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“Yes.”
“And this person is…?”
“Was,” she corrected gently. “Peter,” she said, a soft whisper of remembrance.
“Who’s Peter?”
“Peter Parker.”
I cocked an eyebrow and turned to face her straight on. “Spider-Man?”
“What on earth is a Spider-Man?”
I laughed. “The superhero. Peter Parker.”
Her eyes widened. “You know my Peter Parker?”
“I have a feeling we aren’t talking about the same Peter. Tell me about yours.”
With a sigh and a wistful smile, Teresa embarked on her tale. As she spun the threads of her history, I was struck by a realization. Beneath my great-aunt’s well-curated image of a perennial playgirl was a woman who had experienced, then lost a profound love.
Teresa in love?
It was an odd concept to wrap my brain around.
Ever since I was a child, she’d have a different guy doting on her every want and need. Even her flat in Madrid was paid in full by a man she’d hardly liked and would only date on Saturdays because he’d always bring her the best wine, and she’d get drunk enough to dance with him until the sun came up. Miguel, I believed his name had been. Or Cristian. Heck if I remembered.
But that was the thing—each man was a passing fancy of hers. While these men worshipped her as if she were royalty, she hardly recalled their last names.
“Peter was my everything,” she confessed. “After you, of course.”
“Why haven’t you mentioned him before?” I asked, startled by her casual revelation.
A somber silence fell over us before she finally spoke, her voice laced with memories and regret. “Sometimes the greatest joys in life are the hardest to speak of.” She glanced over her shoulder toward the café behind us, then back toward the abandoned movie theater. “When I was sixteen, my father moved us to America for a few years. To this very town. I met a young man named Peter. He was studying at a café that I was at, too. I was reading out loud as I was trying to learn English, and I kept saying a word wrong. Peter overheard me and came over to help. It turned out he was trying to learn Spanish, too, so each week, we met at the café and would teach one another. Peter’s family founded this town. Hence, the café being called Peter’s Café. The café even has a sandwich called the Teresa.”
“What happened with Peter?” I questioned. “Where did that go?”
“Oh, we spent the next few years falling in love in this dang small town. He gave me my set of firsts.”
“Set of firsts?”
“Yes. My first romantic butterflies. First set of tearful laughing. First meaningful kiss.” She pointed across toward the movie theater. “And last meaningful kiss right inside that building.” Her smile somewhat faltered, and I saw the shift in her personality. “Our story was a tale as old as time.” She shared her history with Peter, a love story that began in Honey Creek. Their romance was a whirlwind affair tainted with a family’s disapproval and life circumstances tearing them apart.
Despite the years and miles between them, it was clear that whatever connection they held was real, and Teresa still held those memories within her heart.
“I’m sorry to hear how it ended,” I told her.
“Thank you.” She shook off her emotions. “Over ten years ago, I received a email from Peter. He found me online.”
“An email?”
“Yes. He told me about his life back in Honey Creek. How he married, and had children, grandchildren. How he helped run this town and how much it meant to him. I wrote him back, and we became pen pals. At first, I felt guilty over the words I left him on the page. Then I felt safe. It was like talking to a ghost almost. An old friend who remembered the best days of your life. He wrote me in Spanish, too. I replied in English, showing how far we’d come with our studies. We’d send picture updates and tell all the stories we’d missed the opportunity to share over the past decades.”
“For the past ten years, you’ve been emailing this guy?”
“Yup.”
“You’ve been back in the United States for over twelve years. We’re right in Chicago. Why didn’t you reach out to him? Why didn’t you try to meet him?”
“Oh.” She waved a dismissive hand. “He had his whole world here. It wasn’t my place to come mix it up. I couldn’t even talk to him on the phone because I felt as if it would become…I don’t know. Real, maybe. The thought of hearing his voice was too much for me because I felt as if maybe I’d still be in love.”
“It sounds like you never stopped being in love.”
“Maybe that’s what love is—something that never really stops.”
“How does someone know when it’s real love?”
“Latidos del corazón,” she said. “It’s in one’s heartbeats. The heart can’t lie, even when the brain tries to deceive it. Every person who’s ever been in love—good or bad—feels it deep within their souls forever. That’s the thing with real love—it’s for better or worse.”
