Chapter 7 #4
And there she was, walking toward him, bathed in blue moonlight. The one true love of his life.
She lowered her sweatshirt hood, pushed two hands through her hair and smiled like she always did when she saw him, as he croaked the words, “Gianna. You came.”
“Of course.”
She sat down next to him. Her voice dropped. “Alfie? What’s going on?”
He realized she now knew everything. The notebook had revealed a lifetime of secrets. What’s going on? The question seemed too big to answer.
“Please, Alfie. You can tell me. Are you sick? Has something affected your . . . thinking?”
“My thinking is fine,” he said softy.
“But what you wrote in that notebook—-”
“It’s true.”
“Alfie.”
“All of it.”
Gianna placed her palms on the sides of his face. He inhaled with her touch.
“Oh, Alfie,” she whispered. “You’re not well.”
“Don’t feel bad for me, Gianna. I’ve been blessed. I got to be with the woman I loved for more than forty years.”
Gianna raised her eyebrows.
“Me?”
“Of course.”
“But we were never . . . in love.”
“Speak for yourself.”
He took her hands. They were cold, and he squeezed them together.
“Gianna, listen. When I was in the hospital, after my stroke, I felt like I had wasted my life. I missed you so much. I missed the way you greeted me when I came home, the little notes you left me on the piano, the touch of you in the morning, the way we used to make love.”
Gianna felt dizzy.
“Alfie, that never happened.”
“It did. Once. Sharing a bed with you was such a privilege. Losing it left a hole inside me forever. But in that hospital room I realized, even if I could never receive such love again, I hadn’t lost the ability to give it. To shower you with it from afar.”
He smiled. “There’s no rule against that.”
Gianna looked down, but Alfie lifted a finger under her chin until her eyes again met his. “That’s what I did, Gianna. As soon as I’d recovered enough to croak out a single syllable, I chose the one word that’s defined my whole insane life.”
“Twice?” she whispered.
“Twice. And I went all the way back to 1978, that day in Philadelphia, during the thunderstorm, remember? Only this time, knowing you could never care for me the same way, I never took that elephant necklace out of the bag. Never said ‘I love you.’ Never kissed you through the glass.
“We hung out, as friends, and from that point on, I did everything I could to stay close to you. I became your sounding board, your confidant, your lens--carrier, your midnight pizza--cutter . . .”
Gianna, despite herself, began to smile.
“Your runner--to--the--drugstore, your morning coffeemaker, your electrician, your caulker, your B12 shot--in--the--thigh--giver . . .”
She was laughing now.
“Your chauffer, your toilet--unclogger, your temperature--taker, your one--phone--call--away assistant—-”
“My everything,” Gianna whispered.
“Everything I could be, except the one thing I couldn’t.”
Gianna dropped her head. She saw their feet lined up together, her two white tennis shoes, his two brown loafers.
“You really believe this,” she murmured.
“Why wouldn’t I? It’s the truth.”
He waited until she looked up again.
“If you can’t accept the stories of my many lives,” he said, “just accept the message that runs through all of them.”
“What message?”
“That you are deeply loved, Gianna. That you have always been deeply loved. That every night, sleeping in another room, I was dreaming of lying beside you. That for all these years, you’ve had my heart to break.
“And all that time, this second time around, I never left your side.”
?
With that, Gianna broke down. She buried her face in her hands.
She had stopped imagining any man’s affection after things ended so badly with Mike.
She’d hidden herself in work and flipped off the switch on intimacy.
She felt tears filling the space between her palms and her cheeks. Were they for Alfie, or for herself?
“I’m going to have to leave now,” Alfie whispered.
“Wait,” she gasped. “Are you really dying?”
“Well, in a few minutes, I’m going to kind of lose it.
I’ll have a stroke. And I won’t be able to speak.
I don’t know how much longer I’ll last after that.
I get the sense it’s not long. It’s OK. Like my grandmother said, there comes a point where you want to see what comes next more than you want to go back. ”
Gianna tried to imagine a life without Alfie.
To her surprise, it hurt like a mule kick.
She had not, until that moment, realized how much of her existence truly was wrapped around this man she had never married, had never slept with, had never kissed, yet who claimed to have memories of all those things.
And what hurt the most was that the way he described those memories was better than any love she had actually experienced in her life.
She hooked her arm in his, and then, as she had done so many times before, curled against his chest and laid her head on his shoulder. Alfie inhaled the smell of her, rested his chin atop her hair, and gazed skyward. He thought to himself that he could die in this moment, it wouldn’t be so bad.
?
“Gianna,” Alfie suddenly whispered.
“Mmm?”
“Does LaPorta have the notebook?”
“I think so.”
“That explains it.”
He pulled away slightly and nodded up ahead. Gianna saw a flashing police car approaching.
“He must have read the ending,” Alfie said. “When I told you to meet me here.”
Gianna grabbed his shoulders.
“Alfie. You have to go.”
“Where?”
“Go back in time!”
“What?”
“Jump. Whatever you do. Just get away from here!”
“I’ve done what I wanted to do, Gianna. You know everything now. There’s no point in going backward anymore.”
“There is a point! You’ll escape this. You’ll live. Don’t you want to live?”
He placed his hands gently on hers. “I’ve lived a long time already.”
“But I want you to live. I don’t want to be in a world without you!”
Alfie smiled. “I want, and you want, and God does what God wants.”
“ALFIE LOGAN! GIANNA RULE!”
LaPorta had exited the car and was sprinting down a pathway and screaming. “HEY! YOU STAY RIGHT THERE!”
“Alfie?” Gianna spun toward him. “Run!”
And because he would do anything she asked, he inhaled, took a final look, then broke free and hurried up the steps. To his surprise, Gianna was running behind him. Two steps. Six. Ten. Twenty.
“What are you doing?” he yelled.
“Take me with you!”
“What?”
“I want to go wherever you go!”
He stopped, panting.
“So you believe me, then?”
“Yes. I believe you.”
He smiled. “That’s all I wanted, Gianna.”
She grabbed his face.
“No! Want more, Alfie!”
His gaze shot from Gianna to LaPorta, who had almost reached the bottom step. Alfie reached into his pocket, removed a crumpled envelope, and dropped it.
Then he took the hand of the woman he had silently loved for this lifetime and another lifetime and, in truth, from the day he met her, and they ran up a miracle of a staircase together with a detective chasing them in the moonlight.
Just before they reached the top, Gianna looked at Alfie and wished to herself that she could have her time with him all over again. She wished it more intensely than anything she had ever wished for in her life.
LaPorta tripped on a step, came down hard, slammed his knee, and cursed. He scrambled back up. But by the time he reached the top of the staircase, the suspects were gone.