19. Solenne #3
“I’m going to contact my lawyer tomorrow,” I say. “I want to withdraw the divorce papers.”
His hand goes still against my sleeve.
“I was reading her last email yesterday. I already knew what I wanted to tell her.” I sit up so he can see me. “I want to be your wife again, Valentin. I want us to have a life together.”
“Solenne.”
“I forgive you.” My voice catches, and I wait until I can finish. “What happened still hurt me. I can’t promise I’ll never remember it on a bad day. But I believe you now. I want to make plans with you without keeping part of myself ready to leave.”
He sits up, the blanket falling away from his shoulders. His eyes are bright.
“You don’t have to decide tonight,” he says, so quietly I almost miss it.
“I didn’t decide tonight. I’m telling you tonight.”
He looks down. When I take his hand, he turns it and holds mine with both of his. A tear falls onto my knuckles before he draws me against him.
“Valentin.”
“I’m fine.” His voice is rough. “I’m more than fine. I just need a minute.”
I hold him while he holds me. The waves continue their patient rhythm against the rocks. The stars are impossibly bright above us, the same stars that were there a year ago when everything was falling apart.
Eventually, he loosens his grip. Pulls back enough to look at me. Wipes his face with the back of his hand.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything.”
“I want to say everything. I want to tell you I’ll never let you down again, that I’ll be everything you deserve, that I’ll spend the rest of my life making this up to you.”
“Talk to me when something is wrong. Even when you think I won’t like what you have to say. Let me answer you.”
“I will.” He brushes his thumb beneath my eye. “And you can tell me when you’re angry. You don’t have to make it easier for me to hear.”
“I know.”
He kisses me again, softer this time. Then he pulls back and reaches for the thermos.
“The chocolate is probably cold now.”
“That’s okay. Cold chocolate is still chocolate.”
We drink what’s left, sitting close together under the blankets. My skin has mostly dried, though my hair is still damp and probably tangled beyond hope. I don’t care. I feel lighter than I have in months. Years, maybe.
“There’s a festival next month,” Valentin says. He pauses, like he’s not sure whether to continue. “The town festival. In April.”
I know which one he means. The same one where everything broke. Where I stood at the edge of the crowd with Summer and watched him pose for photographs with Ginevra while his mother told everyone I’d stayed home because our daughter was sick.
“I remember.”
“I thought…” He stops again. Takes a breath. “I want to take you and Summer this year. Walk through the center of town with both of you. Dance with you while everyone watches. Do everything I should have done last time.”
“You want to redo it.”
“I want to do it right. I want every person who was there last year to see what they should have seen then. My family. Chosen. Not pushed to the edges.”
I think about walking through that crowd, holding Summer’s hand, with Valentin beside us. Everyone who watched me become invisible would see me come back.
It’s a small thing, in a way. A town festival. Dancing. But small things are what build a life. Small choices, made over and over, that add up to something bigger.
“When is it?”
“The second weekend of April. We could come back. If work allows.”
I already know my schedule. I checked it before we left Los Angeles, without knowing exactly what I was checking for.
“I can make it work.”
His face breaks into the smile I fell in love with, years ago, before everything got complicated. The one that makes him look like a different person. The person he was supposed to be, maybe, before grief and fear and bad choices got in the way.
“Really?”
“Really. Summer would love to stay for the dancing this time.”
“She’ll want to name everything.”
“Everything that holds still long enough.”
“She gets that from you.”
“I don’t name things.”
“You named that plant in your kitchen. The one that keeps almost dying.”
“Harold has been through a lot. He deserved a name.”
He laughs, and I laugh too, and for a moment we’re just two people sitting on rocks by the sea, happy to be exactly where we are.
He checks the time, then shows me the screen. We have been away long enough that Delfina will be wondering whether we forgot the path back.
“We should go,” I say.
“In a minute.”
I settle against him for that last minute. Tomorrow I will write to my lawyer. In a few days we will take Summer back to school in Los Angeles. There will be work waiting, laundry, a carton of milk we will probably both forget to buy.
I want those things with him too.
“At the festival,” I say, “we go in together. No waiting somewhere else while you finish with the photographs.”
“Together.”
“And Summer gets her dance.”
“As many as she wants.”
He tucks the edge of the blanket around my feet. I look toward the dark line of the path, then back at him.
Last year, I took our daughter there to find him.
This year, he’ll be holding our hands when we arrive.