The Nazaré Breaks – Chapters 1 & 2

1. Departure

 

“I don’t know how I feel about this, Mel.” Theo was still bent over the dishwasher filter, banging parts together harder than necessary. “I really don’t understand it.”

“I know, Theo. But I need to do this, for me. I know they’re just ashes, but it’s important.”

I’d been mustering the courage to tell him about the road trip for weeks. Now I sat at the kitchen table, watching him take apart and reassemble pieces I couldn’t name, feeling like a 34-year-old child explaining herself.

“Your mom wasn’t even Portuguese. Why on earth would you want to scatter her ashes in Nazaré?”

I hated that word — scatter. It sounded detached, clinical. And he was right. It didn’t make sense. Mom and I had our own volatile, impossible dynamic, but it was ours. Nazaré had been her fantasy destination. She used to talk about it in those rare, fragile moments when she let herself dream. She never said why.

Just as often she’d undercut it with jokes about tossing her body in a ditch, how it wouldn’t matter once she was gone. It was her way of dodging instructions, leaving me to patchwork meaning out of contradictions. That’s how I ended up here — hanging on to ashes longer than the law allowed, trying to finish a journey she never began.

“We’re closing the Fletcher-Ribas sale at the notary soon too…” He wasn’t wrong. But I figured I had time to drive, spend five or six days, then be back for signing. My part with the buyers was done anyway, and I’d be available by phone.

“I’ll be back by then. No worries,” I said.

Mom had passed two years prior. Cancer caught too late, four years of “living with the disease.” Looking at Theo now, I felt the tug of everything he had carried too. Seven years together, and our cadence had been dictated not by us but by her illness. Every fight, every reconciliation, every silence — all threaded through the hospital’s schedule.

“Hey, baby bear.” Bonnie’s nose pressed under my elbow, right on cue when my thoughts drifted dark. At three years old she was a hefty 110 pounds of clumsy, fur-wrapped devotion.

“Can you feed her, babe, while I finish on this dishwasher?” Theo’s voice was gentle. Always tinkering, always fixing things that weren’t us. And if I was honest, I hadn’t been either.

“Sure thing, boo.” I stood and grabbed the bowl from the counter. “Come with mama, little muffin?”

I poured into her what I’d sworn I’d never pour into children of my own. Caregiving had gutted me once already.

“Babe, I hear it’s important to you. Just… be careful. The car’s been acting—”

I cut him off, squishing my face into Bonnie’s fur. “You hear that, bunny? We’re going on a road trip!” She approved with a flurry of licks.

“You’re going to have to stop calling her that,” Theo said, chuckling. “She’s going to develop an identity disorder.”

I giggled back, though I wasn’t sure he realized how much of my softness had redirected into her.

 

***

I spent the next few days lining up my ducks with work. Theo was still chasing certificates from the sellers’ side, but my buyers had their own hurdles. Foreign clients always did. I walked them through opening their Spanish bank account, called to confirm transfer limits, and reassured them the funds would land in time for the notary. Most of it was hand-holding, really. Answering the same questions I’d heard a hundred times, calming nerves that had less to do with paperwork than with fear of uprooting their lives.

Between phone calls and emails I had endless tabs open with Airbnb listings around Nazaré. It was all blending together until a small house on the heights of Pederneira caught my attention. Wherever that was. It seemed within walking distance from the beach, though a good trek. Perfect terrain for a Bernese mountain dog, Bonnie would love the playground. A pale blue house with a large terrace that faced the ocean, an unobstructed view on the town and lighthouse cliffs. Mom would have loved it too, simple, with just enough charm to make her feel cherished. I booked it immediately.

Packing was its own ritual. Clothes, toiletries, Bonnie’s food and bowls. Then the urn. I wrapped it in one of mom’s scarves, and tucked it neatly in a small moving box I’d later place on the passenger seat of my old BMW. She’d be making her last road trip with me and the little angel she’d decided to adopt on a whim just months before passing. It’d be just us girls.

I’d always thought of Bonnie as mom’s parting gift to me, a last joke she pulled knowing both how little I wanted a dog in my life, and how much her presence would actually be the only reason I’d get out of bed in the months following her death.  

Bonnie, of course, thought we were leaving that very second. She shadowed my every step as I set her bed by the door, tail sweeping anything forgotten on the coffee table. She pawed at the urn box playfully, and I shooed her with laughter. 

***

The morning I left, I had the route mapped out on my phone, my favorite playlist ready to go: two long days of driving, an overnight stop in Madrid. Then the Atlantic. Nazaré.

Theo stood in the doorway with his coffee after helping me load the back seats so Bonnie could have the trunk to herself with some legroom. He was trying to hide his disapproval, and he did it well. Only I knew the subtle way he bit the inside of his right cheek when he had something to say he knew he shouldn’t.

We hugged and kissed – it would only be a week and a half, while Bonnie leapt into the trunk with the grace of a small hippopotamus. She circled twice, flopped down with a loud sigh, and looked at me like she already knew I’d come back changed.

The engine coughed into motion, and for the first time in years, the road stretched wider than my grief.

 

2. The Trip

 

Getting out of Madrid at morning rush hour proved to be a feat I wasn’t quite prepared for after just one coffee. This was definitely a two-coffee job. On the M-30 I was spit out onto the far left lane, only to realize my exit was 150 meters ahead, on the far right. I ended up threading across seven lanes of traffic, with one eye shut, praying to a god I didn’t believe in, just to make it out alive.

In hindsight, I feel like this was my first hint at what was to come. All the roads I could have taken, the ones I missed, the ones I forced myself across at the last second. The ones that looked clear until a deer caught the headlights.

Once out of the buzzing chaos, my hands loosened on the steering wheel. The road settled into a smoother rhythm: 6 hours and 36 minutes on the GPS until Nazaré, not accounting for the inevitable stretch-and-pee break for the little muffin happily slobbing all over the headrests of my back seat, ‘boop-snoot’ squished between two of them in a joker-like grin.

The road stretched on in muted colors. February on the Spanish plateau meant pale soil, fields still asleep, the occasional cork oak leaning against the horizon. It all looked drained, dry, even when green was technically starting to push through.

The villages fell away into valleys and ridges, the Sierra de Guadarrama hovering pale and snow-dusted to the north. By the time I crossed into Toledo province, the land had spread wider. Rolling fields of winter wheat, olive groves stripped back for pruning, bare soil showing cracks like old parchment. February made everything look faded: pale yellows, dull browns, only the sharp green of a cork oak every now and then.

And then came the change. Near Badajoz the horizon softened, farmland giving way to river plain, and within two kilometers of crossing into Portugal through Elvas, the curtain dropped. Rain assaulted the windshield, metallic drops hammering the roof in rhythm with the playlist. Calema’s “Te Amo” — the acoustic French-Portuguese version. Eucalyptus gleamed silver, and the grass was suddenly electric green. It felt like I’d driven straight from desert into rainforest, Bonnie was snorting at the back seat window, feeling the shift as well.

Eyes filling with tears, I turned to Mom on the passenger seat. “We’re getting close, ma’. Let’s make it count.”

By the time I crossed Caldas da Rainha, the rain had settled into a steady sheet, loud enough on the roof to drown out the engine’s hum. Then the radio crackled once, twice, and went dead. With it went the Bluetooth connection to my GPS. The screen went black, no map, no voice telling me which turn came next. Just asphalt and road signs I hadn’t bothered to read in years.

I traced the coastal route by sight for the next 20 minutes until the Nazaré exit finally appeared on the signs. At the entrance to Pederneira I pulled over, switched to my phone, and tried to sweet-talk Bonnie into patience while I figured out the neighborhood’s tangled streets. She always knew when we were close to destination. 

Once in front of the pale blue house, my shoulders were tight, my head buzzing. I slid the gear into reverse to parallel park, and the engine light blinked on. STOP.

As much as I was a grown adult and could-have-should-have — after a nine-hour day, I wasn’t starting on a new adventure to find a mechanic who might speak a little English or Spanish, driving the car there, then cabbing back. Not tonight.

I called the host to let her know I’d arrived, then let Bonnie tumble out of the car, nose to the ground, circling until she understood this was home for the next few days.

She would have been around mom’s age. A sweet-looking lady, Dona Teresa. Her English matched my Portuguese. In other words, nonexistent. We managed to find a groove in conversation with Spanish, and she was off to showing us around our new place for the week. Her smile and attention felt too motherly for a stranger. 

I called Theo once we were settled. He’d told me before leaving not to push the car too hard. I hadn’t let him finish his thought, as if leaving it unspoken could erase the occasional white smoke since I’d gotten the DPF changed. I should have gotten it checked again before leaving, but that was yet another important thing I’d put off. 

I told him about the engine light and pretended it was orange instead of red, probably to not worry him, more likely not to get scolded. He sighed, asked if I was safe, then told me to leave it until tomorrow. “Don’t overthink it. You’re there. Rest.”

Rest meant food and Netflix. A paper bag from Uber Eats appeared at the door twenty minutes later. Inside was bacalhau croquettes, still hot, a pork bifana, and two pastéis de nata tucked in waxed paper. On the counter, the host had left a bottle of Quinta das Bágeiras Garrafeira, 2019. I uncorked it, let it breathe for a moment, then poured a glass that caught the lamplight dark cherry.

I ate cross-legged on the large couch, the salt of the cod, the garlic, the sandwich, and the wine all hitting the right comfort notes, and setting the room into place. Bonnie, finished with her own meal, sprawled across the floor watching me out of the corner of her eye, tail thumping the wall every so often, knowing she’d get a croquette once I was done. Outside, rain tapped steady against the shutters.

Later, Bonnie climbed onto the bed, curled herself tight, and pushed her back into my chest with a loud sigh like she always did. She’d claimed the role of little spoon years ago, and neither of us had ever argued it. Her breathing steadied, deepened, and somewhere between one exhale and the next, mine fell in line with hers.

I knew what mom would have said if she were actually standing in that little rental with us. Check the car tomorrow, don’t put it off. Eat something real, not just fried foods and dessert. Don’t forget I raised you tough. 

The STOP light felt like her doing, a warning in red I couldn’t ignore. But the rain against the shutters was her too. Steadier, gentler, reminding me I wasn’t alone. Bonnie pressed closer, her face now tucked into my neck, and I let myself believe, just for a moment, that Mom was keeping watch over us both.