But each year passes without such fortune. Father can doze and dream his memories. I can only wish for my future.

Ours is a large house, made from coral stone. It sits on an island-a small spit of sand stuck between Miami's Biscayne Bay and the great blue wideness of the Atlantic Ocean. As much as I love the salt smell and ocean song that fills the air each day, I dread the thought of a lonely future spent roaming the cool stone corridors, from empty room to empty room.

We've owned this island, Caya DelaSangre, or Blood Key, since Philip II, the king of Spain, granted it to my family in exchange for gold, services rendered and the promise of Don Henri DelaSangra to never return to any portion of Europe. When first deeded to our family in 1589, the island measured eleven acres long and five acres wide. But over the years, wind, tide and storm have eroded our homestead, just as our family has diminished under the weight of time. My inheritance has worn away to no more than nine acres of dry land. Truth is, I wouldn't trade them for ninety anywhere else. My mother gave birth to me here. I grew up in the house Don Henri himself built.

Without a bride of my own, without children, I admit it's an empty kingdom to rule. Still, I pity those poor souls on the mainland who move every few years, from house to house, without any connection to their land, without any sense of their history or their responsibility to it.

The other night Father awoke and grew nostalgic. "Remember when you were a boy," Father wheezed and coughed, "how you loved to play soldier?"

I nodded.

"You'd go out on the veranda, climb on its coral parapet and point to the sea-shouting that pirates were coming to attack. Then you'd run, seeking pretend enemies, circling the house until you finally stopped by one of the gun ports cut into the coral and…"