Chapter Twelve
Umberto did not die that night, but he was severely diminished.
Leontina declared that it was a fitting punishment and Pau found he agreed.
When the old man really did die, only a few years later, his funeral was a bleak affair.
Giaco came with Ivy. Pau went with Leontina.
There were none of the old acolytes and vultures, which made it a quiet affair.
They put the old man in the ground in the mausoleum of a castle he had loved so much, and Pau was fairly certain that the only reason any of them went was to make sure the man who had been an outsize presence in all their lives was well and truly buried.
And just as he had told Umberto on the last night they’d spoken, once he was gone, they rarely thought of him again.
Because life outside the old man’s greed and all the misery he had caused was good.
It was far more interesting. It was joyful.
It was sometimes hard, even dark upon occasion, but there were always constellations to guide the way when the night wore on too long.
There was always a reason to hold on until morning.
Dawn always came, and Pau knew it would, because he could see it in his wife’s beautiful smile, free of pretense now, warm and giving and his.
He liked to tell her that he would always see her. That she could never disappear, because he would always find her.
“Remember,” he would say, “I am the one who noticed you when you wore sacks and made your face blank and strange.”
She would always laugh and press herself against him. “I saw you, Pau. That’s what made the difference.”
And though he did not plan to admit it for another few decades or so, he rather thought she was right.
Their son was born that first winter. He came crashing into the world and into Pau’s heart with a love so intense and so vast it was almost funny that he had ever imagined he could avoid it. That he could somehow hold himself back from love.
He stopped trying.
Instead, he continued the tradition of family dinners, always moving from one room in the monastery to another.
“When will you pick your favorite dining room?” Leontina asked him when their son was a toddler and they were soon to bring their first daughter into the world.
“Never,” he told her. “I want every night to feel as much like an adventure as every day with you does, my love.”
And as the children grew, they took turns choosing new places for the family dinners too, until it became a hallmark of the Calixto family—only this time, steeped in love and laughter, affection and fun.
Both Pau and Giaco were deeply committed to building families that were nothing like the ones they’d grown up in.
So as the two old friends expanded their families, they made certain that the cousins were together as much as possible.
They got to watch their children become as close as siblings ought to be.
They got to watch them play and laugh, grow bored and come up with imaginative ways to cure it, and live out the actual childhoods neither one of them had really had.
They got to watch as their wives—former stepsisters—became the kind of deep, true friends that Pau and Giaco had always been for each other.
As the years passed, Leontina and Ivy became more like sisters.
They renovated the castle and sold it, vowing that none of their babies would set foot on such poisoned ground.
As one big family, they spent summers together, in a sprawling chateau in the hills above the gleaming beaches of the C?te d’Azur that sat in a wild estate that felt as if it was centuries removed from the concerns of the world.
Pau and his best friend turned brother made sure it stayed that way.
They spent the summers without staff, cooking their meals and shopping in the markets and teaching their children how to fend for themselves. How to recognize peace and how to fight for it despite the demands the world would make of them thanks to their family.
And when their oldest daughter got married on that same estate years later, the first of all their children to do it, Pau was there when Ivy reached over and took Leontina’s hand.
“I don’t know if you remember,” Ivy said, “but you told me long ago that you would be the family for me that I couldn’t have because my mother wasn’t there at my wedding.
And I told you that I would do the same for you, but you insisted on marrying Pau in secret.
” She smiled, though her eyes were shining.
“So now I’ve taken it upon myself to act as the mother of the mother of the bride, in whatever capacity I can, so it will be almost as if both of our mothers are here. ”
Leontina took Ivy’s hands and didn’t make the slightest effort to contain her tears. “I think they are here,” she whispered. “Just look at our babies, all grown up. I know they’re here, Ivy. They’ve been with us all along.”
Pau raised his children to respect and honor the Calixto family legacy, but he never let it crush them.
He brought them to Australia to visit their grandmother, and didn’t correct her when she told her stories—not many of them flattering toward the father he still loved, but could see more critically now.
They were her stories about her time in Spain with her former husband.
She could tell them as she wished, and he wasn’t afraid to answer any questions his sons and daughters might have about the things she said.
What kept him up in the night sometimes was worrying that if they weren’t exposed to enough alternate stories, they might end up the way he almost had. A blind man rushing toward an empty victory with no access to his heart.
He taught them to love first, because all things followed from there.
Maybe this was why, as the years ripened and their family grew with daughters and sons-in-law and grandbabies of their own, it only seemed to get sweeter.
And at the end of every day, he and his beautiful wife would find themselves together in the bed they always shared, where they would tangle themselves up, make each other whole, and sleep pressed close together.
Like joy made real.