Chapter 9 - The Coast of Remembering
The cottage in Del Mar sat on a small ridge overlooking the Pacific, its white clapboard siding weathered to a soft, salt-gray color by the ocean wind. The garden was wild, filled with overgrown lavender and white roses that had climbed over the wooden fence until the gate wouldn't close properly.
Dominic stood on the porch, his dark navy suit gone, replaced by a simple black linen shirt and trousers that looked entirely out of place against the bright California sun. He looked out over the water, his hands in his pockets, his ears filled with the rhythmic, ancient sound of the surf breaking against the rocks below.
Sophia was down in the sand, her pink boots discarded on the porch steps, her small bare feet sinking into the white drifts as she chased a group of small sandpipers along the waterline. Hawk and Briggs were posted two hundred yards back on the highway, their black SUVs hidden behind a grove of eucalyptus trees, but here on the shore, the world felt completely empty of Chicago’s grime.
“She loved this view,” a voice said from behind him.
Dominic didn't turn around. He knew the voice. It belonged to Maria Vasquez, Elena’s older sister, who had arrived from Los Angeles an hour earlier to deliver the keys to the interior cabinets.
“Why didn't she call me, Maria?” Dominic asked, his eyes still on his daughter’s small silhouette against the blue ocean. “When the doctors told her it was terminal. Why did she wait until she was in the ground?”
Maria walked up to the railing, her face lined with the same dark, intense beauty that Elena had possessed, but her eyes were tired, filled with the quiet resignation of a woman who had spent her life watching the people she loved break against the rocks.
“Because she knew you would come with thirty cars and a team of specialists from Chicago, Dominic,” Maria said softly. “She knew you would turn her final four months into a military campaign. She didn't want Sophia to remember her mother surrounded by heart monitors and security guards with guns under their jackets. She wanted the girl’s last memories of this house to be sun, salt, and cookies.”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small, silver key. She laid it on the wooden railing between them.
“The cabinet in her bedroom has the journals she kept while she was pregnant,” Maria added. “She wrote to you every day for nine months, Dominic. She never mailed them because she said you were too busy surviving to learn how to live. But she wanted you to have them when you were ready to stop guarding the empty tower.”
Dominic picked up the key. It was light, cool, and carried the faint scent of lavender that still lingered inside the cottage. He looked down at the beach, where Sophia had stopped running.
The little girl was standing by the edge of the water, looking out toward the horizon where the sun was beginning to drop into the sea in a great, golden splash of amber and purple. She held her stuffed rabbit by the arm, her small shoulders straight, her chin lifted in that exact, unyielding posture she had used when she walked into his lobby six months ago.
May you like
“She looks like you when she’s thinking,” Maria murmured.
“No,” Dominic said, his voice dropping into a whisper that was swallowed by the ocean wind. “She looks like her mother. She’s not afraid of the stars.”
