Chapter 59
James
The newlyweds are staring into each other’s eyes like they are alone in a honeymoon suite. The flowering vines hang around them and overhead, framing the residual evening light that illuminates the space through the glass sides of the green house. It’s a beautiful, candid moment. And I’m capturing it for them. But where my heart usually feels full and overflowing in moments like this, right now it feels like someone’s chiseling into my chest, splintering and chipping away at the ruins.
I shouldn’t have agreed to this job. Ava was still here when I accepted the gig, and I wanted more than anything for her to see a traditional Urbino wedding—to experience that unbridled happiness with the locals and, of course, with me. However; here I stand with nothing but my camera to keep me company. And that used to be enough. Now I only feel her absence.
“Va bene. è ora. They are calling you to the dance floor,” I tell them and they startle at the sound of my voice. Yeah, I’m still here.
“Grazie,” the bride smiles, yanking her husband out through the door toward the tent.
I follow. First dance, then cutting of the cake, and I’m free to go. When will other people’s happiness not feel like a wet towel smothering my face.
You could go after her, Nina had told me. As if the thought had never occurred to me.
And then what?
Drag her back to Italy? Set up shop in Philadelphia while she works eighty-hour weeks at her new firm?
That’s if she’s even happy to see me.
I reach into my suit jacket pocket and take out the postcard, running my finger around the worn edges of the once-white cardstock. I flip it, take in her soft curving letters and imagine her at the desk in the guest house, bent over the paper with narrowed, hyper-focused eyes. I don’t need to read the words again. They are carved deep into the folds of my brain. But my eyes pass over them anyway and her voice floods my skull.
James,
I’ve had this postcard in my possession for six years, five months, and twenty-two days. When she handed it to me, she said, “You’ll know when to write on it when you have someone you want to share it with,” and I rolled my eyes like I always did when she made those vague, romantic comments. But, as usual, she was right.
She wanted me to have what she had in Urbino—to be inspired by the place that she claimed “transformed” her and learn who I was and what I was capable of. And when that became impossible the first time around, she made me promise to find a way there. I thought this trip was just another task to fulfill. It was an obligation. Another box on my checklist.
I didn’t know that I’d be part of a family again.
I didn’t know that I’d find a guide that could measure up to her.
You gave me Urbino—a place I will escape to every night—every moment I need a break from reality. You gave me back pieces of myself that I thought died with her.
And I’ll spend my life feeling grateful to you.
Love always,
Ava
The music starts around me, and I study Ava’s pencil sketch of me at the bottom right corner of the card. Every time I look at the drawing I feel a small swell of triumph inside me—to know that somehow Urbino brought her back to art, even if it is just in a tiny sketch, brings me more joy than I have a right to feel. I slip the postcard back in the inside pocket of my jacket and lift the camera to my eye, focusing on the couple dancing. The warm buzz I usually feel behind the lens eludes me as I imagine Ava in my arms on her last night here, the way the chatter of my family and friends floated around us as we spun slowly in the grass.
You could go after her.
She made her choice. She wanted to leave. Just like my mother chose her career.
We can’t control how others feel. Or don’t feel.
The groom dips his bride and her laughter rings out over the music. Friends and family look on behind them with blissful smiles. There’s a layer of warmth and joy surrounding the couple, and I try to focus on capturing that, never once forgetting that I’m looking in on something beautiful from the outside.