With Love from London(51)

I eye the menu and decide on the Cobb salad, which I order when a young waiter stops by our table. Eric selects the same, but with chicken.

“I’m sorry about your mother,” I say a moment later.

“Thanks,” he says. “Something else we have in common, I guess.”

“So you grew up here, in Primrose Hill?”

“Yes,” he replies. “Just around the corner.”

“Wow,” I say, a bit envious of Eric’s seemingly idyllic childhood. “You must have wonderful memories.”

“All of my memories are with Mum,” he says, “which makes it so hard. My dad worked a lot. He was always busy. I think it took Mum’s death to really make him pause and realize what he missed along the way, you know?”

I nod.

“But I suppose that’s the unlikely gift of experiencing a loss, it makes you see things more clearly.”

I don’t tell him that my own mother’s passing seems to have had the opposite effect.

“Well, I’m very sorry for your loss.”

He smiles. “She’s been gone for twelve years now, but it never gets easier, especially here in Primrose Hill, where every single corner brings back a memory. She used to drop me off at your mum’s bookstore before her hair appointments down the block—for read-alouds with Eloise.”

I feel a lump in my throat, but quickly collect myself as he continues.

“Mum was my whole world. She gave me a magical childhood.”

“Mine did, too,” I say, surprised by my admission. “At least, for the time we were together.”

He nods. “I just wish I could have known her better in my adult life, and that she could know me in mine.” He sits up straighter in his chair and runs his hand through his hair with a sigh. “Sorry, I’m rambling.”

“No, not at all,” I say quickly. “In fact, you bring up an excellent point. What you just said—about knowing someone, but not knowing them…it’s so true—especially when it comes to our parents. They lived entire lives before we were born, weathered their own private storms, but as children, we don’t know them that way.”

He nods in agreement.

“Like you, my mother was also my whole world, and when she moved to London, I was never quite able to fill the hole she left. I spent a long time feeling confused by her sudden departure, and later angry. But now that I’m here”—I pause, exhaling deeply—“I’m beginning to realize that there’s more to her story than I knew. I still feel the pain of her absence, but I’m…trying to understand it, if that makes any sense.”

Eric’s eyes burst with compassion, and it warms me. “It absolutely makes sense, and I can’t begin to imagine what you must have been through. But if it’s any consolation at all, you should know that Eloise talked about her daughter—the amazing Valentina—so often that it was almost as if you were a fixture in the bookstore.”

I smile. “Really?”

He nods as the waiter sets our salads on the table. We both forgo the fresh-ground pepper.

“Were your parents ever happy together?” he asks.

I shrug. “I mean, yes, in an outside-looking-in sort of way. But even as a child, I suppose I always knew that something was off. They led separate lives.”

“Mine too,” he says. “I was the one thing that—”

“Kept them together,” we both say, then laugh.

Eric smiles, but there’s hesitation in his eyes. “I guess not everyone gets a fairy tale.”

I adjust my napkin in my lap. “And you don’t think you’re one of the lucky ones?”

“No, I mean, I do—I mean, I hope so.” He pauses. “Fiona and I are lucky, and happy—I guess. But watching my parents all those years made me extra cautious about forever, if that makes any sense.”

I nod.

“She wants to get married, have a family, and I do as well, but…” He rubs his forehead. “I just want to be certain, you know?”

“Oh, I know.”

“Sorry,” Eric says, setting his fork down. “I’m oversharing.”

“No, your honesty is refreshing.”

“Well, I’m glad we’re becoming friends, Valentina.”

“Me too,” I say, smiling.

I decide to tell him about the scavenger hunt my mother left for me, and he’s immediately fascinated.

“That’s brilliant,” he says.

I fill him in on her latest clue, left in Regent’s Park—omitting the bit about running into Fiona—and his eyes widen.

“Of course, she’d bring up Cicero,” he says, beaming. “But it’s not a book she wants you to find.”

“Then what is it?”

He scratches his head and looks off into the distance as if sorting through a flurry of memories. “When my mum used to take me to Eloise’s read-aloud hours, all the children would sit around her on the carpet and before she began, she’d pass around this little wooden box and we’d each pick a lollipop from inside. It was magic.” He smiles. “That’s it, Valentina.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The box—I can still picture it, like it was yesterday. It was made of mahogany, with a shiny varnish. But here’s the thing: On the top, there was an engraving that read: ‘Cicero’s Sentiments.’ I had no idea what it meant at the time, and as a kid, I read it phonetically, at least in my mind, as ‘kick-er-o.’?” He laughs. “But looking back, I think it was very telling of your mum’s literary humor. I mean, Cicero was one of the greatest thinkers of the Roman era, right? And she kept candy inside. It was brilliant.”