And then she’s gone, the back door slamming shut, leaving me once again alone with my daughter.
“That woman… She’s a bad influence,” I murmur halfheartedly.
Grace knows me too well to believe that, though. “You love her just as much as I do,” she teases, smiling up at me.
“Yeah. She was a good friend to your mom. And she’s been good to both of us over the years.”
“Maybe you should take it easy on her, Daddy,” Grace advises. “I think she’s empty nesting. I’m the last of us to go off and get married, you know.”
The last of us.
Grace grew up with Nissa’s children. It was like having a ready-made family. They love each other like siblings. I know if Lena could see how it all turned out, she’d be pleased.
Thrilled, even.
I can almost see her smile…
“Daddy?”
“What? Oh, right. Yeah, I’ll take it easy on her. As long as she doesn’t send you to Rome with stripper clothes.”
Grace gives me her brightest, most Lena-like smile and tells me as she’s walking away, “I make no promises.”
I just shake my head and watch her go.
********
Rome.
Jesus, I think silently when I unlock the hotel room door and step inside. The rush of emotion hits me like a physical blow. I can practically smell Lena.
Shaken, I wonder if it was an enormous miscalculation on my part to think I could handle staying in the beautiful suite I shared with my wife all those years ago. I’d thought I might feel comforted, might feel her presence stronger, but this…
I stumble forward and drop down onto the closest chair, a Queen Anne-style one sitting at the edge of the living area. The room has been redecorated, but it’s still so much the same that when I glance up at the window, I can envision with disturbing clarity my wife standing there, looking out at the incredible view. I feel closer to her all right, but I also feel closer to the loss of her. Like it just happened, the anguish of it that poignant.
It staggers me.
Or maybe it daggers me.
Right through the heart.
An increasingly familiar pain ripples behind my breastbone, and I fist my hand in my shirt right over my heart. I squeeze my eyes shut. I wish I knew exactly how many days, weeks, months, or years it will be before I’m reunited with my wife. Maybe that would make it easier, knowing. Seeing an end in sight.
Or a beginning.
I don’t want to hurt my sweet Grace, but she’s grown up now. She’ll be busy with her own life. She doesn’t need the added worry of her old man clogging up the smooth runnings of her existence.
I’d love to see how she ends up, see her children, see her become even more like her mother, but I also miss my Lena. Still miss her so, so much.
As soon as the discomfort eases, I rise to unpack the laptop I brought. I power it on and pull up the extensive photo and video collection it holds. I find what I’m looking for quickly—the folder simply labeled LENA.
Scrolling through, I find the range of dates I’m looking for then I scan that section for the one entry in particular. When I spot it, I click to open it.
It’s a short video of my wife speaking to our daughter. At the time, I’d been asleep in the other room of this suite. Unbeknownst to me, she’d just found out she was pregnant and had already begun recording messages to the child she wasn’t sure she’d even be able to bring into the world. If she’d asked me then, on that very day, I would have told her that I had no doubt she could. And would. To this day, I’ve never met a stronger person than my Lena.
Circling the pointer over the play button for several seconds, I take two deep breaths before I click it. There’s a slight pause, and then I see my wife appear on the screen in front of me, big as life and twice as stunning. Behind her, framed by the window like an expensive painting, is the Trinità dei Monti. I know that if I walk over and pull back the curtain, I’ll see the exact same view, right down to the angle. If I’m careful enough, I could probably even stand where she stood. I won’t do that, though. I won’t risk giving that scene, that moment, her moment any other meaning.
It was Lena’s.
And Grace’s.
I realize, however, that I would’ve given anything to see her standing where she stood. Right now. Even just one more time.
Exhaling loudly, my eyes scan my beautiful wife’s face as she begins to speak. Her happiness, her pregnancy, her burgeoning hope was already showing in the faint pink of her cheeks. Although I’ve watched every millisecond of footage at least two thousand times over the years, it never stops my arms from breaking out in chills when I first hear her voice. It’s as though she’s in the room with me.
Only she isn’t.
She never will be again.