“Of course not. Losing your father when you were a boy was atraumatic experience. It’s normal that it left a mark on you. I can’t judge you for that.”
“And I can’t judge you for wanting to find me.”
“I shouldn’t have done it.”
“You should have, Maya. Of course you should have! I’d have done the same thing in your place!”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Because I haven’t stopped thinking of you even for one day since you left. Thinking about all you told me about your family and the way you grew up. How alone you must have felt to leave everything behind and take off running because you glimpsed a possibility, just a possibility, in a photograph.”
I dried the tears stinging my cheeks with my sleeve. “I needed to find out if there was a place for me out there. Somewhere I could fit in.”
“There is, Maya,” he said, so energetically he almost sounded angry. “It’s called Sorrento. And I want you to come back there with me.”
“Are you serious?” I asked, partly timid, partly excited.
“We all want you there. Dante, your grandmother, your aunt, the kids… You’re part of our family.” He reached up and touched my brow, and I shivered. “You’re a Dassori.”
“But…I’m sorry to come back to this… You said you never…”
“That doesn’t matter anymore. You exist. You’re my daughter. And it’s not like I even need any proof. I mean, look at us! And I missed out on so much: being with you, watching you grow up… I don’t know what you were like as a little girl, I don’t know what kind of father I would have been, but there’s one thing I do know: I don’t want to miss out on all the other things I can still experience with you.”
I struggled to stop the torrent of tears, and they kept flowing, but I was smiling, too. So was Giulio. He wrapped his arms around meand pulled me in. Waves of emotion washed over me, and all I could do was say yes. Yes to life, yes to everything that was happening to me.
Because I didn’t want to miss out on all the things he and I could share, either.
71
It was hard to say goodbye to my mother and Guille. It wasn’t sad, though. It wasn’t agoodbye, it was anuntil we meet again. We were a family now, and I wasn’t going to lose them again. I would stay in contact. I would be sure I was always a presence in their lives.
Madrid was far, and we decided a train ride would be much more comfortable than a bus. Giulio fell asleep almost instantly, his head leaning on Dante’s shoulder. I wasn’t so scared of Dante now. We’d had the chance to talk things over the night before. It was uncomfortable at first, but we were united by a person we both loved a lot, and we promised each other we’d do what it took to make our relationship work.
We had to change trains in Murcia, and we had enough time to grab a bite to eat in the bar there. We talked about the rest of our trip over sandwiches and soft drinks. Our idea was to spend one night in Madrid before flying to Rome.
I could hardly contain my excitement about going back and seeing Catalina. My grandmother. I never imagined I’d be able to say those words and feel my chest swell with joy instead of fear.
“What are you smiling about?” Giulio asked groggily, woken up by the jarring of the train. I had been looking outside through the window. Now I turned to him.
“I was thinking of Catalina. I’ve really missed her.”
“She missed you, too. You and Lucas… Sorry, I shouldn’t have mentioned him. It came out before I could stop myself. Your mother told me you were having problems.”
“It’s fine,” I said.
“Are you no longer together then?”
“No, we split up. It was better for both of us.”
Giulio bent over the table that was between our seats. “You don’t think there’s a chance you could work it out? You seemed perfect for each other.”
“We were, but…” I shrugged and noticed Dante had stopped reading his book and was peeking up at me. “There are other things in life that matter more to him right now.”
“Like what?” Giulio asked as if he were struggling to believe that.
Dante said something in Italian that started withAmoreand ended withdisagio. I was pretty sure he was telling Giulio I might be uncomfortable, so I let him know I was fine, then told Giulio, “It’s complicated…”
As the train came closer to Madrid, I told them about the weeks I’d spent with Lucas there. It was hard at first to order my thoughts and transform them into words. It was hard just to remember it all. Three weeks had passed, and my feelings were still just as raw as the day I’d left, if not worse.
