Page 101 of Every Step She Takes

“You like who?”

“Who?Maëlys,” Luzia tsks. “The redhead. The girl whose been sleeping in your bed the past two nights.”

“Redhead? I don’t know any redheads.”

Luzia violently ruffles my hair. “You can’t hide anything from me.”

“Ouch!” I yank my head away from her grasp, but she keeps a hand on my shoulder and doesn’t allow me to pull away too much.

“It makes me so happy, menina,” Luzia says with a watery smile, “to see you so happy.”

And when Luzia Ferreira bends over and kisses the crown of my head, I am thirty-eight and discovering that maybe therearesmall ways I can still rewrite my history.

The last time I walked away from one of my father’s vineyards, I planned to never return.

This time, as the tour group passes through the black gate and walks out onto the dirt road, I know my return is as inevitableas my father’s funeral in less than two weeks. I won’t be able to run away from it all, or repress it, or distract myself from it for much longer. Today, the Camino will take us inland, and we won’t return to the coast at all in the next five days.

In five days, we’ll be in Santiago, and I will have to decide what to do with Quinta Costa. With my life.

“Don’t be angry,” Sadie says as we walk down the road side by side, “but I did take one memento from Emo Mal’s bedroom.”

She pulls something out of her raincoat. “Peanut!” I involuntarily scream. I grab the elephant from her outstretched hands.

“I know your life is too nomadic for the entire collection,” she teases, “but I figured you could make room in your bag for one forlorn Beanie Baby.”

I press the soft elephant to my cheek, his trunk near my ear. “What’s that, Peanut? You only agreed to come because you want to watch Sadie—Mr. Peanut!” I gasp. “You perv!”

Sadie swats my arm. “Don’t corrupt the innocent elephant like you corrupted me.”

“You’ve loved being corrupted by me.”

She blushes at that. I only have five more days of watching those rosy splotches bloom across her face. “No, seriously. Thank you, Sadie.” I hold the elephant to my heart so she knows I’m being sincere.

Sadie smiles in return, and I lean over to kiss that sweet smile, forgetting about Inez and Ari and the entire tour group that’s spread out around us. Forgetting that in five days, we’ll be in Santiago, and whatever this thing is with Sadie—practice or not—will be over.

TWENTY-FOURREDONDELA, SPAINThursday, May 22, 2025

Sadie

I don’t miss home.

The thought occurs to me halfway to Redondela when my phone buzzes with a text from Vi.

Mrs. Hernandez is here to pick up that curio cabinet you refinished for her. Where is it?

Then, another text.Also, Mrs. Hernandez is a bitch.

An overwhelming sense of resentment rises as I stare down at the texts that pulled me out of my meditative morning.

It’s drizzling a little, and the fields around us are shrouded in mist like something out of a Brontë novel. I’m listening to my favorite soundtrack as we walk: Mal’s clanging water bottle, Ro’s clanking trekking poles, Rebecca’s pretty humming, Inez’s enthusiastic storytelling, and the consistentclick click clickof Vera’s camera. My body feels restored after our day of rest, and it’s easy to keep putting one foot in front of the other, to keep following those ever-present yellow arrows toward Santiago.

But the texts, and the reminder of the responsibilities awaiting me back home, shatter the rhythm of the Camino, and I realize all at once that I don’t miss any of it at all.

I don’t miss the store. I don’t miss the grueling hours or the constant demands of customers and clients. I don’t miss having no life outside of work, and I don’t miss living someone else’s dream.

This, though.ThisI will miss.

The heft of my pack and the strain in my legs; feeling strong, feeling connected to my body, to the earth, to myself. I’ll miss getting up every morning and knowing that the only thing on my to-do list is to walk. The Camino is life stripped down to our most basic human needs: water, food, and sleep. Companionship, sometimes, but also time with yourself.