The Lost Diamond
BACK IN THE CABIN

I returned to my routines as if I had left my own spirit on a chair in that Spanish restaurant. I felt an inexplicable emptiness, a sense of defeat, as if I had awakened from a beautiful dream I had never dreamed. As my wise master always said, people who doesn’t follow the voice of their conscience is like a ship without a course, always lost regardless of the direction it takes. At that moment, I felt like a ship without a course, or worse yet, like a ship that suddenly exchanged the crystal waters of the sea for the dry sand of the desert.

I urgently needed to clear my mind of all those thoughts, empty my heart of feelings that led nowhere, and muster a new determination to keep moving forward. Any other person who had gone through what I went through might have felt the temptation to hold onto an impossible love. There was nothing wrong with my feelings; I just had to know how to let go of them, learn to say goodbye, and not look back at the past.

In the sanctuary of my home, I sought the path to return to the point where I had lost myself. I needed to replace, through meditation, the beauty of spirituality and the value of what had always been important but now seemed to make so little sense. I felt miserable for being so irresponsible as to fall in love with someone I was supposed to help, a client. I couldn’t allow myself to have made that mistake; it made no sense.

Conscience is the embassy of wisdom and universal love that we all carry within. However, on certain occasions, our own perceptions, sometimes mistaken, of what the truth is can affect that conscience. When one is not truly focused, what we believe is the voice of conscience and isn’t can lead us down the wrong paths.

I understood this very quickly when I answered the phone and heard Rossy’s voice. It had been a month since our last conversation, and I still hadn’t been able to shake off my feelings for her.

“Brandon, I had a dream about my grandmother; she asked for my help, said she needed me. She was standing by the piano. I looked at her in fear, and she told me not to be scared. I need you to come to the cabin; I need you to keep your promise to take care of me... Brandon, I need you right now.”

Saying yes would have meant throwing away all the remorse I had felt, all the hours of meditation I had spent trying to make my heart understand that it had been wrong, that falling in love with someone who was far beyond the realm of possibility was absurd.

But saying no would have been even worse. It would have meant acknowledging that I had lied when I told her I wanted to be her Zeus. Besides, although there was no signed document, she and her boyfriend had fulfilled their part and had paid me a good amount of money, and I had not yet fulfilled mine. I couldn’t hesitate; I couldn’t ask for a week, not even a few minutes to give her an answer.

“I’ll be right there,” I told her.

I checked the time; it was 7:15 PM. That meant, with good luck, I wouldn’t arrive at the cabin until at least 8:30 PM. Another night in that cabin, alone with Rossy, waiting for her grandmother to manifest herself. I repeated to myself several times that this was not right. The last time I told myself that all of this was against what my Master Hao would have recommended, and that it was better to call Rossy to cancel the visit, was just seconds before starting my car and speeding off towards the mountains.

One more thing, I’m a frugal person who would never buy a luxury car. I defined a car as a tin box with seats, four wheels, and an engine that takes me from point A to point B. Of course, I never thought of buying a Lamborghini, a Jaguar, or even a very economical car.

Once, a client gifted me his own car as a token of appreciation for my advice. He was about to close the deal on buying a particular house for his family. Before doing so, he consulted with me, and I recommended that he change his plans and purchase the second option that he had in mind. He followed my advice. Shortly afterward, the city approved the construction of a massive shopping center on the land next to his new house. Within two years, he sold his property to have a parking lot built, not only recovering his initial investment but multiplying the total price he had paid by fivefold. With that money, his wife opened a small cosmetics store, which, up to the last time I spoke with them, had expanded to four stores in the city’s most profitable areas. This man was surprised when I told him I didn’t have a car of my own, so he gifted me the one he had used for years, before good fortune knocked on his door. The vehicle was old and noisy, but I didn’t need to anymore. In that old, noisy car, I was on my way to meet the youngest daughter of the Dainik family.

Heavy traffic, traffic lights, a refueling stop

, and slow speeds notwithstanding, I arrived at the cabin after 9:30 PM. At times, I feared that the mountain road, with its steep climbs, might win the battle against us, but despite the engine’s discomfort due to the high temperature, my car carried me to our destination. Late... but we made it to the cabin. In the house’s parking lot were the two vehicles I knew, her father’s Lamborghini and Rossy’s Jaguar, and there was also a dark blue Audi S8, which I assumed belonged to Jorik. The oil change for any of those cars would probably cost more than my entire vehicle. With a shamanic flair, I parked between the Audi and the Lamborghini.