Chapter 1

It is beautiful here, the sea breeze gently flowing through my hair, the crystal clear and freezing water, the small islands that dot the coast line with their summer holiday homes. Before I boarded the ferry I had ambled through the quaint market here on the pier and looked and sampled the local produce. There was a time in my life when I would have said “I don’t have time for this.” The truth is that I neither had the time or the inclination. Now I have both, time and inclination. It is the rare times like this that I miss home, my home, LA, the girls, Kit and of course Tina. I haven’t been home in 18 months. In the time I have been away, many things have changed. I enjoy my own company, or at least I am used to it. I enjoy the quiet and the simple things in life like wandering through the market and watching the world go by as the ferry shows me all the sights off the coast. I have seen nearly all of the most significant art galleries and art on display in Europe and other places. But is the times like this when something triggers memories of a former life. Memories of a life with Tina. Perhaps it is being on the ferry, it reminds me of the days Tee and I sat on the beach, the picnics we had in secluded spots. I can never tell when it is going to happen, day or night, alone or in company but when it hits, it hits hard. I sometimes think about her and our life but I do not let consume me as it once had. After Tina and I went our separate ways, and I am the first to admit my guilt and my soul was torn. What I did was unforgivable and I paid the price for it. I threw myself into doing everything I could to get her, our life back, anything to make amends. She just didn’t want that. I truly believed Tina and I would work it out and get back together. It didn’t happen. She was my soul mate. Thoughts of the ugliness and pain that I caused both of us come flooding back. Tears well up in my eyes, will I never move on from this place in my heart, will I ever love someone again? There are times when I truly believe I have moved forward, most of the time in fact. The times when I am unexpectedly assaulted by the images I know deep in my heart it will not be resolved until I go home and make peace. I look up to see the stranger who’d said hello to be earlier watch me wipe away the tears. I flash a small smile, one that does not come from the heart. I know the woman wonders what tragedy befell me. None that Tina and I didn’t bring on our selves I think angrily. I think about the last time we were together, intimately, I think about her with another woman, I think about when she went to the divorce lawyer and I was on my knees pleading with her to find out if she still loved me, I think about our home, the times we made love, the laughter, about ***** Faye Buckley and the protestors on the night Tina lost the baby, the thousands of times I tried to apologise, the times we had friends over. I smirk at the look on Franklin’s face when I return to the table after my phone call with the dwarf, my sessions with Dan Foxworthy, the sadness and realizations those sessions had bought, the nights I had cried myself to sleep or not slept at all, the nights I drank too much, the nights were always the hardest. It’s all a jumble. The difference is I am no longer prepared to blame the others. I absently mindedly play with my wedding ring I still wear around my neck on a chain, unwilling to part with it wholly but willing to acknowledge we no longer belong to each other. The woman watches me and smiles, she knows my tragedy, she has seen it before. I ponder whether one has to know the tragedy to recognize it.