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He handed her another ornament, a small silver heart she’d bought on a whim, as she’d been leaving the store five years earlier. She ran her fingers over the silk ribbon, then hung it quickly.
“I often thought her illness might have led you to study medicine.”
She nodded slowly. “You’re right. I learned a lot over the years. Helping her doctors, monitoring her at night.” She reached for a dainty silver bell and hooked it on a low-hanging branch, crouching down to do so. “But the thing I learned that really stuck with me is how sometimes, even with all the modern medicine in the world, it’s just not enough.”
When she turned to him – on autopilot – it was to find him looking at her with something on his face that caught her breath in her throat. “Yes,” he agreed, blinking, as if only just realising he was staring. “When Gianfelice died,” he said, referring to his beloved grandfather, “It was almost impossible to grasp. How could someone with so much…presence…simply cease to exist? Honestly, he was such a behemoth, I thought he’d never die.”
Alessia’s smile was nostalgic. “He was a behemoth. The thing is, people don’t ever really die.” She held her hand out for another ornament. Misunderstanding, he put his own in hers and pulled her gently to her feet. She didn’t correct him. Their bodies brushed close together. The pine needles shifted, releasing more of their beautiful, festive scent into the air.
“Gianfelice is so much a part of you.” She pressed a hand to his heart. “Everything he taught you is in here. Everything he showed you is inside of you, in how you live your life and the decisions you make.” She lifted her gaze to his face, an analytical frown on her own. “And you have his eyes.”
Max stared down at her as though seeing Alessia for the first time. “Do I?”
She lifted a hand to his face, running a finger to the side of one eye, swallowing hard. “He had such kind eyes.”
“You think my eyes are kind?”
She dropped her hand away, but he moved their bodies closer catching her in the circle of his arms. “I think you have his eyes,” she said with a small smile.
“And you have your mother’s smile.”
Her eyes widened. “I loved her smile.”
“Yours is just like it.”
She closed her eyes then, breathing in deeply, wrapping the truth deep inside of her. He was right; she didn’t know why she hadn’t really noticed it before.
“At the funeral –,”
“Your mother’s?”
“Gianfelice’s.” She corrected. “You were so…sad. I wanted to say this to you then, but…”
“I barely spoke to you,” he recalled with shame. It hadn’t been long after their divorce, and the sting of her supposed infidelity had still embarrassed him, and angered him. He’d noticed she was there, and while his brothers had all gone to her, Massimo had watched from a distance, nodding at her once to acknowledge her, without getting close enough to speak
.
“You were angry.”
“Yes.”
“I understood.”
“You shouldn’t have had to understand. Why didn’t you tell me the truth about your innocence back then?”
“What would it have achieved?”
“Well, for one thing, I wouldn’t have spent the next five years imagining who you’d had sex with during our marriage.”
“I didn’t have sex with anyone during our marriage,” she reminded him pointedly.
It was an attempt at a joke, but he didn’t so much as smile. “I know that now. But then? Yes. I was angry.”
“I know.” She made a small movement, to pull away? Or get closer? She couldn’t tell and his hands were clamped, vice-like, behind her back. “I wanted you to be angry; that was the point. I wanted you to show me that you were capable of feeling anything for me – even if it was anger. I wanted to fight with you, I wanted you to shout at me, to scream, to call me names – anything to show me that you knew I was alive.”
His eyes swept shut, his thick, black lashes two perfect crescents against his cheeks.
“Not showing how I feel doesn’t mean I don’t feel.” He opened his eyes, looking directly at her. “I guess that’s a hangover from my childhood.”
