Morgan, however, had other plans.
“I’m parked outside,” he said when I answered his morning call.
I glanced at my watch. “It’s only eight o’clock.”
“We’re going for a drive,” was his calm reply, followed by a chuckle that caused my toes to curl. “To the mission. To see Margarita’s grave.”
🗲🗲🗲
I’d never gotten around to telling him about her or the voices. I’d been afraid to. Because I loved him. And that gave him the power to hurt me. As Cliff had hurt me. It also gave him the power to block my path, now that I was finally free.
We paused in front of the pepper tree that marked Margarita’s grave, and Morgan fixed his intense green eyes on mine. “Talk to me.”
I hesitated, surprised anew at the force of his gaze, the way it cut through my heart like a green diamond. “I’m going home for two weeks to sort things out.”
Morgan showed no surprise. “And?”
“I’m going to have a long talk with my mother.”
“Glad to hear that.”
“And share my journal with Dr. Mendez.”
Morgan turned his attention to the gnarled and burled tree, his gaze following its up-stretched branches into the marshmallow-clouded sky.
“After that, I’m heading for Big Sur,” I said.
He stiffened. “So, your search isn’t over?”
“Not yet.” My voice caught on these two simple words as if I were presenting a eulogy at my own funeral. I wanted desperately to allow him to shield me and protect me, but he couldn’t shield me from the voices, and he couldn’t protect me from myself.
He touched my cheek with fingers that trembled. “Ben told me about Margarita.”
I started to lift my hands and then let them drop. “I should’ve been the one to tell you about her, but I was always too mad . . . and afraid.”
“You’re hearing another voice as well?”
My cheeks burned. “Yes, Antonia, my birth mother.” I took a breath that sounded like a gasp for air. “I never got around to telling you about her, either.”
“No. But it explains a lot. Like why you consulted Dr. Mendez and why you came to Carmel Valley. Pretty scary, huh?”
“When I first started hearing Antonia’s voice, I’d never been so scared in my life, except maybe in the cave with the rifle pointed at my chest.”
Morgan winced, and I hurried on, in an attempt to keep a swell of grief from stealing my voice. “I need more time, Morgan. I don’t know if Antonia will continue to talk to me, but, regardless, I have more discoveries to make.”
“Such as?”
“I need to know what Antonia wants. I think she needs me.”
He cradled my face with his calloused hands and looked so deeply into my eyes it felt as if he were entering my mind. “And?”
“I need to discover who I am and what I can give.”
He passed his thumbs over my wet cheeks. “Do you need to be alone for that?”
My heart fisted, anticipating the giving, and receiving, of an unrecoverable punch. There was no way I could avoid hurting him, although he was the one I loved above all. “Hopefully, not for long.”
“When you disappeared a few days ago,” Morgan said. “I realized that by trying to protect you, I’d been trying to control you, which almost led to disaster.” He dropped his hands to my shoulders and bowed his head.
“I’m not asking you to change,” I said.
He chuckled low in his throat. “You’d give me up in a heartbeat before you’d give up your freedom.”
“No,” I said. “At least I’ve learned that much. To be entirely free, I’d have to stay single all my life, which isn’t an option. I want to marry and have a family. With you.”
For a few seconds, Morgan said nothing. He swallowed, looked up at the sky, and closed his eyes. “You’ve accomplished so much here,” he said finally, his eyes moist.
I should have pulled him into my arms to show him that I, too, was capable of deep love and demonstrating it, but I knew this opportunity to talk might not come again, at least not for a while. “I’ve been a catalyst, true. I’d have to be blind not to see that, but all I did was walk into situations. Things happened, and I reacted. I have to do my part, too.”
“Which sometimes means being acted upon,” Morgan said. “And giving in to a higher power.”
I broke contact with Morgan’s gaze and concentrated instead on bulky clouds floating across the heavens. “You mean submit?”
“In order to receive.”
“I think I already did that while alone in the forest and again while trapped in the cave. What a paradox, Morgan. I had to surrender in order to be free.”
“Hard to swallow, isn’t it?” Morgan said. “Realizing that we’re not always in control.”
“It’s humbling and scary,” I admitted.
He pressed his forehead to mine. “So, Big Sur beckons.”
Dear God, how could I make him understand? “Hopefully in the land of my mother’s people, I can close the door on what caused me pain and disappointment and move on.”
“Cliff?” he asked.
“Not Cliff as much as what he did to me. If I don’t learn to trust again, we don’t stand a chance. But that’s not all. I need to learn to say no to what hurts me, so I can say yes to love. I crave security, but something inside still needs to be born.”
“I’d love to see you dance and hear you sing,” Morgan said. “I’d love to watch you heal.”
I pulled back in surprise, looked him straight in the eye.
“But, I know, you’re not ready,” he said. “You don’t want to be courted but to be understood, and I love you exactly as you are.”
“You don’t know how much I want to believe that.”
“Maybe this’ll help.” Morgan touched his lips to mine.
Shivers of delight stunned me into submission. But not for long. I opened my mouth and spoke to him in the new language I’d learned since coming to Carmel Valley: the language of love, the non-possessive kind, the kind that heals, that soothes, that comforts—the kind that sets one free.
And Morgan understood every word.
He kissed the corner of my mouth, my cheek, my forehead, and stroked my back. “You’ve just told me all I needed to know.”
A ripple of cool, cypress-scented air whispered past us, and we both shivered.
This is only the beginning, the Voice said.
Morgan’s head jerked up.
“Morgan?”
He stood completely still, and I waited. Whatever he had experienced, he would need time to absorb it. I, of all people, should know. He lowered his eyes to mine, and in doing so, tears spilled down his bronzed cheeks. When I touched his face, he drew in a ragged breath and shook his head, as if unsure of how to proceed. “I just received a message too strong to ignore. That you love me and will come back to me and that all is well.” He buried his face in my hair, and I thought I heard a sob. “Joshua and I will wait for you as long as it takes.”
A gust of wind swooshed through the pepper tree, and sunrays streamed through the spaces between the branches to illuminate the ivy over Margarita’s grave. Morgan whistled softly. “The world of the invisible surrounds us.”
“And I hope we never lose our connection to it,” I said. “I pray that we don’t.”
“Someday, my love, we’ll have to settle somewhere in-between.”
“Yes,” I said. “Between the visible and the invisible, between the ordinary and the sacred, between will and surrender.”