Here, after a whole day spent in front of my PC, all that awaits me is an empty house and a takeaway meal that no one cooked with me in mind.
“Thank you,” I say.
“For what?”
“Thank you, but I don’t want your shares.”
“I don’t understand ... you don’t want my shares?”
“My future isn’t here,” I reply. I place my untouched glass down on the table and stand up. “I’ll give you mine.”
Saxton watches in silence as I leave his office.
I return to my office with a strange lightness. I grab my coat, turn off the light, and take the stairs toward the exit.
“I didn’t know how else to get through to you,” thunders Saxton over the banister, the echo in the stairwell lending his words a strange, godlike effect. “But you finally got it.”
70
Elisa
I love to stroll alone among the vines at dawn.
It’s mid-November. A light, low fog rises from the ground, the vineyard’s wedding veil, illuminated by the milky autumn light.
I walk between two rows of vines along the path that leads from the annex to the villa and reach out to touch the leaves that are turning from red to brown.
Even though it’s starting to get cold, I walk barefoot. I want to root myself in the earth. I’m never leaving again.
Le Giuggiole is mine.
I close my eyes and inhale, allowing the fresh, humid air to tickle my lungs. It’s my air.
When I reopen my eyes, I notice a blurry figure heading toward me.
The closer he gets, the faster my heart pounds.
I’d recognize that shape among a thousand people.
Michael.
I want to run toward him, but I feel stuck.
The smaller the distance between us, the faster his pace, as he comes closer and closer.
He holds out his arms and enfolds me, imprisons me, holds me close to him, and only when I’m pressed against his warm body do I realize how cold I’d been.
“I realized I don’t have a photo of the two of us,” he says. “I never put photos in frames before because I had nothing to frame. Now I want us to be in the frame together.”
“It’ll look great on your kitchen counter.”
“There’s no kitchen anymore. There’s not even an apartment. I brought the frame with me. We can put it wherever you’d like.” He bows his head, pressing his forehead against mine. “You were right. I was scared.”
“Of what?”
“Scared I’ll live the rest of my life wondering what it would have been like. Scared that in forty years, I’ll find myself back where I started. Scared of living in an empty apartment forever. Scared of a future without you.”
“Are you here to stay?”
