I will certainly have to face the music, or should I say cacophony, of my parents’ rift. I can’t imagine what it will be like to have them living in two different places and to have to take care of them, when I’m not so well off myself. It feels like a hand closing over my heart to think that something once so stable is now disintegrating, the same way John had been a stable and integral part of my life until Francesco and Billy had inadvertently shown me passion, and I’d faced up to the doubts that had haunted me. Nothing will ever be the same, but at least I’ve had a semblance of a normal family life for twenty-six years. And I have a collection of friends who round out my family and whom I will never let out of my grasp again.
Fear puts me to bed and wakes me up in the morning, but in between I smile a lot. I am alone, jobless and without a man. Yet I have myself, or at least more of myself than I’ve ever had before. I have found a piece of home within my own skin.
The only plan I have set in stone at this very moment is to enjoy this wine and cheese and this sunset beginning to burn a rust-red. I might spend the night by myself sitting on the terrace or writing in my journal. I might go into Fira to the Orinos Café along the water to visit the waiter I met today while shopping for wine. Or I might not.
BURNING THE MAP
A Red Dress Ink novel
ISBN: 978-1-4268-3681-7
© 2002 by Laura Caldwell.
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All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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