I walked toward the double glass doors with Dante behind me pushing a cart with our luggage while my father talked on the phone. I was anxious. I had dreamed of coming back so many times, but for a while it hadn’t seemed real, and it almost didn’t seem true that I was back in Italy.
It was as if the time hadn’t passed.
As if nothing had happened at all.
I walked through the doors and made my way through everyone waiting there. Then I met eyes with someone I knew. “Chabela?”
She turned. A few wrinkles appeared in her forehead. Then her face was transformed by an explosion of joy.
“Maya! Is it really you? It’s so amazing to see you again!”
I ran over and we wrapped our arms around each other.
“I’m happy to see you, too,” I told her. “How are you?”
“Great, dear, just great. As always.”
“Are you here for your daughter?”
“I was, but I’m leaving now. My plane departs in a few hours.”
Giulio and Dante appeared next to us and they and Chabela looked each other over.
“Guys,” I said, “this is Chabela. We met the first time I flew over here, and she was so nice to me. These guys are… They’re…”
“Her parents,” Dante said, reaching out his hand. “Buonasera, I’m Dante.”
My cheeks were trembling with happiness. All my life, I’d wanted a father, and now I had two, and they were better than I could ever have hoped. Giulio reached out his hand and introduced himself, before warning me, “Maya, we should get a move on or we’ll miss our train.”
“I’ll be right there,” I said.
Chabela watched them walk off through the bystanders and asked with surprise, “You’ve got two fathers?”
“Yeah, Giulio’s my biological father and Dante is his husband, so I guess you’d call him my stepdad?”
“They look so young. I was wondering if one of them was your boyfriend. Good thing I didn’t open my mouth!”
We laughed, and I told her she was right, that it was hard to believe he was that much older than me.
“So he’s what brought you to Italy,” she said. “Well, it seems to have turned out well. I’m glad.”
“How do you know?” I asked her. “I never mentioned that!”
“It was obvious you were looking for something. I just didn’t know what it was.”
I hugged her. “I’ve got to go, Chabela. I hope we see each other again.”
“Me too, Gorgeous. You take care.”
“You too.”
I ran off toward the tracks as I saw on the monitors that the train for Naples was leaving in just a few minutes.
Seeing her again brought back to me the first time I set foot in that airport: who I was then and the different person I was now. Aneternity seemed to have passed since then. For all I’d lived through. All that had happened. All those important moments.
But it had just been a few months, followed by weeks when I’d fallen and gotten back up and become a much freer version of myself. A version that was much more me.
It had been worth it.
