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“Well, right there we’ve got six, no, seven people you could tell. I mean keeping a secret that would be just between you and me, something you’d keep in your heart until you get to Heaven. Can you do that?”
“Is it that important?”
“Could affect the rest of my life.”
Her eyes filled with alarm. “Oh dear! Are you in some kind of trouble, Dimitri?”
He felt his insides smile, his heart expand. His soul warm. He had enough love for the world he could even love the fact that his mother would be gone soon, much sooner than anyone else thought. Any day now.
“I’m in love, mother.”
“That’s wonderful, Dimitri. Who is she?”
“The same woman I’ve been in love with for eighteen years, Mother. Moira. She’s alive. And she’s asked for me to come rescue her. And I’m going to do it.”
Chapter Nine
Dimitri spent theafternoon looking into ways to travel to Capri. He found more options flying into Naples and then taking the ferry system to the little island off the Amalfi Coast of Italy. He’d never been there, though he’d been many other places in Italy.
Known for its lively nightlife, artist community, and long-standing home to such notorious authors as Oscar Wilde, fleeing the more stayed and puritanical society rules of Europe and the UK. It had hosted kings, queens, starlets, famous scandalous royalty from all over the world, mafia mob bosses, and occasional patriots during WWII being hunted by the Italian government at that time.
But the history of the region went back to Roman times. The first Roman villa was built in AD 54, and ruins of that villa still remained visible to this day.
Jordan had told him Moira’s mother came from Capri, so it made sense they would find safe haven there. And it wasn’t too far from an international airport, that being Naples.
From a logistics standpoint, it was the perfect place to hide out. Anyone arriving on the island, an old volcano crater in the same family as Vesuvius, could be seen for miles and miles afar. The entire population lived in buildings built upon the steep hillside and on top of each other, old villas beneath new ones with stunning verandas overlooking the blue waters of theTyrrhenian Sea and the Gulf of Naples, leading to where it connected with the Mediterranean Sea beyond.
It started as one Roman emperor’s private playground, but it soon became the magical land of myth and legend, where secrets were held in the old stone walls, Bougainville vines sometimes holding those walls together, where even pirates roamed during the heyday of the Ottoman Empire.
It survived all the wars of the mainland, mostly because of the steep terrain, making a formal military campaign fruitless. The culture blended so many times as to be a microcosm of history for the past two thousand years. It had everything but a mall, car dealerships, and a soccer team. Terraced, the farmers grew flowers, grapes, olive groves, fresh farm produce, and chickens everywhere. Every square inch was taken up and used for something. And, if not, another chapel dedicated to a variety of martyrs or saints housing a relic, like a dead saint’s finger or femur or perhaps a well-preserved ear under glass.
Fishing and tourism were their trades. Boats would travel from sunrise to three or four in the afternoon, after which, the island was completely isolated and the night creatures came out to party better than any Mardi Gras in New Orleans ever was, without the blaring horns, the parades, or the jazz.
The more he read, the more excited he got.
He’d wait to speak with her before making the reservations. And he was going to use his dad’s phone for everything and then wipe it later.
Now he understood the need for lack of politics in Moira’s world. There were no simple labels to apply to the population, since they organically sprang up from the way the winds blew and who they blew onto the shores of the little conclave.
At ten sharp, he dialed.
Again, he heard the clicking noises, the abrupt partial message in a man’s recorded voice—cut off at the first word. Then he heard Moira herself.
“Hello, my love.”
His ears began to ring. He didn’t care if she was conning him. It made no difference to him. He was her slave in all the important ways, and the rest would soon follow.
“I’ve waited all this time, and now get to speak to you twice in two days. I must be living under a lucky star.”
She giggled. “You do. You are my lucky star, Dimitri. And while I’d love to just talk, I need help, and we haven’t much time.”
“Go ahead. Give me instructions. I’m listening.”
“You’ve surveyed how to get here?”
“Yes, fly into Naples, ferry to Capri.”
“Yes. So you arrange it, and then give me the eta, and I’ll have someone pick you up. Make sure you get on the right ferry. There are several. I have activated messaging. You can text me on the way to let me know when you’ll arrive. I’ll have someone meet you.”
