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Aurora thought back to that night on the hillside, watching the fires coming for them, and the wise counsel her friend had given her when she had told her to go home.
Aurora was so glad she had.
‘I will carry it with me for ever. And I wish the same for you,’ Aurora said.
But she felt the fragile shoulders beneath her hand and looked into her friend’s sad eyes. It was an almost futile wish, Aurora was sure.
No!
She would never give up on her friend.
‘We are going to catch up properly soon,’ Aurora said as tears sparkled in her eyes. ‘Even if I have to come to France to do so.’
‘Youwillhave to come to France,’ Antonietta said, ‘for I am no longer welcome here.’ And then she recovered. ‘Get on with your wedding! Your Nico is waiting…’
‘My heart is waiting,’ Aurora corrected. ‘And I will tell this only to you. I think he almost loves me. And I believe that Nico will be the best father in the world.’
She blew at an escaped curl that Luigi would have to attend to in a moment. But right now she spoke honestly to her friend.
‘He tells me that I am mad to doubt him…’
‘Aurora…’ Antonietta said.
She braced herself for a pep talk from her friend, for Antonietta to tell her that ofcourseshe was not mad. That ofcourseshe should enter this marriage with a reasonable nugget of doubt as to Nico’s love.
But Antonietta had long ago thrown away the script.
‘Youaremad,’ Antonietta said. ‘Nico loves you. Why can’t you just accept it?’
It was a good question.
It had been wonderful to see her friend, although Aurora was very pleased that Luigi hadn’t applied the eyeliner before Antonietta had arrived.
‘You are ready,’ Luigi said to the bride.
He had indeed waved his magic wand—but not too much, for it was happiness that shone through on this day.
‘Oh, Aurora…’ Her father beamed when he saw her. ‘This is the best day of my life,’ he said. ‘I always knew he was right for you…’
It would be easy for her to hold a grudge. But her parents doted on Gabe and had been all over Aurora from the second they’d found out that the baby was Nico’s. They seemed to have conveniently forgotten that they had forced their pregnant daughter to leave home.
Forgiveness was not always the easier path. It was spiky and it stung as you trod on old hurts and raged internally.
‘It’s not worth it, Aurora,’ Nico had said as he’d held her hands and she had sobbed in frustration.
And she had looked up to a master. She had looked up to and learned from a man who had been beaten, but who had risen.
Yes, forgiveness was a spiky path, but if you pushed on and through it you got to those bulrushes, waiting to be snapped so that a million seeds of kindness could escape…
And so, instead of pointing out the hurts her father had caused, when Bruno said he had always known Nico was the one for his daughter, Aurora smiled and agreed. ‘You did always say that, Pa.’
It was better to be kind today.
And it was easy to be happy.
Especially when Nadia and Antonio ran in, laughing, carrying a small posy of the freshly picked wild flowers that Aurora would carry.
‘You look pretty,’ Nadia said.
