“We have a lot more hope.” She gripped his hand more tightly. “Your unbelievable devotion and care for your sister and Luca is part of the reason I fell so hopelessly in love with you.” She sniffed. “If you could see yourself in my eyes for but a moment, you would never doubt yourself again.”
But he wondered if it would be a matter of moments until she focused on what he had done. How it would follow them forever. Maybe someday she would shirk away, untwine her fingers, and that passionate, hopeful faith in her eyes would be replaced by disappointment.
For now, Ray kept his right fist clenched, trying to wring out the memory of the act it had committed. Jem put her hand over his and grasped tightly. Her feet were solidly on the ground, her shimmery eyes on his face. Feet on the ground. Eyes on the stars. This didn’t look like a girl who was one step away from turning and leaving him. This looked like a girl who would face it all head-on.
Ray cleared his throat. “The whole of my life is playing before me, Jem. And in that lifetime, Tony was a close friend of mine. We fished together and played jacks by the creek. We talked about the great, green land that is Canada, and we booked our passage. I watched him flirt with my little sister. Tony is… was Luca’s father.”
They stopped silently under a streetlight. Jem made out the contours of Ray’s face clearly, and it was tired and worn and rimmed with worry. She wanted to swipe her palm over it and iron out every crease.
Ray’s eyes glistened. “She hates me. I was supposed to protect her and make sure she was safe and happy, and she hates me. She threatens to go back to Italy. That treacherous passage. We barely made it the first time. And Luca… ”
Jem nodded.
“I killed my childhood friend and broke Vi’s heart and left little Luca without a father. A poor father is better than no father, Jemima. I would know.”
“She’ll see, Ray. Someday she’ll see, and the pain will turn into a dull ache, and she will realize that Luca needs you. That she needs you.” Jem set her chin. “I promise you that this anger and hurt is as much her grief over a man who was lost to her years ago as the act that ended his life.”
Ray felt a slight lightening in his heart. “Do you think so?”
“I know so. In the meantime, you will miss her and Luca. But you will write and you will visit no matter how many times she slams the door in your face, no matter how many tearstained letters she sends back. No matter the silence. You’ll pursue her. And I’ll be there. Always. Thinking of presents for Luca and picking and pressing little flowers for you to send in your notes.”
A moment later, Jem’s fingers closed around a cold circle Ray had pressed into her palm.
“Quite shockingly,” he said with a wink at her under the halo of streetlight, “the pawnbroker on Michigan Avenue hadn’t found anyone to sell it to.”
Jem pressed it to her heart. “I love this rusty old watch,” she said with a lilt in her voice, and she leaned up lightly to kiss him on the cheek. But he had another idea and circled his arms around her waist. His hand didn’t shake when he was embracing her. So, he thought, brushing his lips over her cheeks, her eyelids, her nose, and then her slightly parted lips, he’d just have to do it more often.
EPILOGUE
Jem gave Mrs. Malone a quick peck on the cheek.
“It is truly wonderful to see you,” she said as her dear old landlady’s face brightened.
Merinda’s face was flushed and her eyes bright as she called for coffee.
“You kissed him!” Jem said, feeling a jolt of exuberance pass between them. It was something new, of course, and something strange and something that evidently made Merinda visibly uneasy no matter how hard she tried to shield her face from uncertainty and straighten her shoulders.
And things had changed. Merinda might try to tie them up with an invisible string and keep them, but her world was fraying even as everything seemed the same.
The cookies and the tea.
The bellows for Turkish coffee.
The fanned-out newspapers, the chalk from their board on her fingertips.
But a force was pulling Jem away to her own sphere. A corner of which would, of course, always have room for a radical woman with blonde hair and a Cheshire cat grin. The same blonde girl who was blushing to high heaven and shrugging out of her bold exterior. The same blonde girl who now was prone to vulnerably talk about the man she could almost see herself following as far as the northern lights and into the cloak of the unknown.
While Jem couldn’t keep her heart from racing at the sheer surprise of it all, Merinda was surprisingly buoyant and enraptured. “Yes! I almost followed him! I almost did, Jemima!” Merinda flung her arms out dramatically. “But so much of myself is here.” She motioned about her, taking the King Street townhouse, its stories and secrets, and subsequently all of Toronto in her embrace. “I need to be here. I like to think that here needs me too.”
“Promise me, Jem,” Merinda said after the clock ticked away a few silent moments.*
“Promise what?”