The world believed Julian Cohen had vanished into thin air, a ghost
following his father into oblivion. The financial columns occasionally
speculated—a sighting in Buenos Aires, a rumoured tech investment in
Singapore—but they were chasing phantoms. The truth was quieter, and farther
away.
He lived in a small, whitewashed house on a rugged stretch of the
Dalmatian coast. It had a red-tiled roof, a terrace overlooking a shock of blue
sea, and a lemon tree in a pot. He bought it for cash under a name that had no
history. His possessions were few: clothes that favoured linen and cotton over
silk, a stack of books, a simple laptop used only for secure, necessary
communications, and a single, framed photograph of Elora, the one from Vivian's
safe.
His days had a rhythm utterly foreign to his old life. He rose with the
sun, not with the opening bell of the stock exchange. He fished from a small,
wooden dinghy, finding a focus in the silent, patient wait that no boardroom
strategy session had ever demanded. He learned to repair the stone wall
bordering his property, his hands growing calloused and stained with earth. In
the evenings, he read, or simply sat, watching the light die on the water,
letting the silence fill him until it wasn't a void, but a presence.
He did not find peace. Not in the way the word is often used. He found a
ceasefire. The war inside him—the horror, the grief, the love, the
revulsion—did not end, but the battles grew less frequent. The landscape of his
mind was no longer a burning city; it was a rugged, weathered coast, where
storms still came, but he had built a sturdy house.
He thought of Cordelia every day. He had a secure, encrypted channel
through which Fiona sent monthly updates. Photos. Milestones. She smiled today.
She held her head up. She seems to love the sound of rain. He devoured them, a
starving man at a feast of normality. He never responded. His love was a
silent, distant satellite, orbiting her life without ever casting a shadow.
And he thought of Elara. Of the twins he would never know. Of the rubble
he had left her to help clear. He felt no pride, only a grim gratitude that she
had the strength he lacked to build anew on that scorched earth.
One afternoon, after mending a net in the shade of his terrace, he
walked into the village. It was a cluster of sun-bleached stone houses clinging
to a hill. He bought bread, olives, a block of sharp cheese. At the tiny post
office, he lingered by a rack of postcards. Touristy images of the harbour, of
St. James Cathedral, of the Pakleni Islands.
His eye was caught by one. It was simpler than the rest. Just a
photograph of the sea at dawn, utterly calm, the sky a soft gradient from
indigo to gold. The water was a mirror, holding the light perfectly. It looked
like a world at rest. A world holding its breath.
He bought it. He didn't plan to. The action felt both impulsive and
inevitable.
Back at his house, he sat at the rough wooden table. He took out a pen.
He did not write an address. He simply wrote, in the clear, elegant hand he'd
inherited from Arthur's training, the coordinates of Aeterna Tower. He knew
Silas's systems would route it to her.
What did one say after such silence? What could possibly bridge the
chasm of all that had happened? Apologies were inadequate. Explanations were
impossible. News was irrelevant.
He looked at the image of the calm sea. It wasn't a lie. The sea here
could be that calm. It could also be terrifyingly rough. The picture captured a
moment, a possibility. It was a hope, not a fact.
He put the pen to the card. He did not write 'I'm okay.' He was not. He
did not write 'Forgive me.' That was not his to ask.
He wrote a single line, the only truth he could offer that was both a
conclusion and an opening:
The water is clear here.
He did not sign it.
He walked back to the post office and dropped it into the international
slot. The woman behind the counter nodded, and he left. It was done.
A week later, the postcard arrived at Aeterna Tower. It passed through
Silas's meticulous security scans, its simplicity and lack of threat markers
allowing it through to Elara's personal mail pile.
She found it among business journals and invitations. The sight of the
unfamiliar stamps, the coastal postmark, sent a jolt through her. She picked it
up, turning it over.
Her breath caught. She knew the handwriting. She'd seen it on contracts,
on dismissive notes, on a warning left in an empty frame. But it had never
looked so unadorned, so bare.
She stared at the image of the serene sea. Then she read the four words.
The water is clear here.
She understood. It wasn't an invitation. It wasn't a plea. It was a
report from the front lines of his exile. It spoke of distance, of a deliberate
separation from the murky, poisoned depths they had all been swimming in. It
acknowledged that he had sought, and perhaps found, a place where he could see
the bottom. Where things were not obscured by silt and shadow.
She held it for a long time, then placed it on the mantel in the living
room, leaning it against a simple vase. She didn't hide it. She didn't frame
it. She just let it be there, a small, quiet artefact from a lost country.
When Silas came in, he saw it. He read it. He looked at her.
"He's alive," she said softly.
Silas nodded. "And he's telling you he's not coming back."
"Yes," she said. But she also heard the other message, the one between
the lines: I am not drowning. The poison is not here. It was the closest thing
to a blessing he could send.
That night, as she fed Maya, she looked at the postcard in the dim
light. A calm sea. A clear view. It was an ending of sorts. But in its open,
silent horizon, it held the faint, fragile possibility of a different kind of
story—one not of dynasties and vengeance, but of quiet survival in a clean,
blue world. The chapter was closed. The sea, somewhere, was calm. And for now,
that was enough.