Free Explore Her, More of Her by Z.L. Arkadie

the only one here, but I see a wine-covered rag on a bench, and it’s pretty fresh. Someone was here not long ago, maybe yesterday or the day before. I take shots of the rafters and the lights attached to them. I get a close-up of the brick pillars. Other than that rag, everything is so neat and in place.  
    To up the adventure factor, I exit out a different door, which puts me on a pathway. Three feet in front of me is a field of trees: pines, oaks, and other wild types. I succumb to my impatience and walk through the wild. Low brush scratches my calves. Dirt slithers between my toes. I glance back at the castle just to get an idea of where I am. It’s not far away, but if I remember correctly, the lake is nearby. I cross the road and keep walking until I’m beyond the grapevines and looking out over the lake. The narrow waterway snakes across the valley. It was probably cut to irrigate the fields. I make myself a seat in the grass, hug my legs, and bask in this perfect moment.
    I hear brakes squeal to a halt. I look behind me and see Anton getting out of a car.
    “Hello, cousin,” I say.
    He grins and walks in my direction. I just noticed that his car isn’t a cab, though perhaps it was at one time. The roof is painted black, but the body is a faded yellow. It’s not the kind of car a man who makes “a lot of money” would drive. However, Anton doesn’t strike me as the type who collects status symbols.
    “You like lakes?” he asks.
    “Only the muddy ones.” I smile.
    Anton scans the cliff that dives into the bank of the lake and the trees on the other side of the water. “To me, it’s old. To you, it’s new. Maybe that’s what you like. The new.” He sits beside me.
    I snort. “Another man trying to tell me what I feel.”
    “Ah ha. Is that why you do not wear your ring?”
    I wiggle my ring finger. “I would wear it if I had it. Peculiar circumstances landed me here without it or my husband.”
    “I see.”
    “Do you?”
    Anton digs into the soil with the heel of his brown leather shoe. They’re nice shoes. He’s the kind of man who thinks about what he wears.  
    “You did not remember me,” he says.
    I snicker. “You spoke to Jacques?”
    He nods.
    “If you’d said something, then I would’ve looked closer and recognized you.”
    His chuckle is quiet. “I last saw you at your brother’s funeral.”
    “I didn’t see you, but that doesn’t mean you weren’t there. I didn’t see anyone.”
    “This I know. You only saw your grief.”
    My memories want to carry me back to those days, but I won’t allow that. “I do remember your family visiting us before then.”
    Anton tilts his head and studies me. “Home is for losers.”
    I snort. “Daniel’s motto.”
    “My brother and I thought we were cool until we met you and Daniel.”
    “We didn’t do anything that was particularly ‘cool,’” I say.
    “You were, as they say, laid-back. That was cool.”
    I chuckle. “All Californian kids are laid-back. It’s the air we breathe.”
    “No, it was the freedom. When we came in, you and Daniel were leaving. You had skateboards, very long ones.”
    “Ah, our longboards.”
    He points at his head. “You wore calottes .”  
    “Our beanies.”
    “You both had long hair.”
    “I remember you and Leon thought I was a boy,” I say.
    “You remember my brother’s name?”
    “I remember you both clearly. You don’t look that much different now than you did then.”
    He laughs and rubs his face. “I look old, but you are very beautiful, Daisy. You are no more a tomboy.”
    “You don’t look old. I think back then, I was trying to become Daniel, and Daniel wanted me to become Daniel.”
    He nods, grinning nostalgically. “You would have gotten away with ditching us if my mother had not asked Tante Heloise where you had gone all day.”
    I laugh as I remember why we got in so late from our excursion that day, which had started so early in the morning. “Daniel and I got