Love & Gelato(71)

I sighed. No wonder this had been the place my mom had finally noticed Howard. Even if she hadn’t already fallen for his sense of humor and awesome taste in gelato, she probably would have taken one look at the view and gone completely out of her mind with love. It was the sort of place that could make a stampede of buffalos seem romantic.

I set the journal down on the ground, then slowly made my way around the platform, scanning every inch of it. I really wanted to find some sign of my mom, a stone scratched with H+H or maybe some lost journal pages she’d tucked under a rock or something, but all I found were two spiders that looked at me with about as much interest as a pair of British Royal Guards.

I gave up on my little scavenger hunt and walked back to the center of the platform, wrapping my arms around myself. I needed a question answered, and I got the feeling this was the best place to ask.

“Mom, why did you send me to Italy?” My voice threw off the quiet peacefulness of everything around me, but I shut my eyes tight to listen.

Nothing.

I tried again. “Why did you send me to be with Howard?”

Still nothing. Then the wind picked up and made a whipping noise through the grass and trees, and suddenly all the loneliness and emptiness I carried around with me swelled up so big it swallowed me whole. I pressed my palms to my eyes, pain ricocheting through my body. What if my mom and my grandma and the counselor were wrong? What if I hurt this badly for the rest of my life? What if every second of every day would be less about what I had than what I’d lost?

I sank to the floor, pain washing over me in big, jagged waves. She’d told me over and over how wonderful my life was going to be. How proud she was of me. How much she wished she could be there, not just for the big moments, but for the little ones. And then she’d said she’d find a way to stay close to me. But so far, she’d just been gone. Then gone some more. And all that gone stretched out in front of me like a horizon, endless and daunting and empty. I’d been running around Italy trying to solve the mystery of the journal, trying to understand why she’d done what she’d done, but really I’d just been looking for her. And I wasn’t going to find her. Ever.

“I can’t do this,” I said aloud, pressing my face into my hands. “I can’t be here without you.”

And that’s when I got slapped. Well, maybe not slapped—it was more like a nudging—but suddenly I was getting to my feet because a word was pushing itself into my brain.

Look.

I shaded my eyes. The sun was rising over the hills, heating up the undersides of the clouds and setting them on fire in crazy shades of pink and gold. Everything around me was bright and beautiful and suddenly very clear.

I didn’t get to stop missing her. Ever. It was the thing that my life had handed me, and no matter how heavy it was, I was never going to be able to set it down. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to be okay. Or even happy. I couldn’t imagine it yet exactly, but maybe a day would come when the hole inside me wouldn’t ache quite so badly and I could think about her, and remember, and it would be all right. That day felt light-years away, but right at this moment I was standing on a tower in the middle of Tuscany and the sunrise was so beautiful that it hurt.

And that was something.

I picked up the journal. It was time to finish.



JUNE 19

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. I had that song lyric written on a piece of paper above my desk for almost a year, and only today does it actually mean anything to me. I’ve spent the entire afternoon wandering the streets and thinking, and a few things have become clear.

First, I have to leave Italy. Last September I met an American woman who’s trapped in a terrible marriage because Italian law says that children stay with the father. I doubt Matteo will ever want anything to do with our baby, but I can’t take that chance.

And second, I can’t tell Howard how I feel about him. He thinks I’ve already chosen someone else, and he needs to keep thinking that. Otherwise he’ll leave behind the life he’s created for himself for a chance to start things with me. I want that so badly, but not enough to let him give up his dream of living and working in the middle of so much beauty. It’s what he deserves.

So there it is. In loving Howard, I have to leave him. And to protect my child, I have to put as much distance between her and her father as possible. (Yes, I think it’s a girl.)

If I could go back to one moment—just one—I would be back at the tower, a whole world of possibility ahead of me. And even though my heart hurts more than I ever thought it could, I wouldn’t take back that sunrise or this baby for anything. This is a new chapter. My life. And I’m going to run at it with arms outstretched. Anything else would be a waste.



The End. The rest of the journal was blank. I slowly turned to the front cover and read that first sentence one more time.

I made the wrong choice.

Sonia had been wrong. My mom hadn’t sent the journal to the cemetery for me—she’d sent it for Howard. She’d wanted him to know what had really happened and tell him that she’d loved him all along. And then, even though she couldn’t go back and change their story, she’d done the next best thing.

She’d sent me.





Chapter 25




I PRACTICALLY FLEW BACK TO the cemetery. I was incredibly nervous, but I felt light, too. No matter what Howard’s reaction was, it was going to be okay. And he deserved to read her story. Right this second.