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“Gabriel. ”
He blinked at the sound of her voice, as if she was awakening him from a dream.
When he didn’t move, she placed a few inches between them and handed him his glasses. “Goodnight, Gabriel. ”
He looked stricken. “I don’t mean to hurt you. ”
“I know. ”
He remained perfectly still, staring down into eyes that were filled with sadness and longing. “I’m trying to be strong for both of us,” he whispered. “But when you look at me like that…”
He kissed her lips softly and nodded his acquiescence as she fumbled for her slide card, and the two of them disappeared behind her hotel room door.
* * *
Early the next morning, Julia left the comfort of Gabriel’s warm embrace to tip toe to the washroom. When she returned, she found him wide-awake and gazing at her with concern.
“Are you all right?”
Blushing, she smiled. “Yes. ”
“Then come here. ” He opened his arms, and she snuggled close, placing a leg over both of his.
“I’m sorry if I embarrassed you in the hallway. ”
“You didn’t embarrass me. ” The urgency of his tone took Julia aback. “How could I be embarrassed by the woman I love showing me that she wants me?”
“I think we gave some of the other guests a bit of a show. ”
“And some inspiration,” he spoke against her lips, kissing her.
When they broke apart, she rested her head on his shoulder. “I guess you’re serious about waiting until the wedding. ”
“You weren’t complaining last night. ”
“You know me. ” She winked at him. “I don’t like to complain.
“Thank you for compromising, Gabriel. ” She tightened her arms around his waist. “Last night was important for me. ”
“For me too. ” He smiled. “I could see that you trust me. ”
“I’m glad, because I’ve never trusted you more. ”
He kissed her again, before pushing a lock of hair away from her face. “I have something to tell you,” he said, his fingers gently running up and down her neck. “Something strange. ”
Her eyebrows knit together curiously.
“Go ahead. ”
“When I was back in Selinsgrove, I saw something. Or rather, something happened to me. ”
Julia covered his hand with hers, stilling his fingers. “Were you hurt?”
“No. ” He paused uncomfortably. “Promise me you’ll keep an open mind. ”
“Of course. ”
“I thought it was a dream. When I woke up, I wondered if it was a vision. ”
She blinked. “Like when you thought you saw me in Assisi?”
“No. Like what you said about the Gentileschi painting while we were in Florence—about Maia and Grace.
“I saw her. Grace. We were in my old room at my parents’ house. And Grace told me…” Gabriel’s voice broke. He struggled to compose himself. “She told me that she knew that I loved her. ”
“Of course she did,” Julia murmured, hugging him more tightly.
“There’s more. She had someone with her. A young woman. ”
“Who was she?”
Gabriel swallowed roughly. “Maia. ”
Julia gasped, her eyes wide.
“She told me she was happy. ”
Julia wiped a stray tear from Gabriel’s face. “Was it a dream?”
“Perhaps. I don’t know. ”
“Did you tell Richard? Or Paulina?”
“No. They’ve both made their peace. ”
Julia placed her hand against his cheek.
“Maybe you needed this in order to forgive yourself—to see that Grace and Maia forgave you and that they’re happy. ”
He nodded wordlessly, burying his face in her hair.
Chapter 50
On their flight back to Boston, Julia surprised Gabriel by telling him that she would welcome his proposal. His happiness could barely be contained in the first class section of the airplane. She expected that he would drop to one knee immediately.
He didn’t.
When they arrived in Boston, she expected him to take her shopping for wedding rings.
He made no such plans.
In fact, as September flew by, she wondered if Gabriel was going to propose to her at all. Perhaps it was the case that he merely assumed that they were engaged and planned to pick out wedding rings at some later date.
Gabriel warned her that the doctoral program at Harvard was challenging and that the professors were highly demanding. In fact, he remarked more than once that the average faculty member who taught in her program was far more pretentious and ass-like than he had ever been.
(Julia wondered if such astronomical ass-like levels were humanly possible. )
Nevertheless, his warnings hadn’t quite prepared her for the amount of work she was required to do on a daily basis. She spent long hours in seminars and also in the library, keeping up with her homework and supplementing the reading from her classes. She met with Professor Marinelli regularly and found that they enjoyed a professional but comfortable rapport. And she worked tirelessly on her Italian and other languages, in preparation for her competency exams.
Gabriel encouraged her, of course, and he did his very best not to pressure her about spending time with him. He was busy with his new position and had immediately taken over the supervision of three doctoral students, having relinquished Paul to Katherine’s capable direction. But full professors have more leisure time than graduate students, and so Gabriel spent many an evening and weekend alone.
He began volunteering as a tutor at the Italian Home for Children in Jamaica Plain. Despite his somewhat limited success, under his supervision a small group of teenagers developed a lively interest in Italian art and culture. The Professor promised to send them to Italy if they graduated high school with a respectable grade point average.
Though he kept himself busy, each day ended as it began, with him alone in his now renovated house, missing Julianne.
He seriously contemplated buying a dog. Or a ferret.
Despite her overall busyness with graduate school, which was a welcome distraction, Julia continued to be frustrated. Their separation was unnatural, uncomfortable, cold, and she ached to breach that separation and be one with him again. The fact that she couldn’t made her terribly sad. All the romantic activities short of intercourse couldn’t erase that kind of loneliness. And there were only so many times she could listen to comforting music while lying alone in her single bed.
Sexual desires can be satisfied in many ways, but she longed for the attention that he paid to her when they were making love, the way he lavished single-minded devotion on her as if there were no one and nothing else on earth. She coveted the way she felt when he touched her naked form. For in those moments, she felt beautiful and desirable, despite her innate shyness and unease about her body. She desired the moments after sex, when they were both relaxed and sated, and Gabriel would whisper beautiful words in her ear, and they would simply be in one another’s arms.
As the days passed, Julia wasn’t sure how long she could tolerate their disconnection without lapsing into a depression.
* * *
One day at the end of September, Julia opened the door of the Range Rover and silently slid into the passenger seat. She buckled her seatbelt and gazed out the window.
“Sweetheart?” Gabriel reached his hand out to push her hair away from her face.
She stiffened.
He withdrew his hand. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“Sharon,” she mumbled.
Gabriel reached over to gently turn her chin in his direction. Her face was puffy, and her skin was blotchy and uneven. She’d been crying for a while.
“Come here. ” He unfastened her seatbelt and tugged her over the center console and onto his lap, which was no easy feat. “Tell m
e what happened. ”
“Dr. Walters brought up all this stuff about my mother. I didn’t want to talk about it, but she said that she wasn’t doing her job if she let me suppress everything that happened in St. Louis. I took as much as I could take and then I left. ”
Gabriel grimaced. Dr. Townsend had been making similar comments about his own mother, but he seemed to be closer to making peace with his past since his trip to Italy. Certainly, his continued presence at Narcotics Anonymous meetings seemed to be helping.
“I’m sorry,” he offered, kissing the top of her head. “But didn’t Nicole address your relationship with your mother?”
“Briefly. Mostly we discussed you. ”
Gabriel winced. He would always feel guilty for the pain he had caused her, but the fact that he had bumped Sharon off Nicole’s priority list for helping Julia made him cringe.
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
Julia laughed mirthlessly as she wiped her tears away. “Find me another therapist. ”
“I wouldn’t be helping you if I did. Any therapist worth her salt would insist that you address what happened with your mother. And her boyfriends. ”
Julia began to protest, but Gabriel interrupted her. “I understand what you’re going through. Even though our mothers were abusive in different ways, I understand. ”
She wiped her nose with a tissue.
“I’m here to listen, whenever you want to talk about it. But in order to be healthy, you have to deal with your past. I’ll do everything I can to help, but this is something only you can do—for yourself and for us. ” He gave her a sympathetic look. “You realize that, don’t you? That the healing process not only helps you, it helps us?”
She nodded begrudgingly. “I thought all the angst was behind us. I thought that after everything we’d been through, we’d have our happy ever after. ”
Gabriel tried to repress a snicker. And failed.
“What? You don’t believe in happy ever after?”
He smirked at her and tapped her nose with his finger. “No, I don’t believe in angst. ”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not an Existentialist; I’m a Dantean. ”
She wrinkled her nose. “Very funny, Professor. With a name like Emerson, I would have thought you to be a Transcendentalist. ”
“Hardly. ” He kissed her wrinkles affectionately. “I exist in order to please you.
“We will be happy, Julianne, but don’t you see that in order to get to the happiness, you have to address the pain of the past?”
She squirmed but didn’t respond.
“I was thinking about visiting Maia’s grave. ” He cleared his throat. “I’d like to take you with me. ” His voice was hesitant and barely above a whisper. “I’d like you to see it. That is, if you wouldn’t find it morbid. ”
“I’d be honored. Of course I’ll go with you. ”
“Thank you. ” He pressed his lips to her forehead.
“Gabriel?”
“Yes?”
“I didn’t tell you everything that happened with Sharon. Or with Simon. ”
Gabriel rubbed at his eyes. “I didn’t tell you everything about my past, either. ”