, I think I can be certain he isn’t planning on seducing me, then. As they rounded the beach, a little sailboat sat upon the sand. It was tucked up a ways on the bank, out of reach of the tide, nestled in between some large boulders. A long rope ran from the bow, securing it to a scraggly tree poking out from the rocks.

Remy let go of Bieito and ran up to it. The wood was smooth, cared for and sanded by hand for years. The boat was small, but obviously loved. “Is this yours?” Remy asked. “Did you make this?”

Bieito ducked his head. “Yes, my brother and I made it years ago.”

“It’s beautiful!”

“I thought you would like it.”

“Do I get to ride in it?”

“If you would like.”

“I’ve been on row boats and skiffs before, but never on a sailboat. How do you make it work?”

He untied the bow line, moved it to the stern, and began digging a channel in the sand to drag the boat out to the water. “You have to listen to the water, and the air. You have to dance with both of them, and not be in a rush to get to a destination.”

That sounded pretty doable to Remy. In fact, it sounded like the perfect way to travel. “Did your father teach you how to sail?”

“He did. My mother loved to sail. They used to go out all the time together. It was the one activity my mother would put away all else for. If the winds were right, she would look at us and say, ‘No more work today. Go get your father. We are going to the boat.’”

“And you guys would take this out?”

“It was another boat. One my father made for my mother.”

“He didn’t help you make this one?”

“No. Sailing makes him miss her too much.” Bieito grasped the stern rope and began to tug the boat behind him down to the water.

“Did something happen?”

Bieito pulled the boat down to the white foam before he stood up to answer. “My mother was dying of an illness. It took her quickly, and she had mere hours left. My father, in his grief, took both her and the sailboat out to sea, intending not to live without her. The worst storm in fifty years struck the bay and capsized him. My father washed ashore, barely alive, but the boat and my mother’s body were gone. He regrets it to this day that he has no grave site to visit, and that his madness blinded him to his responsibilities to his children. So, he vowed never to go out on the water again. He is a fisherman still, at heart, but does his work dockside while my brother and I bring in the catch. He believes it to be his penance.”

“Bieito, I am so sorry. That must have been tragic for your whole family. I don’t know what to say.”

He shrugged. “It was a long time ago. We all handle grief differently. I am thankful that my brother was small when it happened, and he is not as weighed down by it as my father and I are.”

“But you still take to the water,” Remy noticed. “Do you feel close to Catarina here?”

“This is where I feel my mother’s spirit. I do not run from it; I embrace it. I think it was fitting that the waters took her body. It was where she was happiest. I do not mourn that she did not have a proper Christian burial, though I know that it deeply offends some. She is exactly where she belongs, and watches over me when I am out there.”

“I completely believe that,” Remy agreed. “And I think she would be happy to know that her son still finds such joy in the same thing that she did.”

Bieito busied himself with the boat once more, but Remy could tell that her statement touched him. She was grateful that Bieito had opened up, and the dynamic between him and his brother and father suddenly made all the more sense. The way Bieito took care of the two of them, why Lino had fallen in love and gotten married, but Bieito kept himself on the outside. He chose never to get too close, to watch over his family instead.

Wanting him to feel comfortable opening up to her some more, Remy decided to give Bieito something of herself in return. “I have not lost a parent, but I never fit into my family, and I don’t think they mourned me when I left, even though I might as well have died in their eyes. I almost lost my brother when I was young, and things were never the same after that. Moving away and actually doing something with my life was considered the ultimate betrayal. I can’t say I’ve been through what you’ve been through, but I have lost something precious to me. Precious somethings. Irreplaceable. And each loss took a part of my heart I can never get back. I admire you, Bieito, for how you’ve held everything together. You are a remarkable man.”

The sailboat was now in the water, and Bieito held the line so tight his knuckles were white. Remy saw him swallow hard, his throat bobbing with emotion. “No one else has ever been on this boat besides me and Lino,” he told her.

“I’m honored to be your first guest.”

He held out his hand to her, and Remy grabbed it like a lifeline. They stood knee deep in the freezing surf, the waves breaking around them but neither one feeling the cold. “I think the ocean brought you to me,” Bieito whispered, so low that Remy could barely catch his words.

“The ocean. Or the village. Or the Camino.” Bieito heaved Remy aboard, her wet skirts a heavy tangle around her legs. “Or maybe, a combination of all three. Because no matter what, we were meant to find each other.”