Chapter 29 - Julian
TWENTY-NINE
JULIAN
PRESENT DAY
“He’s so fucking stubborn, Mammona,” I complain to the old woman.
She just got out of the hospital after Pietro found her unconscious in the kitchen three weeks ago.
It’s been happening more and more this year.
Cardiac arrhythmia, the doctors say, but at eighty-nine—in two weeks—there’s not much they can do to reduce the palpitations or manage the drops in blood pressure.
She refused any potential surgery, and when the doctors suggested she stop alcohol and caffeine, she cackled so hard the entire hospital trembled.
No one could take that nightcap from her hands.
She did agree to spend more time outside, though.
We walk through the Moretti garden at snail pace, her arm linked with mine as she uses me as her crutch to support herself.
The beginning of March is particularly mild this year, and the rays of sun accompany our little trail down the bench in front of the sea.
Mammona remains in her warm, black wool dress, a traditional mourning attire for women in their nineties on Kalliste.
Over it, she layered a bright pink cashmere scarf because ‘her husband died but she didn’t.
’ That’s our Mammona, adding her own take to traditions.
“Who did you think you married, my boy?” She chuckles. “Be kind to him, Jules. You don’t know what he went through.”
And that’s part of the problem. I don’t really know.
I can guess but Igor refuses to talk about it.
He refuses to talk, period. Most days when he’s not avoiding me, he trains with the Moretti men.
He’s back to being a soldier, all over again.
I don’t know if that’s good for him, to remain in that life he was forced to live.
He could be anyone, do anything. My therapist says he might be seeking comfort in familiarity.
His stitches have healed nicely. The scars are still swollen and bright pink, but physically he’s in shape.
Mentally, it’s like he’s still in Russia, and I don’t know what I can do to get through to him.
I tried training with him, reading in silence with him, sharing the book I’m reading with him, but he refused to open the pages.
My mother welcomed him back with open arms, and he gave her a tiny smile, yet it was sad and the permanent cloud over his irises never lifted. She did most of the talking as she took him through the wine cellar to show him proudly the blends I worked on while he was away.
“You kept working. That’s good,” he said.
And then went right back to his silence.
“He sleeps on the couch, Mammona,” I tell her as I watch the first cabin cruisers of the season leave the harbour for an afternoon at sea.
Her eyes burn the side of my face. She hums before turning her attention on the calm spectacle underneath.
Boats come and go. Small as ants, people mile about on the docks of the marina.
It’s all so simple. Their lives haven’t been blasted and forever changed by an evil man.
Or maybe they have. What do I know of their lives?
I take an invigorating inhale and spill the contents of my heart to the woman who’s probably seen and heard it all. She lost her husband in territorial disputes. One of her grandchildren is still in a coma, for Christ’s sake. If someone knows pain, it’s Mammona.
“It’s hard. I waited three years for him to be back. I don’t know how to talk to him anymore.”
“Would you wait a few more years?”
“Yes. Of course. He’s my everything.”
My husband is in there, somewhere. Under the layers of rubble and harm Misha has left behind. Somewhere hides the boy I fell for, who smiled at me like I hung the moon, and protected the people he loved at the cost of his own sanity.
“Maybe you should start from the beginning,” Mammona muses.
“What do you mean?”
“Be his friend.”
“Like when we were sixteen? We were never really friends.”
“That’s the problem with your generation,” she tuts disapprovingly. “You go all in from the start. Your man is traumatised. He doesn’t need you to come on strong and woo him, and go all seduction mode with your smoulder and your good looks.”
“Are you saying I can’t use my good looks, Mammona?”
She chuckles and smacks my bicep.
“O baullo, our Igor needs softness. A safe place to land. Right now, you’re anything but safe. You’re practically sex on legs. Give the man a break. Maybe walk on the beach in silence. Or ask him to help you throw my birthday party.”
“You know about the birthday party?”
“My boy, when you’re eighty-nine, people think you’re senile and deaf. But I have all my head, and my hearing has never been better. You couldn’t hide my surprise birthday party if you tried. Also, Colomba is a doll, but God, she’s loud.”
Lana certainly took her ruthlessness from her father and her commanding presence from her mother. I smile at Mammona. Maybe she should be my therapist. What she says makes so much more sense.
I have been growling at Igor, haven’t I? Gosh, I’m an idiot. I’ve been going insane with the need to have my husband back, exactly like we were as we exchanged vows. That wretched selfishness reared its ugly head, and it’s costing me. Again. I can’t keep making the same mistakes.
I shake my head, dispelling the thoughts.
I haven’t been thinking of his needs, or not in the way that serves him only.
I’ve let my fears and how much I’ve missed him guide me, imposing my presence on him, being overbearing, asking how he’s feeling three times a day like I can’t fucking see the pain on his damn face and wants me to stop pestering him.
That stops today.
I can’t force him to feel better.
I can only show him that no matter what, he has a family to rely on. And I’m part of it. I meant what I said when I told him I’d never let him go. Igor Bartoli is mine. That will never change. But my impatience can.
“Where are we going?” Igor asks, shifting on the passenger’s seat every so often, clearly uncomfortable with being in such close quarters with me.
My flat isn’t big but at least he can hide in the study when he doesn’t want to be faced with my presence. Now, in the mint-coloured Fiat 500 I borrowed from my mum, there’s no place to hide.
When Mammona suggested I become my husband’s friend first, before reconnecting as husbands or lovers or whatever we were before, I may have arranged for this little trip as soon as I got her back into the house. I’m still that eager pup Igor used to call me, after all. Sue me.
“You’ll see.”
“Uhh, Julian, I know you have the best of intentions but surprises and I really don’t do well.”
I glance to the side. Igor wrings his hands together before wiping them on his jeans.
Shit.
This whole ‘put someone’s needs before yours’ is really hard.
“I’m sorry,” I say, feeling chastened. “We’re going to a farm in the mountains, in the county of Roccapina. It’s just a thirty minute drive.”
“A farm?”
I nod, his eyes boring into the side of my face. My cheeks and the top of my ears heat. Why is this so hard?
“I… I wanted to do something different.” I clear my throat. “It’s lamb season.”
“Are we there to eat them?” he asks, confused.
“What? No! You know how Giulia’s a vegetarian, and well, she convinced me to go without meat, too.
I don’t really miss it, but I truly can’t go without cheese.
And she says cheese doesn’t count.” Great, now I’m rambling.
I pause, exhale, and glance back at him with a shy smile.
“We’re not there to eat the lambs. They’re…
I guess we’re there to cuddle with them? ”
“Julian, are you asking me if I’d like to cuddle lambs all afternoon?”
“Yeah?”
In my peripheral vision, Igor clamps a hand over his mouth, then frowns like he can’t believe he almost got caught laughing again.
He doesn’t smile again but his features have softened when I throw another look at him.
He relaxes into his seat and nods. I’m not sure if the gesture is for me or for himself.
“Okay. I think I’d like that.”
That’s the understatement of the century.
The tour guide takes us to the sheepfold they keep a few lambs in at the beginning of the season to get extra coin from tourists—and husbands desperate to win their husband’s friendship, apparently.
It’s built to look like an old building of crumbling grey stones, with only hay on the ground, giving the illusion of an authentic shepherd shelter.
I don’t give two shits if they built it two years ago or if it was indeed on the property when this farming family bought the land.
I can’t keep my eyes off Igor, seated on the hay, cross-legged, nuzzling his buzzed head into the soft curls of not one, not two, but three lambs.
They’re all over him. And we’re not even feeding the adorable beasts.
Igor talks to them softly in Russian, petting them, rubbing their heads like they’re dogs. My heart does something weird inside my ribcage. It’s not flutters, not exactly palpitations either. Just a unique rhythm created only for him.
Mammona was right. Igor needs softness. I may have taken that quite literally, but I’m glad I did. His whole body seems more loose as we get back into the car and drive the road down to Sant Armellu.
I swallow and fidget behind the wheel. The silence makes me uncomfortable. I want to fix this. I want to fix him. But it doesn’t work like that. When it’s not my therapist’s voice inside my head, it’s Lana’s or Mammona’s.
This trip was as much to bring him comfort and something new as it was for me to get used to the new Igor.
The man I knew and loved three years ago, that I fell for every day for more than ten years, isn't the same man seated on the passenger’s side.
And the sooner I come to terms with that reality, the sooner we can begin anew.
“You’re loud when you overthink, Jules.”
“Oh.” I clear my throat. “Yeah, sorry.”
I glide a strand of hair behind my ear with my right hand then wrap my fingers around the gear stick, just to give myself something to do.
Before I can tell him how sorry I am again, my hand burns with a warmth I haven’t felt in so long.
I'm shocked I’m not passing out from it.
Igor and I may have been physical when we weren’t sure we would survive the following day, before we stormed Misha’s compound, but it was a desperate sort of touch.
A physical rekindling that didn’t reach the depth of my soul like this simple touch does.
Igor’s hand on mine is a revelation.
“Thank you,” he murmurs.
Then, it’s gone. Just like that. The moment lasted but for a few seconds, yet I’m so excited I could drag the window down and shout out that my husband willingly touched me after days of avoiding me.
“So, you liked it?” I ask, just to hear his voice again.
“Yeah, pup. It was nice.”
‘Pup’. Not ‘Julian’. Fuck, the power that man has over me.
I clear my throat and pinch my lips so I’m not grinning like a fool. But inside, everything is on fire. Fuck butterflies, there’s a whole beehive inside me.
Now I only need to think of another simple date. And try not to get to woo my husband like my whole being is begging me to.