Mountains of Dawn

Loneliness. It creeps into your head and washes all the colors out of life. Tanya sat in waves of self-pity, feeling abandoned by Kevin, who was across the Atlantic again, and by Edda and Charles, who continued to take day trips, and even by Marta, who left to visit her niece in the hospital. Restless, Tanya tried to force herself to work on Kevin's portrait. At five o'clock, with the light at its best, she couldn't bring herself to pick up a brush and begin to work. She stared at the portrait. It pleased her. Kevin's smile, complete with dimples, flashed from the canvas. His vivid, joyful grey eyes sparkled. He added so much to her life, a dimension she never thought existed. Without him, the dullness she felt now would be a forever thing, something she couldn't escape.

She looked down, searching. Even the cat had abandoned her. Tobia usually wound himself around her legs and climbed into her lap. He was even known to jump on the easel's control panel, just to get her attention. No Tobia.

Tanya leaned back in her chair and surveyed her surroundings. As usual, peace flowed around her. Portulacas, petunias, redbeckias and geraniums created splashes of color around the pool area. Umbrella pine trees gave plenty of shade, while a beech tree broke the monotony of the green foliage with a spot of dark red. On the left, technology prevailed over nature with a thirty-thousand-volt tower overlooking the property.

"I'd give a million dollars to get out of here," she said to Kevin's portrait. "To go to the beach, swim in the waves, walk on the sand. What heaven that would be." She stretched in the chair, raising her arms over her head. "Heaven. For just a couple of hours." She wrinkled her nose at Kevin's portrait, and laughed. "And who would know?"

Tanya bounced from the chair, set the color palette and the paint remover on the easel ledge and covered her paints with her smock. She grabbed her bathing suit. With a glance around to be certain no one was anywhere near, she hurried to the beach.

Swimming in the salt water had never felt so good.

She swam until shortly before seven o'clock, then, with reluctance, returned home. She felt free, if only for a short while, free as if she were a normal person after so many months of confinement. She giggled like a schoolgirl cutting classes as she climbed the steep pathway toward Kevin's villa.

A low cloud surrounded the trees, far too dense to be anything less than smoke. She hurried.