dirt and rock, isolating Big Sur even more after the closure of Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge. This winter storm has caused an estimated two billion dollars in damage to state and local highways.
“The names of the Cliffside victims have not yet been confirmed but are assumed to be the residents of the house, their dog, and a visiting friend. The names of the four officers involved will be released shortly. Stay tuned for more updates.”
Epilogue
Forgiving someone doesn’t happen overnight. It’s like a sports injury that will never go away completely, but you learn to live with it, and then one day, you realize you’re not in pain anymore.
If only we could control our own hearts, cherry-pick each feeling, choose only the sensible best for ourselves, stamp out love whenever we know it hurts. But we don’t get to govern how we feel, not deep down inside, anyway. All you can do is follow your heart, even if it leads you to your own blissful ruin.
We’ve been living on this island—somewhere in the Mediterranean—for over two years now. Being “dead” is surprisingly easy. And for Juan, being dead is a piece of cake. After all, he’d had a head start after he faked his own death in that car accident at Ragged Point.
He’d got himself into a real mess with that eight million, much of which he’d been saving as a gift for his three children, to buy them each a property when he took over Cliffside, to help them start their adult lives. He didn’t want to leave them with nothing after they turned eighteen. But things had corkscrewed out of control with his VIP client, and after we buried it, Juan had to do a runner, “kill” himself to save his own skin. Something I had no idea about.
I was in the dark all along, a victim, not least of my own paranoia. I speak for myself as well as for Juan when I say we were both guilty of a crime, albeit indirectly. We all had a part to play in the events that unfolded, especially Pippa. Pippa was the one person Juan had let in on his secret. She had no idea about the money or whatever nasty crime syndicate Juan had inadvertently got mixed up with, but she did know Juan was in danger and had to hide. She was his confidante, and he had given her instructions to inform me that he was not dead, but very much alive, to let me know this after he had made his escape. He did this to protect me, he told me later, so I wouldn’t talk him out of it or try to follow him.
But Pippa, of course, had kept me in the dark.
The drone spying on me? That was Juan controlling the drone from his computer, from his hiding place. The I’LL BE WATCHING YOU text? Juan had meant that as a friendly message, assuming Pippa had let me know he was still alive. At the time, it had freaked me out, thinking my life was at stake. But of course it was the lyrics from our song, “Every Breath You Take.” Another clue I missed. How could Juan have imagined that his old friend Pippa had betrayed his trust? That his text would seem creepy and menacing? He thought it would offer me comfort.
The roses and the note? Also Juan. He had made an order via Interflora in Peru, where he was hiding. They screwed up the message when he dictated it by phone. Our favorite line from Casablanca—something Juan would say to me all the time—got transformed into a sinister threat.
Instead of “Here’s looking at you,” they’d put: HERE. LOOKING AT YOU, in scary capital letters separated with a period and worse, spaced on different lines. I should have worked that out, but my fear of being spied on had taken me over. Juan had supposed the message was a sure-fire way of me knowing it was him—a typical Juan message.
Strange how paranoia can take over and not let you see or think straight.
The Facebook banner that popped up on my laptop? Juan too. He was desperate by this point, because I was ignoring his messages. He’d got access to a friend’s computer, someone who did Facebook ads regularly. That way it couldn’t be traced back to him.
And the landline calls, Juan too, although the triplets had cut the connection, of course.
Juan lay in hiding in various countries in South America, perplexed as to why