It was a whirlwind of activity and excitement, and I was loving every second of it. That said, even with every beautiful part of Jamaica that I’d seen so far, I felt most at peace and comfortable in Port Royal. We’d made it our base and because the owner of the hotel we were staying in was a friend of Gloria’s twin – who didn’t have anything bright pink on whenever I saw her, and in fact looked fucking phenomenal in everything she wore like her sisters did – they held a room for us to come back to whenever we needed it. We also spent a lot of time with Rita whenever we were in Kingston, and I’d finally gotten to meet her daughter. All I could say was that she looked exactly like her mother and had a personality similar to Maude’s – I wished Rita the best of luck with that.
And I needed it badly.
I’d sat on the shoreline of Kingston Harbor last night, trying to hear the bell that had been in the city before it was swallowed by the sea. Many of the residents swore they still heard it ringing under the water some nights, but so far I hadn’t been able to. While I’d been sitting there, I’d thought over some of the stories I’d read about the earthquake that had taken half of the city in 1692, and I thought about three of the graves in the church's graveyard here.
An archaeological team had found the bodies of two children while they’d been on a dive years ago and had buried them together at the church. There were claims that they’d found them wrapped around each other, but only the people who’d brought them to the surface would ever know the truth of that. Regardless, they now had a beautiful headstone and a grave that was looked after by many of the residents of the city, and it had been decided that all the other bodies still underwater in the city would remain there, using the remains of it as their graves.
There was also the grave of a man who’d been sucked down with it when half of the city collapsed into the sea, but through some miracle, the suction that had dragged him down had broken and it was said he was “spat up, back onto the land”. There was a museum with some artefacts from dives to the remains, but it was the counts of the tragedy and the graves that had the most impact for me because it was a catastrophe and act of nature that had ugly results, ones we couldn’t see up on land, but miracles had happened out of it.
There was also the fact that Port Royal was now joined to Kingston by a long highway called the Norman Manley Highway, which had been built to allow traffic from the airport to get into the city. Originally, there had been small islands dotted between them, but it was claimed that they’d sunk ships between them and covered them in rocks, sand, dirt and tarmac to create what was once known as the Palisadoes.
The whole area had me hooked, and it was crystal clear why the Klines felt the way they did about the place. Maude would have loved it, even though in the heat and sun her hair would have wilted.
This morning Jarrod had brought me out to an island called Lime Cay. We’d woken up and caught a small boat out here, enjoying the peace and quiet of the short ride and island once we’d arrived. At the weekend, it was surrounded by yachts and boats with loud music, lots of alcohol and laughter, but right now it was deserted and we had it to ourselves.
This was where I’d found the first true peace in sixteen months.
I was sitting, letting the water lick my toes before it retreated and enjoying the warmth of the sun, when I felt him walk up behind me. Getting down onto the sand so that he was pressed up against my back with his legs either side of mine, he leaned in and wrapped his arms around me.
“You happy?”
For the first time in a long time, I truly was. “I think I needed this vacation to recharge the batteries I haven’t been able to charge in a long time, honey,” I replied, keeping my eyes trained on the sun glinting off the water. “So yes, I’m happy. Happier than I’ve been in a long time.”
He’d been my rock over the last year and four months. Even on the nights when I’d woken up screaming or crying, he’d patiently hold me, giving me his strength, until I went back to sleep. That’s not to say that I hadn’t laughed and we hadn’t had fun, we absolutely had, but it hadn’t felt like I was living and enjoying the fun, whereas now it did.