Lights on the Far Horizon Trilogy

by Stone, Sailor

  What to do now? There was nothing he could do so he made for a nearby rock and sat down on it to wait for her to finish her swim. He tugged at his board shorts in desperation.

  22

  Kinsey Starts New

  Kinsey left the hotel eager for the coming day. It was the first time she remembered being excited about the future in many months, about being alive, about having purpose and starting her day with a smile and high expectations.

  Since Sammy was going in to town to shop for his own outfit, Kinsey had texted him before she left the hotel and asked him to pick out several outfits for her to pick from for their upcoming dinner party on Dmitri’s yacht and Sammy was more than happy to oblige her request. She gave him her sizes and added that any accessories that he could find for her outfits would be much appreciated as well. He texted her a happy face in response.

  With her night’s wardrobe now taken care of, Kinsey got to the task of healing her spirit and igniting the passion to make beautiful art that had been sleeping dormant for so long within her. She packed her camera into her carryall bag and then, on a whim, added her new thong bikini that Jessica had packed in her suitcase for her along with some suntan oil and a towel to the bag. She called down from her hotel room to the pool bar and had them pack her a lunch and then, after picking up the lunch and getting a scooter and helmet from the hotel staff, she began her day’s adventure.

  Kinsey left the hotel and soon found herself lost. Every winding road she took somehow came back to itself and so when the opportunity came to pull over at a small grocery store and go inside and get directions she did so without hesitation.

  She made sure to remember the route to her destination given to her by the owner of the store and she went on her way.

  The directions were easy to follow and accurate.

  She pulled into the church, a beautiful small stone chapel with a white roof, and removed her helmet and stepped inside the sanctuary. There was a church schedule posted and she read it.

  What she hoped would be available to her, she discovered, wouldn’t happen for another day. She could come back then but she needed, at this moment at least, to be back inside a church – in God’s house.

  The air inside was cool, and, like all places in Bermuda, the church was decorated in many beautiful colors. The centerpiece was a cedar altar that looked to be handcrafted.

  Kinsey was alone and so she went to the Holy Water and crossed herself with it and entered the church and sat in a pew. She knelt and prayed, for how long she had no idea. When she came back to herself she saw that a priest was coming down the aisle toward her and she smiled.

  “How are you?” he asked, as she stood to meet him.

  He was of a kindness that Kinsey immediately leaned into and she answered, “I’m okay. I’d like to be better but I’m finally on the right path. At least I think I am.”

  “How about we talk about it? We can go into the confessional or I can take you to lunch. It’s up to you.”

  “The church schedule says confession is tomorrow. I can come back, Father.”

  “I made that schedule. I can change it anytime I want. I’m the sheriff in this little sanctuary so to speak.”

  He began to laugh and to Kinsey his soft chuckles sounded like an invitation to say yes. Moments later she found herself in the confessional being absolved of her sins.

  Her penance was simply to keep getting well. When the gentle priest told her that what she’d done to her family and friends while suffering from an acute depression wasn’t something she could help and that her now wanting to right her transgressions with them was more than he, as a priest, would ever ask of her; she felt like a thousand and one stones were lifted from her back.

  Afterward, she began to cry and each tear seemed to bring two more until she found herself blathering on the shoulder of the kind priest whose name she did not know.

  After some time she was able to gather herself and she asked his name.

  “I’m Father Tim.”

  “Why did you come into the church just now?” she asked.

  Father Tim smiled and said, “I’d love to tell you that I was told by God to be sure and be in the church today at a certain time, but to be truthful, I saw your hotel scooter out front and I enjoy meeting people. I came in to meet someone new. I’m so glad I did.”

  Kinsey wiped one last tear away from her face and nodded, “I am too. I feel so clean inside. There was a darkness within me that I hope is gone now.”

  Father Tim nodded, “Let go of the guilt, that’s where the darkness comes from. It’s okay to feel bad about your past actions but let go of the guilt. Go get right with your family.”

  “I will, Father.”

  “And one more thing.”

  “Yes, Father?”

  “If you ever come back to Bermuda, look me up and let’s me and your family go get some dinner.”

  Kinsey beamed, “I will, Father. You’d love my husband and my babies, my twins. I so will make that happen. I promise.”

  Kinsey went out to her scooter and made to leave. All the foliage around the church seemed to be new and brimming with life and Kinsey wanted to begin taking pictures again. She reached into her bag and took out her camera. The sun was high in the sky above the stone white church. Kinsey pointed her lens to the steeple and the sun behind it and took a photo. With the click of the camera, Kinsey could likewise almost hear the click of her artistry as it unlocked the door to her heart and took up residence within it again.

  She left the church with ocean, beach, sky, rocks, definitely rocks, sand, waves and seawater – things of the great creation – keying on her mind. Here was a new beginning and any art that came from it had to have a big dose of the primal elements on full display.

  She pulled onto the road with hopes of a finding a deserted beach. As she left the church she looked back in her rear view mirror and saw a man stepping from the garden on the other side of the road from the church. He crossed the road and entered the church. She was looking at him in her rear view mirror and so details were hard to see but she could tell he was a handsome man. He reminded her of Tanner and the thought of seeing Tanner made her heart skip a beat. She pulled down on the throttle and the scooter sped her faster down the road.

  She found a perfect beach. From the road, looking down to it, she could see that it was deserted and surrounded by cliff rocks that glistened dark and wet in the afternoon sun. Great for pictures she thought. The water was a light blue color with pockets of bright green and the sand on the beach glowed brilliant and white.

  She’d sun, take a swim, eat lunch and get some good photos. The world looked new to Kinsey and Bermuda was like a garden surrounded by sea, waiting for her to pick its fruit.

  She parked her scooter, grabbed her bag and began the trek down the path to the beach. When she made it to the white sands and had spread out her towel she was reminded of how she felt when she took her photo that was the basis for her favorite painting, The Naked Sunset. It was the painting that she’d given to Tanner on the night that they met and had become the map, so to speak, that led to their reunion four years later.

  She applied suntan oil to her body and then she looked around, and seeing no one in sight, she removed her top. Being topless, in nothing but a thong, made her feel like she did on the evening in Charleston when, years before, she had stepped onto her balcony and bared herself to the world and God, all for the sake of her art and for her future, as then yet unknown, husband.

  Kinsey had just bared herself to God in the confessional at the church and now she wished, no dreamed, in truth, desperately needed, to bare herself to Tanner – to the husband that she loved beyond her comprehension. She missed him and knew that she had to go make things right for him. She’d start by helping Sammy and Justin, and with that being the case, she knew she had to make sure and leave this beach completely healed.

  After her afternoon on the beach she’d head back to the hotel and get ready for the coming di
nner party on the Naked Seducer, Dmitri’s fine and exquisite yacht. After that, she’d call Tanner and beg him to let her come to him and make things right between them.

  She laid out in the sun on her stomach for a few minutes then rose to go for a swim. She wondered if anyone could see her topless but she decided she didn’t care if they did, and, without looking around her, she walked in the rays of the warm sun to the edge of the sea.

  23

  Sting

  Tanner, uncomfortable and sitting on a rock, watched his wife, Kinsey, as she walked topless toward the water and thought back to all that they had gone through since the twins were born.

  It had been an easy pregnancy, at least that’s what the doctors had told them, considering she was carrying twins, and the delivery of Bark and Jessie had been joyous with both of their new additions coming into the world healthy and with heads full of hair.

  Watching Kinsey learn to breast feed two new babies took Tanner’s heart to another place, a higher realm, where the mysteries of life and love came at him and overpowered and humbled him to the point that he told his good friend, Father Ron, that he expected his life could never get better than it did as he watched his baby boy and baby girl feed at his wife’s breasts.

  Tanner looked out to sea and watched as his all but naked wife dove under the curl of a white crashing wave, her beautiful legs just making it under the falling wall of water.

  How prophetic his words had been, as only weeks later, Kinsey’s hormones became violently disrupted and she began to fall into a deep and black depression.

  Their lives went from heaven to hell and Tanner was at a loss as to what was happening to his good and kind wife.

  He sought help for her and over and over her doctor’s told her that she would get better.

  Eventually.

  Eventually seemed to be taking its sweet time getting to her and as Kinsey became darker, withdrawn and angrier by the day, Tanner found that he was being overwhelmed by work, being a good father and trying to be a good husband to a wife who wished he’d just go away.

  He felt himself getting angry and he and Father Ron had many long conversations about his role as a patient and loving husband.

  Tanner was having a hard time being that husband and when she cut off the sex he was sure that if Kinsey didn’t begin to turn around soon and begin to get better that he would say something to her that he’d always regret. But he held in there. With a lot of prayer, spiritual help from Father Ron, best-friend help from Dale and Jessica, and little hugs from Bark and Jessie, Tanner knew he could make it to the end of Kinsey’s post-partum depression and always be there for her.

  Then she struck him.

  Physically, he didn’t feel it. Emotionally, he was devastated. The true love of his life had struck him and he felt himself going spiritually into a place that he didn’t know existed. He only told Father Ron about it but Jessica and Dale knew something had changed for Tanner and Kinsey and that it wasn’t for the better.

  Jessica, in a desperate show of hope, came to him one evening at his house when he was with the twins and Kinsey was staying (as usual) late at her gallery and she handed him a beer and said, “Let’s talk.”

  He opened the beer, took a big swallow, then another, and nodded to her.

  “It scares me to say this but I’m afraid you and Kinsey might lose each other if you don’t do something soon.”

  Tanner took another swallow and said, “I could start drinking all the time. That might help.” He held up the can of beer.

  “That’s not funny. At least not now. I think she’s hurting you.”

  “She’s not hurting me.” Tanner remembered answering, “I’m not saying she didn’t hurt me recently but at the moment she’s not hurting me.”

  Jessica took a long look at Tanner. “I can tell by your answers that you’ve about had enough of her. I think you need to wake her up to what she’s doing to you – to both you and your marriage to one another.”

  “I wish it were that easy, Jess. I’d wake her up, as you say, in a skinny second. I’m tired of this hell we’re living in, this bullshit marriage where she’s taken to hitting me…” Tanner, for a second, wished he hadn’t revealed their dark secret, but when he felt Jessica’s arms going around him in an enormous hug he broke down onto her.

  Then later, after he’d shared with her both his emotional exhaustion and the story about how she’d struck him in a fit of dark anger that wasn’t even about something that was concerning them and their marriage but was, in fact, work related to her art gallery, Jessica suggested a plan of action that might help to bring Kinsey around to herself and her family.

  Tanner came back into the moment and took another look to his wife as she began to swim up the coast of the beach. He wasn’t certain, but deep in his heart, he felt like Jessica’s plan had been a good one and with each passing day his hope grew that Kinsey, the happy and beautiful woman that he’d married a few short years before, was coming out of her dark place.

  He’d already been here, waiting in Bermuda, when Kinsey arrived and he’d been following her and sliding notes under her hotel door telling her how beautiful she was and how much he wanted to meet her, and, as the days had gone on, he’d noticed something about her: She’d began to smile. This was no small thing. He hadn’t seen Kinsey smile for almost six months and to see her dazzling pearly whites gave him cause to celebrate.

  So in celebration he’d ordered a beer in the bar where she and her new friends had been drinking and eating, after they’d all left for the night, and he was drinking it on the outside terrace when she came back into the bar for her purse.

  He’d watched in amazement when the large blond Russian man had come to her and began to hit on her as she was having a drink. That she responded to him had caused Tanner no small alarm.

  Then, after she had left the bar again, he asked the bartender about the blond man and the bartender’s answer made it all come together for Tanner. When the bartender told him just how powerful and dangerous a man the Russian was, Tanner became worried and revealed to the bartender that he was Kinsey’s husband.

  After Tanner convinced the bartender of his good intentions for Kinsey the bartender came clean and told him what she was trying to do for her new friend, Justin.

  “You need to watch her. I’d never trust a man like Dmitri Rublev with my wife for even a second,” he added.

  “You’re right,” Tanner answered, “I don’t trust him, but I trust Kinsey and I think I know why she is doing that for her new friend. I think it reminds her of what we went through before we were married. She wants to help bring two people together. I get it and I respect her and trust her enough to let her go on that man’s yacht.”

  “You might be a better man than I’ll ever be.” said the bartender, “I doubt I’d let my wife do that.”

  “It doesn’t mean I won’t be close by; ready to come to her aid.”

  “I’d be real close if I were you.”

  Tanner nodded in agreement.

  Still sitting on the rock on the beach, deep in his thinking, not seeing the world around him, Tanner came back to himself when he heard the sound of a woman’s voice calling out in distress. He looked around but saw no one on the beach. Then he heard the cry again and intuited that it was coming from the ocean. It sounded like a woman in the deepest of pain and agony and he was already running toward the water as he realized it was his wife doing the screaming.

  Kinsey’s dive into the ocean was as cathartic for her as were the moments, years before, at the age of twenty-one, when she had stepped naked onto the balcony of her bedroom in Charleston and posed for her photo. Now, the water was cool and clean and she could see the sand and rocks on the bottom of the ocean below her as she swam. She dove under the waves as they crashed to shore and she swam free and primal, like what her ancestors must have done thousands of years before. Her heart beat against her chest as she swam up the coast and then she put her feet down to the floor of
the sea for a rest before she turned and swam back to her towel on the beach.

  She bobbed up and down with the waves, her feet touching sand and smooth rock on the bottom. A large wave came, sending her feet high from the bottom as she was floated over the swell and then it rolled past her and she dropped her feet to touch bottom again and she heard herself screaming before she even knew she was in pain. And then the pain overcame her and she feared she’d lost her foot, perhaps her leg. To what? A shark? Barracuda?

  She pulled her foot up to her hands while being well aware that she was screaming as loud as her voice was able to – there was nothing within her that could stop the screams from happening. The pain was overwhelming, like a spike being nailed through her foot, and she looked to the shore and feared she wouldn’t be able to make it in to dry land.

  She regretted finding such a desolate beach and wished there were people to call out to but she knew she’d have to save herself with no help from anyone.

  She was forced under water as a large wave crashed on top of her. She was pushed violently down to the bottom and her head hit a rock. She tried to hold on to her air but she felt it leaving her lungs as the wave plowed her along the rocky bottom and then things went dark.

  Tanner could see Kinsey just ahead of him in the water. She was screaming, her face purple with fear and pain, and Tanner was sure she was being attacked by a shark. Perhaps a Portuguese man o’war, he almost hoped it was a man o’war, but he doubted she’d be screaming so from its sting. She sounded like she was dying and then he dove under a wave in his race to her and when he came up she was no longer screaming and she wasn’t in sight either. He felt like the cold steel of a sword was piercing his heart as he realized she was under water and not coming back up to the surface. He planted his feet to the bottom and jumped up as high as he could from the water and looked around. No sign of her. A wave came and he had to dive under it less it push him back to shore and when he dove under it he felt, just for the briefest of moments and the slightest of sensations, the light touch of wet human skin against the side of his leg. He came up from the water and looked behind him just in time to see the limp body of Kinsey rolling toward the shore in the tumult of the crashing wave.