“Where are we going?” she asked, looking at the kitchen, which was almost spotless, but she had been cleaning more lately, like she couldn’t help herself.
“To free you,” I said. “Freeing us.”
“From what?”
I lifted her hand and kissed it in answer.
Luca was wanting to get down—he’d started walking early, and he wanted to be as independent as possible. I gave him a sharp command to still himself in Italian, and he did. I kissed hishead, fixing his hair, and he smiled at me. I laughed, and so did he.
Stella grinned at him, wiping his face. He gazed at her like she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. He loved his mamma.
I loved her too—more than my next breath.
I brought my family to a prime spot for star gazing. I’d already set an old blanket on the ground for us to sit on. My wife sat first, and then I took a seat with Luca, sitting him on his bottom. He started picking up rocks right away, busying himself with toys the land gave him. It wasn’t big enough for him to eat, but he did lick it. He stared at it, going cross eyed a little, and then his face scrunched up and he shook as if it was sour.
Like,yeah, fuck no, that’s not as good as mamma’s food!
Stella and I looked at each other and laughed.
He rocked, laughing with us, even though he was still searching the ground for more “toys” to occupy himself with. I stared at his face, running my hands through his soft, dark hair, and when I looked up, my wife was gazing at me like I was the star.
“Remember,la mia stella, you are the star; I am the darkness. My eyes are on you, not the other way around.”
She startled a little, as if I had caught her doing something she thought she was doing on the sly. She had thought my attention was solely on my son, but it was always on her too—even when she didn’t think so.
She nodded and looked up.
“Talk to me,” I said in Italian.
She understood.
“I don’t know, I really don’t anymore,” she whispered. “I can’t stop thinking about that night. I can’t stop thinking about what would have happened to Luca after. Because…” She pulled her knees up to her chest and set her arms around them, restingher chin there, keeping her eyes up and away from mine. But she wasn’t looking at the stars, she was looking at a spot in the sky that was void of them. It was completely dark.
And my wife couldn’t have been more beautiful to me in that moment.
Her hair was long, that beautiful strawberry blonde, the same as her mama’s, and it waved down her back. Her features were slim and elegant. Her skin was touched by sun and glowing. She wore a flowered dress and brown boots to keep up with our son as he started to run through our yard. But the dress didn’t hide her curves. Curves I ached to trace with my fingertips even in my deepest sleeps. A breeze kicked up and circulated her essence around me, flowers, the spices from dinner, and the smell of our son, our love. I breathed them all in, willing them to become a part of my DNA.
I knew as the years passed, she’d only become more beautiful to me, wiser, more…womanly. And my heart, at the end of it, would die because it couldn’t hold in my love for her anymore.
A woman loved me enough to give me life.
One day, another woman’s love would take it back, sending me up to the stars like I was made of helium instead of flesh, blood, and bone.
I’d wait for her up there someday in complete darkness again, until she came along and brightened my world. I refused to think of the end of our lives any other way.
She sighed and looked at me. “I didn’t tell you this, but that night…Itrulyunderstood the love between your parents. How one couldn’t live without the other. Luca…one day, Luca will leave us to find his own happiness, like I did, like you did, and...that’s separate from the connection we share. It’s a part of it, because he’s a part of us, but…it’s just us, Matteo. And as guilty as that makes me feel, because my mom wasn’t like thatwith me, I can’t stop feeling it, you know? Like my air depends on yours.”
I took her hand and kissed it. “I understand, baby. I didn’t before. But I understood the second my eyes found yours.”
“Stella without Matteo doesn’t make sense,” she whispered, her eyes turning glossy from the tears she held back. In this light, they looked silver.
“Matteo and Stella were born to love each other, and one without the other doesn’t exist.”
“A star can’t shine without the darkness.”
“And the darkness would just be…dark, without the stars. I’d see nothing but my own world without you in my life,la mia stella.”
“I love you so much, Matteo.”
