I started writing this letter so many times, and didn’t know how to start. In the end, I decided to simply start with the truth, so here it is. I have watched you your whole life, from when you were a little girl until you had your own daughter, and then a granddaughter after that. I never wanted to leave you, but at the time, I was barely an adult myself, and my life felt as if I didn’t have a say in it. I was so determined to return for you, but fate meant that it wasn’t to be. I want you to know that not a day passed that I didn’t think about you.
One day I will leave everything to you, and I hope that you find a second home in Argentina, and that you feel as if you belong in the country I have loved so fiercely. You might have been born in London, but somewhere deep inside,you have Spanish blood flowing through your veins, and a connection to Argentina that can never be erased.
Once, many years ago, I was forced into a marriage that I resisted with all of my heart, but that marriage gave me you, and I wouldn’t have swapped those precious moments I spent holding you in my arms for anything. I only wish that things could have been different, and that I could have spent the rest of my life getting to know you.
If you’ve received this letter, then I am long gone. So please, breathe in the fresh air, explore the land around you and open your heart. And know that you were forever held in mine, until my very last breath.
Valentina Santiago
Rose stood, leaving the letter on the table as she walked out of the door and stood in the sunshine, tilting her head up to the sky and breathing in the air, just as her great-grandmother had instructed. Because she’d been right—somehow, despite everything, she did feel the connection to this property, to Argentina, to the legacy Valentina had left behind. And now she finally knew the truth.
‘There you are.’
Benjamin’s arms wrapped around her from behind, and she let him hold her, leaning back into him as she looked out at the landscape around them. Her world had been turned upside down more than once these past few years, but Rose had the most overwhelming feeling that she was at last,somehow, exactly where she was supposed to be.
31
ARGENTINA, 1995
When Valentina saw Felipe walking up to her porch, she was sitting in the front room, a book in hand, enjoying the late-afternoon sun as it bathed her chair in light. Her book fell from her hand, and her bookmark along with it, and she knew that this was a day she would never forget for as long as she lived.
Valentina rose and went into the hallway, checking her reflection in the mirror and smoothing down some flyaway wisps of hair. It had been a long time since she’d seen Felipe—back then she’d had a jet-black mane of hair that she’d preferred to wear loose and falling down her back. Now, that dark hair was streaked with silver, and she more often wore it pulled back into a soft bun. There was a gentle knock then, and Valentina took a deep breath, at peace with how she looked. She was a woman in her seventies now, but then Felipe also was a much older man than he’d been the last time they’d seen each other, but she guessed that he too still felt like the younger version of himself that looked nothing like the reflection staring back from the mirror.
She walked slowly down the hall, on the one hand not sure if she was ready for this moment, but on the other, knowing that she’d been waiting for it since she was a girl of eighteen.
Valentina swung open the door. ‘Felipe,’ she said, as he took off his hat and held it bunched together in his hands. ‘I was so sorry to hear about the passing of your wife.’
He nodded, his dark brown eyes meeting hers. His face was drawn with lines now, but his skin was still golden, weathered from years beneath the sun riding horses, and he was fortunate to still have a thick head of hair, albeit grey now.
‘She was a wonderful woman,’ he said, as tears shone from his eyes. ‘She loved me and I loved her, and she was the most amazing mother to our children, and then grandmother to our grandchildren.’
Valentina stared back at him, neither of them daring to blink as they stood before each other, and when he dropped his hat to the ground and reached for her hands, she let him without thinking.
‘But she wasn’t you, Valentina,’ he whispered. ‘I’ve spent my entire life trying to be the best husband I could be to her, making her believe that there was no one more important to me in my life, and I did that. I almost made myself believe it. But after she passed away, I couldn’t help it, I’d lie there remembering what it was like between us, and those feelings haven’t changed in over sixty years.’
She wrapped her fingers around his, squeezing his hand. ‘My feelings haven’t changed, either,’ she said. ‘There have been others, of course there have, but I’ve always hoped that one day, if we waited long enough…’
‘That the day would finally come for us to be together,’ he finished for her.
Valentina didn’t know what to say. ‘Your family, it’s so soon, and I don’t want to show any disrespect to your late wife or your children.’
‘Does anyone have to know, until we’re ready?’ he asked. ‘Can this not just be something between us? A friendship that we’renurturing to see what might come of it? I’d be happy to just sit in your company and know that we’re making the most of our time together.’
Valentina nodded, still holding his hand. ‘Yes, Felipe. This can be something just for us, two people who have rekindled their friendship after many years. It doesn’t have to be anything more.’
The hopeful expression in his eyes made her smile—that after all these years, he still wanted to be with her, that the love between them had never faded. She understood the pull he’d felt, knew what it felt like to pretend there wasn’t someone else even though that person was still locked somewhere in your heart.
‘Shall we begin by you coming inside and having a coffee with me?’ she asked. ‘We can even sit out here on the porch if you’d like, so we don’t feel as if we’re hiding.’
‘I’d like that,’ Felipe said. ‘And Valentina?’
She waited for him to speak.
‘I need you to know that I loved her, that what I had with my wife was sincere. I didn’t love her in the way I’ve always loved you, but it was a love, nonetheless, and I don’t want to pretend that she didn’t mean the world to me. Because she did.’
‘You don’t need to explain yourself to me, Felipe,’ she said, gesturing for him to come inside. ‘We’ve both lived our lives, and now…’ Valentina stopped and turned around, doing something she’d thought about doing for decades. She lifted her hand and gently placed it against Felipe’s chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart as she leaned in and pressed her lips to his. It wasn’t a passionate kiss, but it was a soft touch of her mouth to his that was filled with promise, a stirring of long-held memories. ‘Now it’s time for us to choose what we want. It wasn’t meant to be before, but perhaps it is now?’
Felipe nodded, and she watched as he swallowed, his eyes glancing down at her mouth as she smiled. She hadn’t kissed the man in more than fifty years, and they weren’t the same people they’d been then, but the chemistry between them was still there.
