Epilogue
Nora
One Year Later
We kept it after all.
The deal fell through - something about the buyer’s financing, though I suspect Dante had more to do with it than he admits - and by the time we got back from Florence, it seemed wrong to let it go.
So we kept it. Remodeled the kitchen. Fixed the furnace. Made new memories.
I’m standing at the window, watching the lake catch the morning light, when Dante’s arms wrap around me from behind.
“Good morning, wife.”
“Good morning, husband.” I lean back into his chest. “You’re up early.”
“Couldn’t sleep.” He kisses my shoulder. “Kept thinking about how lucky I am.”
“That’s very romantic for 7 AM.”
“I’m a romantic guy.”
“Since when?”
“Since I almost lost you and decided to stop being an idiot.” He turns me around. Cups my face. “I’m working on it.”
***
We drink coffee on the porch, watching the mist rise off the water.
It’s quiet here. Peaceful in a way the city never is. Dante comes up most weekends now - sometimes Friday through Sunday, sometimes longer when there’s nothing pressing.
He went back to work after six months. I knew he would; the company is part of him, and I never wanted him to give it up entirely.
The company weathered it - the stock clawed back, and Julian Cross took his circling somewhere else.
But it’s different now.
Home for dinner at least four nights a week. Phone off by seven. He knows Sophia’s birthday without checking his calendar. Last month, he left a board meeting early because I had a cold and he wanted to bring me soup.
The board was furious. He didn’t care.
I started painting again.
There’s a room upstairs with the good light and a canvas that isn’t blank anymore - the lake at dawn, mostly, since that’s what I wake to. The early ones are bad. I keep them anyway.
And I kept the work that’s mine. I run the Castellano account from up here now, two days a week in the city that belong to no one but me. I didn’t disappear back into his life this time. I built one right beside it.
“You finished it,” I say, noticing the battered paperback on the side table. The novel about the woman who leaves - the one I was reading during the cold year, the one he tracked in his notes.
“Last night.” He takes a sip of his coffee. “You never told me how it ended.”
“She leaves. Starts over. Finds herself.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s the ending. She’s happy alone.”
Dante is quiet for a moment.
“You highlighted half the pages,” he says finally.
“I was looking for myself.”
“Did you find her?”
I think about it. The woman I was a year ago - the one who came to this house with a bottle of honeymoon wine and a red dress and a marriage that was already over. The one who stood outside a glass wall and watched everything fall apart.
She’s still in there. But she’s not alone anymore.
“I think I wrote a different ending,” I say.
He reaches for my hand. Laces our fingers together.
“I like your ending better.”
***
The wine is still on the counter.
The honeymoon Barolo - the one I dropped outside Dante’s office the night everything fell apart. He kept it all this time. Waiting.
“Should we?” he asks.
“It’s been almost a year and a half.”
“It’s been waiting for this.” He picks up the bottle. Turns it in his hands. “I think it’s finally time.”
I get the glasses. He finds the corkscrew.
The cork comes out with a soft pop. The wine is dark, almost black, and when he pours it the scent fills the kitchen - earth and fruit and something like memory.
“To us,” he says, raising his glass.
“To second chances.”
“To coming home.”
We drink.
The wine is perfect. Better than I remembered from that first night on the grass with the stars overhead and forever stretching out in front of us.
Or maybe everything just tastes better now.
THE END