Chapter
Nine
Asilver convertible BMW is waiting when Logan leads me out of the plane.
At first, nothing registers. Not when Logan inputs an address into the navigational system. Not when we leave the airport behind. It is hot, and the wind in my hair is soothing.
Nothing on the drive away from the airport registers as familiar.
But then, after what feels like an eternity, something flickers inside me. Like a lightbulb being screwed into a lamp whose switch has been turned on, so that the bulb flickers to life, dies, flickers again. The sea is to our left. The beach, separated from the road by a wide swath of dune grass. To our right, white condo buildings, three and four stories high, screened in by palm trees and bushes. This is what causes the flicker, the dim gleam. The sky is wide and endless and blue, dotted and hazed with clouds. There are people on the beach, families and couples and singles. A cyclist, a group of them. Someone running on the side of the road.
I know this place.
I have been here.
I have driven down this exact road. I have seen this condo before, that hillock of dune grass–covered sand leading down to the azure rippling waves of the Mediterranean. I do not remember, not precisely. I just...feelit. In my bones and my blood and my soul, I feel it. It is not painful, as I expect it to be.
It is . . . soothing.
Comforting.
I have never felt at home, before, but the sea, the sun, the sand... it feels familiar.
Logan pulls off the main road onto a smaller side street, which in turn leads to a narrow avenue wreathed in shadows cast by a bower of tall trees. A few meters down this avenue, and then into a driveway leading to a condo building. There is a keypad; Logan consults his phone, taps in a few numbers; a gate trundles aside, admitting us.
Reception, Logan speaking in halting, uncertain Spanish. Mangling it.“There is a holding for one rooms, please, under name of rider.”
The receptionist, a woman puts on a strained smile, attempting to decipher what he’s saying.
Without thinking, I cut in, speak the first words in many, many hours. In Spanish.“We have a reservation, I believe. Under Ryder, R-Y-D-E-R.”
Logan stares at me, stunned. “You speak Spanish?”
“Apparently.” I duck my head. “I figured it out with Caleb. He said something, telling me a story about how we met, one of his lies, or maybe the truth, I don’t know. He said something in Spanish, I could understand it. He said something else, and I understood that too.”
“So just now, I was—”
“Making rather a mess of it, yes.” I try to smile, to lessen the sting of the insult.
He just laughs. “Yeah, well, I used to speak it sort of fluently, but that was twenty years ago, and it was street-level Spanish—Spanglish more than anything. Enough to know when I was being insulted by my Hispanic buddies and insult them back.”
“Much different than what is spoken here, I presume.”
“Yeah, I’d guess.”
The receptionist has our keys, speaking to me now, runs a spiel about incidental charges and room service and the elevator, hands me the key. I realize, as Logan carries the suitcase and leads the way to the elevator, that the receptionist was speaking rapidly, and that I followed her effortlessly, without even realizing she was speaking Spanish. How is that possible? I didn’t even know I knew it until very recently. It has been six years, at least, but I am perfectly fluent.
The human mind is a strange and mysterious thing, I think.
Logan swipes the key card, shoves open the door. The room is bright, sunlight coming from outside, through the sliding glass door. Evening light, golden-crimson sun settling into the sea.
I move as if in a dream to the door, slide it open. Step out on the balcony.
Waves crash.
A seagull haws.
Chatter, in Spanish:Mama, Mama! I made a sand castle, come look!—No,mijo, it’s not time for supper yet, you just had a snack—She was talking about her cousin, who went on holiday to Greece last winter, and met a much older man. She’s still seeing him, I hear...
