The Problem with Peace (Greenstone Security 3)

So I didn’t ask.

And I was now a wealthy woman.

I most likely wouldn’t have to work again if I didn’t want to, considering my lifestyle wasn’t exactly extravagant.

And I was wealthy enough to take the trip around Europe, flit around the continent like I didn’t have a care in the world.

When in reality, the cares were cinderblocks I dragged around with me from country to country, from wonder to wonder. Luckily invisible in the many pictures I sent back to my no doubt concerned family. My carefree grin was firmly in place, mindful of the fact I loved them and didn’t want them worrying about me doing something stupid.

Again.

So I looked happy. Joyous.

But my joy was only on the surface.

Even as I sucked down pasta in a little-known town in Northern Italy where I was all but adopted by a tomato farmer and his friends—wrinkled and leathery from a lifetime working in the sun, fond of grappa, not a word of English spoke between them, considering none of them had left their idyllic village in the hills. But they had kind eyes and large hearts.

I was invited to party after party when they realized the crazy American girl was on her own and that just wasn’t okay.

So I was adopted.

I indulged in some of the most delicious food I’d ever tasted. The most vibrant company of people who didn’t speak my language yet they somehow understood everything I didn’t say. Everything I couldn’t say.

But then, of course, I left.

Because the family and the happiness became sour on my tongue with the knowledge of my very own family half a world away. The delicious food was ashes in my mouth when my mind thought about another man a world away yet somehow right beside me.

So I ran.

Again.

Hopped through Spain. Ran with the bulls. Walked a week of the Camino. But that was too quiet. So I took a detour to Morocco. Rode camels in the desert. Learned to surf in a seaside town called Essaouira.

Went back upwards to Portugal. Did a yoga retreat in the hills for three weeks. I volunteered when I could because there was only so much wandering my feet could do before my mind followed suit.

Before my broken and bleeding, festering heart followed suit.

I kept busy.

Met people.

Had experiences that most people weren’t lucky enough to enjoy in a lifetime let alone eleven months. And though outwardly I was enjoying every moment, I couldn’t smile in my soul. Couldn’t find the peace I thought an ocean and an ancient continent would give me.

So here I was.

Back in the apartment that Rosie had taken care of for me.

“I killed your plants,” Rosie said one month into my trip over a crackling connection, after she told me about her wedding that I was going to miss. Not with judgment, but with understanding. She might not know the specifics of why I couldn’t come back, but she knew I couldn’t. “How I’m going to be a mother someday is beyond me,” she continued. “But then again, a child screams when it’s hungry. Plants just die quietly. So maybe plants are much harder to keep alive than a child.”

So my apartment was devoid of all life that my houseplants had offered.

But it suited me at this point.

I stared at the apartment, unmoving even though my limbs were heavier than lead and my stomach was protesting painfully at the lack of food I’d given it. Usually, I took care of my body. I was a vegetarian, something that started because of a boyfriend who educated me on the horrors of eating meat and then I continued long after he was history. I became somewhat obsessed with taking care of what I put into my body because I hadn’t taken care of who I’d let into my heart.

I drank kombucha.

I did yoga every single morning.

Meditated.

Took vitamins.

Surrounded myself with crystals that helped with spiritual growth and promoted clean and positive energy.

I lived mindfully and tried to do as little harm to myself and others as I could.

And wasn’t that ironic since I’d harmed the person who I cared about more than myself. Broken his heart. Not because he’d broken mine. No, I didn’t work that way. But I’d broken the both of ours because there was no other choice.

Not that he knew that.

He, like everyone else, thought I breezed through life on a whim and barely noticed the wreckage I left in my wake. And I left the broken pieces of us both eleven months ago, in this very apartment.

I let the weight of my pack settle on my back, sighing in relief as my body protested with the load. It was good to get something tangible on my shoulders to distract me from the true weight I’d been carrying around. That had brought me to my knees. At least I could stand under the meager physical reproduction of it.