Chapter 9 - The Garden Where We Said Goodbye
We scattered Anna’s ashes on a clear morning after the arrangements had been confirmed.
Teresa chose the corner Anna had loved when she visited years earlier.
A lemon tree stood near the wall.
Lavender bordered the path, still planted slightly too close for Anna’s approval.
Gabriel had prepared the ground carefully and placed a simple stone nearby.
No grand inscription.
Just her name.
Anna Moretti.
Beloved mother, grandmother, and friend.
Salvatore came.
He looked smaller outside Chicago.
There were no men waiting behind him.
No restaurant table held empty until he arrived.
Only an older man carrying flowers for his wife.
He stood beside me while Mom held Luca and Teresa rocked Anna in her stroller.
For a while, he could not speak.
Then he said, “She asked me to come here once.”
I looked at him.
“I said we were too busy.”
He stared at the lemon tree.
“We were always too busy.”
I did not tell him it was all right.
It wasn’t.
I put my hand briefly on his arm.
Sometimes comfort could be truthful without making anything smaller.
Vincent had sent a letter through the permitted channels.
I had agreed to read it because the goodbye belonged to more than one person.
The letter did not defend him.
It spoke of his mother making breakfast before school.
Of the little sewing kit she kept in the kitchen drawer.
Of how she always answered when he called.
My voice broke at that sentence.
I stopped.
Mom touched my shoulder.
I continued when I could.
At the end, Vincent wrote:
I thought there would always be another call. I will spend the rest of my life knowing there wasn’t.
We stood quietly afterward.
Then we let Anna go.
Not all at once.
Gently.
The wind moved through the leaves.
Luca made a small impatient noise.
Our daughter answered with a delighted squeal.
Life had terrible timing.
It also had mercy.
Afterward, we ate lunch beneath Teresa’s awning.
Salvatore held his granddaughter and listened while she babbled at him.
When he left the following day, he gave me a small box.
Inside was Anna’s flour-stained recipe card for lemon cake.
“I found it where she kept the good china,” he said.
I smiled.
“Of course you did.”
My illustration work returned slowly.
One book.
Then another.
An editor I had worked with before the marriage remembered me.
She asked for samples.
Not explanations.
I sent them.
Months later, I held a finished children’s book with my name on the cover.
Two rabbits appeared beneath a lemon tree on the final page.
I knew who they were.
Gabriel came to the little launch event at a local bookshop.
He brought no flowers.
Instead, he bought a copy and asked me to sign it.
“For whom?”
“For a man who has spent months pretending he only comes by because Teresa’s gate needs adjusting.”
I looked up.
He seemed nervous.
I liked that he did not cover it with a joke.
“Is the gate actually broken?”
“Occasionally. Not nearly as often as I visit.”
I laughed.
Then I looked toward Mom, who was managing two toddlers beside a display of postcards.
My life was full.
Messy.
Not waiting for a man to begin it.
That made the next question easier.
“Would you like coffee sometime when there’s no gate involved?”
“Yes,” he said.
We moved slowly.
There were dates and canceled dates.
There were conversations about the children, my history, and what he wanted from his own life.
He did not call me brave whenever I disagreed.
He listened.
Once, when I apologized for needing to cancel because Anna was sick, he said, “You can be disappointed without being guilty.”
I stared at the message for a long time.
Then I wrote it down.
May you like
Years earlier, I had believed love was proven by how long you could wait.
Now it was beginning to look like someone respecting the life already happening around you.
