Carla shrugged. “So?”
“If I upload the image to Google Lens, I can find similar ones online. We might be able to source where the photo was taken.”
“I presume the church is in Holland.”
“I’ll get back to you in a sec.” Jess hung up.
When Jess called Carla back a few minutes later, her eyes were wide and wild. “You are not going to believe this,” she started. “I found the window and it is in a church...in Preston.”
“In Amsterdam?”
“No, silly, in the North West of England.”
Carla’s brain rattled. “What’s it doing there? Lars and Agatha were Dutch and so was the newspaper article. Do you think they had a prewedding photo taken in England?”
“It’s the only explanation I can think of, unless there’s a window exactly the same in Holland, which seems highly unlikely. And there’s something else, too. In the picture I found, I can see the full window.”
Carla’s phone pinged as Jess sent the image to her.
“Can you see it?” her sister asked.
Carla leaned closer to her phone and saw exactly what Jess meant. In the bottom right-hand corner of the window, among the leaded panels and painted in broad brushstrokes, was a magpie. “Aakster, ekster, magpie,” she said. “Lars’s surname.”
“I know, right. There’s something very strange about this whole scenario.”
Carla leaned back on her bed, at the very least glad the frostiness between her and Jess was thawing. “I’d look into it further, but I’m back in Spain with Babs.”
Jess toyed with her hair as she thought. “I could go to Preston, which is much less glamorous. When are you coming home?”
Carla pursed her lips and considered the question. “I don’t know. My search here has pretty much ended and I’m waiting for Tom to call me about the baby. He said he needs time to think about everything. I had considered going to Sardinia next, but...” She shook her head.
Jess gave an indignant huff. “So, you’re going to sit on your backside waiting for your fiancé to call when you could be checking out a gorgeous Italian island? Well, I know what I’d do.”
“Hmm.” Carla paused, thinking her sister might be right.
After their call ended, she again checked to see if Tom had messaged her back yet and folded her arms firmly when he hadn’t.
Jess had made a good point. Why should she sit around here, in the middle of nowhere, waiting for Tom to make his move? If Carla returned to England, he’d probably remain in America for several more days, and he was also with his ex. Babs was moving back into the civilization of Blanca del Mar, and from what Carla understood, it was fine to travel while pregnant. Plus, a flight to Sardinia should take less than a couple of hours.
Carla also realized she was no longer only looking for a man of great importance to her. He’d have to be highly significant to her unborn child, too.
Out of all the men she’d dated during her gap year, Fidele was the one she’d loved the most, the one she’d regretted leaving behind.
She now knew her family curse did exist, so could that mean she and Tom had been doomed from the start?
Carla paced around her room, considering all her options before deciding she couldn’t keep thinking What if? She had less than two weeks before she walked down the aisle with Tom, if they were still going to get married, and she wanted to know for sure.
Without further ado, Carla messaged Fidele back to say she’d love to see him again and that she’d arrive in Sardinia the following day.
Her search was firmly back on.
Twenty-Two
Ring
Being pregnant felt like a good reason to book a room in a boutique hotel in the seaside town of Castelsardo, on the northwest coast of Sardinia. During her gap year, Carla had slept on a lumpy mattress in a small room above Fidele’s diving center, and this fresh, pretty hotel room felt like some kind of delayed compensation. Her bed came with the fluffiest pillows, and the spacious balcony gave her a beautiful view of the emerald waters of the Gulf of Asinara.
If she stood outside and turned to the right, she could see a mosaic of brightly colored houses in shades of cornflower blue, lilac, sunflower yellow and pistachio tightly packed together on a rocky outcrop that was topped with fortified walls and a citadel.
The hotel was only a couple of hundred meters away from Fidele’s place, and Carla watched as a group of people wearing ill-fitting wetsuits headed along the beach to board a small boat. The sight of them brought back memories of the time she’d once spent here.
She and Fidele used to tour hotels throughout the area, giving short diving demonstrations in the swimming pools, so tourists could “try dive” before signing up for lessons. Carla had helped with transporting the scuba tanks and other equipment down to the beach, offering reassurance to anyone who was nervous about going underwater.
Many shipwrecks lay strewn on the island’s seabed, and Fidele sometimes took the more experienced divers out to visit them. The decaying carcasses of the ghost ships offered up a whole underwater city bustling with activity—soft and hard corals, giant moray eels, sea slugs and starfish.
By the time Carla and Fidele rinsed the wet suits after the day’s diving, the sunset made the sky look alight with fire.
One night, Carla had found him sitting on a rock looking out to sea. Fidele had handed her a spare bottle of beer and they’d both opened them on the rocks. After clinking them together, they’d pocketed the caps and talked for hours about their families. Fidele wore a blue glass eye on a leather thong around his neck, a little like her own.
At the time, Carla had been acutely aware that a closeness was blossoming between them. There’d been something magnetic and positive about him, and when they’d kissed for the first time, his lips fit hers perfectly and tasted of beer and salt. From that moment on, they were rarely apart, working together by day and sinking into each other’s arms at night, the sound of laughter and music in the restaurants beneath them.
All good things come to an end, Carla had told herself, and as the summer season fizzled away, tourists dwindled, too. Time sped up and she also thought it was time to move on.
Fidele had taken her hand by sunset and asked her to stay with him in Sardinia. It was something Carla had wanted, too, so easy to picture a life for them together. But, by now, she hadn’t seen Jess and Gran for almost a year, and she was missing how the leaves turned to orange and scarlet on the trees in England. She felt she should be wearing a wooly hat, scarf and boots, instead of a beach dress and sandals.
She’d expressed all of this to Fidele while knowing she couldn’t ask him to leave behind the island and business he loved so much.
When they’d parted ways, Carla had sobbed, knowing this man she loved and the beautiful island they’d temporarily shared would hold a place in her heart forever.
