Home by Another Way (18 page)

Later, in my head, I started driving the island, down past Bluewater and along the shoreline to Princetown. Up the hill and through the roundabout and back around past Leon’s and into the hills where the plantations are. Past the art gallery road and then around the curve to where the horse track is and the beach where we went body-surfing with the children. Up along the windward coast to Three Kings Bay and then around to Newcastle.

Later in the day I wished I had mustered up the wit to say, “Look at who we are among too.” The people at St. Peter’s and in the market and down at Domingo’s. Margaret and David and Andrew and Kate and Mrs. Gilbert. Deb and Daisy and Linda and Tim and James and Captain Christmas. And the folks who are liming at the Heptagon and shopping at the Trade Winds.

I want these people to be my friends
, I thought. And I may be willing to cross a line to make it so.

We were standing in the airport in Miami, headed toward Charlotte and then back to Tennessee. Sara sighed.

“I do not know if I am going home or leaving home,” she said. And then we were both quiet for a long time. It had been our first trip to St. Cecilia, and we were both stunned we could feel that way about a place so quickly and so deeply. We were afraid to say much more.

“Are you going to be there when I get there?” I finally asked in Charlotte. It is a derivative of one of the ritual sentences of our marriage.

She nodded, though more slowly than she often does. There were tears in her eyes as she started to understand what we had just discovered or maybe discovered again. Not only on St. Cecilia but in our hearts.

“Then, either way, it will be home,” I said. “So I am going too.”

Later, as the plane pushed back, one of us said, “With you.”

And we began to giggle.

I have a confession to make, and I have gratitude that is due, as is the case with all writers almost all the time, whether we always do so or not.

The confession is that St. Cecilia and its people and its places are real, though most of the names in this book are not, including the name St. Cecilia. There are some names that are real, the sort of obvious ones, like the name of the body of water the island sits in and the name of the state I live in. But I have invented names for the real places mentioned and described in these pages. I did so for a reason.

Some of the writers who have written books about faraway places that they loved now say they wish they had never written the books at all. Enough armchair
travelers, under the influence of their books, got up out of their chairs and got on a plane to see for themselves the things that make such places so wonderful—simplicity, solitude, beauty, and so on—and these things have disappeared under the weight of it.

St. Cecilia is a small place, and though the Ministry of Tourism there might take exception, I am loath to do anything to create a stampede of tourists. I have never actually created a stampede with any of my books before, but I am taking no chances.

That said, there are some names for people in the book that I want to be sure you know are true. One of them is my name.

The other name is Sara. I do not always put my family’s names in my books. But I cannot write about home without saying the name Sara. I cannot even find home without Sara, and if I could, I would not go there if she was not going to be there.

The gratitude is due to the people of St. Cecilia in general. And in the specific it is due Kathryn, Julie, Derrick, Daisy, Jane, Eulyn, and Debbie.

And to the people at WaterBrook Press—particularly Steve and Shannon and Jessica and Dudley and Ginia and Carol. And to Don, who is traveling in another circle these days but who has not been forgotten.

And, as always, to Ms. Lil of Linda Lane, queen of the red pencil, without whom I cannot make books at all. And to Ms. Dupree of Arab, without whom I do not get a chance to try. And to Miss Jones, without whom these sentences would be less than they are now.

If you do find St. Cecilia, look us up. I will be happy to see you.

The truth is that finding a faraway place that is home to you the way St. Cecilia is becoming home to us is up to you, wherever it may be. Home is always
where you find it, anyway. The trick is to keep looking for it and to be wise enough to say yes to it when it finally finds you. Namaste.

   R. Benson

Seastone, St. Cecilia, West Indies

Kingdomtide, 2005