Chapter 18
Iflew to Italy six weeks later.
Not for the postponed anniversary and not on the itinerary Bennett left behind. I canceled the couple's booking, lost an offensive deposit and reserved four nights in a small hotel in Ravello under my own name.
Nate drove me to the airport.
“Last chance to hide in my trunk,” I said as he lifted my suitcase onto the curb.
“I have a gala in ten days, and the event planner is terrifying.”
“She'd understand.”
“No, she wouldn't.”
He closed the trunk. We'd spent three nights together since the summer supper and four nights apart. The balance felt deliberate without becoming an accounting exercise.
“Call when you land,” he said.
“I will.”
“Unless you don't want to.”
“Nate.”
“I'm trying to respect your independence.”
“You're becoming irritatingly good at it.”
“I've had strict instruction.”
I kissed him beside the departures sign, then walked into the terminal alone.
On the first day, I woke early because Bennett hated wasting vacation time, then realized nobody was waiting. I went back to bed. Later I drank two coffees on a terrace, spent forty minutes in a ceramics shop and ordered fish Bennett disliked with a dessert he'd have called too sweet.
The next morning I boarded the wrong bus and ended up halfway to Salerno. Instead of panicking, I got off in an unplanned town, bought an awful hat and ate beside a marina. I sent Nate a photograph.
This is terrible, he replied.
I'm finding myself.
Please find someone with a mirror.
I wore it for the rest of the trip.
On the second afternoon, I took the garden tour we'd once planned together.
The guide was a woman in her seventies who wore red lipstick and walked faster than the rest of us. She pointed out lemon trees trained along stone walls and roses planted by women whose husbands' names had survived in every history book.
“Gardens tell you who did the tending,” she said, “if you know where to look.”
I thought of the Brooklyn house, the summer supper and twenty years of invisible labor.
Then I thought of Rowan Events. My name had always been on that door.
That evening I sat on my balcony with wine and called Evelyn.
“Are you transformed?” she asked.
“I had a nap and ate an entire plate of fried zucchini.”
“So yes.”
After we hung up, I saw two missed messages from Nate.
The first was a photograph of the apprenticeship greenhouse. The seedlings we'd seen together now reached above their labels.
The second read, Caleb says I need to stop sending plant photographs to a woman vacationing in Italy. He thinks I have no game.
I replied, Caleb is right.
Nate called immediately.
“I knew you liked the photographs.”
“I like the labels.”
“How's Italy?”
I looked past the railing toward the dark line of the sea.
“Mine,” I said.
He was quiet for a beat. “Good.”
He didn't ask what the trip had proved. He didn't turn my solitude into a test of what I felt for him.
“I miss you,” I said.
“I miss you too.”
“That doesn't mean I regret coming.”
“I know.”
“You could sound slightly less pleased with yourself.”
“I'm standing in a greenhouse at two in the afternoon while you drink wine in Ravello. Please allow me one thing.”
On my last morning I wrote myself a postcard: You came.
Nate met me at arrivals with flowers, coffee made exactly as I liked it and a hat nearly identical to mine.
I stopped in front of him. “What is that?”
“Caleb found it online.”
“Take it off.”
“I thought we were finding ourselves.”
“I've found embarrassment.”
A woman passing with a suitcase smiled at us. Nate tipped the hat to her, and I laughed so loudly that three people turned around.
I had missed him. Not the help he could provide or the proof he represented. I had missed this man and his terrible jokes, his stubborn opinions and the crease beside his mouth when he tried not to smile.
“How was the flight?” he asked.
“Long.”
“Did you enjoy yourself?”
“Very much.”
He took my suitcase, then stopped. “Am I allowed to carry this?”
“Don't push it.”
His grin made me want to kiss him before we reached the car, so I did.
On the drive home, he told me a conservatory apprentice wanted to speak at the gala.
“Is she good?”
“She's terrified.”
“That's not the same thing.”
“I know. She'll be wonderful.”
At my house, Nate carried the suitcase upstairs and left it unopened beside the bed. He didn't assume he was staying. I didn't assume he was leaving.
We sat in the kitchen with Italian chocolates between us while I described the gardens.
“Come away with me after the gala,” I said.
He put down the chocolate. “Where?”
“I don't know yet. Somewhere neither of us has already planned with another person.”
“How long?”
“A week.”
“Separate rooms?”
“Now you're being ridiculous.”
“I'm checking the rules.”
I reached across the table and took his hand.
“There aren't rules,” I said. “There's a choice. I'm making it.”
He turned my hand over and kissed my palm.
“Then yes.”
The divorce wasn't final. I didn't know whether I would ever marry again or share a house with someone. Nate and I hadn't used the word forever.
For once, the absence of a plan didn't feel like failure.
It felt like room.