Before Ever After (39 page)
Authors: Samantha Sotto
“So what would you like for breakfast?” Sari asked. She ushered Shelley to one of the café’s three bamboo tables.
Shelley sat down at a table overlooking the sea. She wondered if she had made a mistake. Perhaps she had just imagined seeing the picture of Max sipping coffee and looking out of this very window.
“I recommend the baked eggs.” Sari handed Shelley a menu. “My husband’s an excellent cook.”
Shelley blanched. She was about to throw herself and Sari out the window
when she heard Paolo clambering through the hatch. She turned to him to say a quick good-bye.
Sari ran to Paolo and gave him a tight hug, then tiptoed and kissed him on both cheeks. “It’s so good to see you again, Paolo.”
Shelley choked, too confused to put questions into words.
Paolo inhaled deeply. “Shelley …”
“Shelley?” Sari’s eyes widened. “You’re Shelley?”
Shelley froze. How did this woman know her?
“I’ve heard all about you,” Sari said. “Please wait here while I go get my husband. He’s in the kitchen.” She disappeared through the curtain of seashells at the back of the room.
Shelley stared at Paolo, paralyzed by his deception. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to punch him in the face or burst into tears.
He took the seat across from her. “I can explain.”
“Please do,” she said between clenched teeth.
“It’s not what you think …”
“Really?” Shelley glared at him. “And what do I think?”
A buttery earthy scent wafted through the seashell curtain, bringing with it memories of Parisian grandes dames, Bee Gees mixed tapes, Venetian islands, and the smell of Max’s skin against hers. Shelley could already picture its bubbling yellow crust. The curtain parted to reveal the dish that had spurred her journey. Sari carried it out on a wooden tray together with two cups of coffee.
“Sundays with Shell,” Sari said as she set the dish down on the table. “On the house.”
Shelley averted her eyes from the plate, half expecting to see cheese melting over her hot and still beating heart, freshly hacked out of her chest. She scrambled to throw up out the window. She knocked her chair to the floor.
A hand closed over Shelley’s shoulder as she hung over the ledge, desperate for the fresh sea air.
“Shelley, are you okay?” a warm voice asked her.
Shelley spun around. He was just as she remembered him.
“You don’t look too good,” he said. “Do you need a doctor?”
She staggered back. “Dex?”
“You must be seasick,” Sari said. “I’ll get you some water.” She disappeared into the kitchen.
Dex set Shelley’s chair upright and helped her sit down.
Shelley stared at him. “What … what are you doing here?”
Dex smiled and sat next to her. “My wife, Sari, and I own this place. Our house is just farther up this cliff.”
“Hang on. Sari’s your wife?”
“Yes.”
“But what about—”
“Sheila died soon after I returned home from my European tour.”
“Oh.”
“I met Sari here in Boracay when I was doing a piece for my website. It’s called the Back—”
“The Backpacking Gourmet,” Shelley said.
Dex grinned proudly. “You’ve heard of it?”
She nodded and glanced at Paolo. He looked away.
“After Sheila died, I decided to travel again,” Dex said. “I felt closer to her that way. I felt like I was still making memories for the two of us. Eventually, I started writing about my travels. Boracay was the last place my dart landed.”
“Dart?” Shelley asked.
Dex pointed to a hole-riddled map on the wall and smiled. “Ta-dah. My very scientific navigation system,” he said. “I followed my dart, met Sari under a palm tree, and decided not to leave. Can you imagine my surprise when I saw Max here? I’m so sorry things didn’t work out between the two of you. I had always thought that you two were perfect for each other. Max didn’t like to talk about it when I asked about you, so I don’t know any of the details. It’s a pity we weren’t able to stay in touch after the tour. My life got pretty crazy for a while …”
“Dex.” She tried to steady her voice. “Where is Max now?”
“Well, I don’t know, actually. After Sari and I convinced him to sell us this place, he packed his bags and left.”
Sari walked back into the room and handed Shelley a glass of water. She turned to Paolo. “That was about two weeks after you left.”
Shelley heard Paolo’s breath catch in his throat. She searched his face for answers. It didn’t seem so familiar now. She looked at Sari. “So you’ve met each other …”
Sari smiled and sat beside Paolo. “Yes. We had never seen a person so desperate for baked eggs and cheese. Paolo got in touch with Dex through the website. We were the ones who introduced him to Max.”
Shelley glared at Paolo. “You’ve seen him,” she said slowly, struggling to control her rage.
Paolo dropped his eyes.
“Hey, but don’t worry.” Dex grinned. “Max taught us his baked eggs and cheese recipe before he left. That’s why everyone comes here.”
Shelley’s heart sank.
“Honey, didn’t Max leave something for Paolo?” Sari asked Dex. “And Shelley?”
“Oh, yeah, that’s right. I almost forgot. I’ll go get it.” Dex stood up and slipped through the shell curtains.
“That’s how I knew your name,” Sari told Shelley. “Before he left, Max told us that he expected Paolo to return with you.”
Dex walked back to their table. He was carrying two white envelopes. He handed one of them to Shelley and the other to Paolo.
Shelley’s hand shook as she took the envelope from Dex’s hand. “Um, Dex, do you think you could give us a moment?”
“Of course.” Dex squeezed Shelley’s shoulder again.
Shelley looked into his eyes. Dex did not need words to reassure her that he knew exactly what it was like to lose the person you loved the most.
Shelley tried to smile, but a tear rolled down her cheek, betraying her true feelings. As scared and confused as she had been, she had expected Max to be there, waiting for her. The fact that he had moved on … It hurt more than she could have imagined.
Dex turned to Sari. “Hey, hon, um, could you help me sort things out with that new inventory program you installed on the computer? I
inputted the latest stock this morning and it says that we have ten years’ worth of coffee creamer.”
“Oh, er, certainly,” Sari said, standing up. “Please excuse us, Shelley, Paolo. We’ll be up at the house if you need anything.”
“We might be a while. I’m horrible at numbers.” Dex gave Shelley a meaningful smile. “Enjoy your breakfast.”
“Sari, Dex,” Shelley called after them. “Thank you.”
Dex looked back and gave Shelley a wink.
Shelley heard the back door of the hut open and shut. Dex’s and Sari’s footsteps grew fainter as they made their way up the steps carved into the cliff.
“Shelley,” Paolo said, “I need to explain—”
She glared at him.
“I thought that Nonno would be here waiting for us,” he said. “That wasn’t the trade.”
Trade?
The word stung Shelley like alcohol poured over a fresh wound. “What trade?”
“The trade I made with him when I first found him,” Paolo said.
“I don’t believe you.” She crumpled the envelope in her fist. “Everything you’ve told me is a lie.”
Paolo looked directly at her. “I didn’t lie to you. I saw Nonno’s picture on Dex’s website and in Brad’s book. That’s how I discovered he was alive.”
“And you went looking for him,” Shelley said, “without me.”
“Yes.”
“So what was this charade all about?”
“It wasn’t—isn’t—a charade,” he said. “I really needed to find you.”
“Why? You had already found Max,” Shelley said.
“I found him, yes,” Paolo said, “but finding him alone wasn’t everything that I was searching for.” His eyes darkened. “I came here with the same questions you have. I wanted to know who Nonno was, how it was
possible that he was still alive, and why he left me.” He inhaled deeply. “But I had one more question for him.”
Even in the balmy Philippine sun, Shelley’s skin turned to ice.
“I wanted to know,” Paolo said, “how I could be like him.”
Shelley clenched her fists to keep from flinging the eggs in Paolo’s face.
“But he wouldn’t give me the answers,” he said. “He said that we would have to make a trade.”
“What did Max want from you?”
“He didn’t want anything from me,” Paolo said. “He wanted you.”
“What? Why—”
“He said that you would have the answers I was searching for—that he had already shared them with you. If I wanted to learn the truth,” Paolo said, “I had to bring you here.”
Tears scalded Shelley’s face. “So where is he?”
“I’m sorry; I don’t know.”
Shelley looked down at the thin envelope in her fist. She turned it over.
Shelley
Seeing her name written in Max’s hand was like hearing him whisper it in her ear. She threw the envelope away. It landed next to the open hatch.
The wind chimes stirred. The breeze lifted a corner of the envelope off the floor.
Shelley dove for it. Her fingertips grazed the edge of the paper just as it fell through the hut’s entryway.
“No!” Paolo lunged toward the hatch.
Shelley slumped to the floor. Max’s letter was gone. She buried her face in her hands and began to cry. She had come all this way to get answers and now she had just thrown them away.
She had been so fearful of the words she and Max would exchange when she confronted him, afraid that they would be horrible and scarring. And now she wept desperately for the soggiest scrap of half a word. She didn’t even need to read it. She just wanted to have something to show for her search other than a palmful of tears.
Paolo sat next to her. “Here,” he said.
Shelley looked up. He handed the crumpled envelope to her.
“But how …”
“It got caught on a rung,” Paolo said.
Shelley could not have survived losing whatever it was the envelope contained, but she could not bring herself to thank Paolo for saving it. He had betrayed her trust just as Max had, and in that way, she thought, he was already like the man he sought to become.
“Are you going to read it?” he asked.
“No,” Shelley said. “You read yours first. Aloud.”
Paolo opened his envelope. Inside it was a letter and a second envelope. The smaller envelope was yellowed with age. He set the older envelope aside and unfolded the letter.
Context and consequence
Paolo
,
This is the tenth sheet of paper I have written your name on. Hopefully this time I will know what to write after it. (Don’t worry, I recycle. I am very concerned about the planet the next generations and I will continue to inherit. I used one of the pages to write down the baked eggs and cheese recipe for Dex and Sari.) As I have not yet crumpled this sheet, I believe I am making progress, even if only by pushing this pen across the paper and writing gibberish about how environmentally conscious I am. (Did Shelley tell you about the time she won a gift voucher for banning plastic coffee stirrers in the office?)
If Shelley is with you now, then you would understand why I sent you to find her. You would know why there was no way I could have possibly told you all that you wished to know when you first came to me. I was not being cruel, as you had accused me. (You used a more colorful term as I recall, but since there is a large chance that you are reading this letter to Shelley—hence my use of English—I have taken the liberty of toning down your language.) But I deserved your anger—just as you deserved to know the truth with all its layers and context
.
I asked you to find Shelley because the truth of who I am is not so much a story but a journey—a journey I had already shared with Shelley—and a journey that you, in turn, needed to
take with her to understand fully. To rattle it off to you over a cup of coffee (or even a round or two of Boracay’s best mojitos) would have robbed you of the depths of a history that is as much mine as it is yours. But believe me when I tell you that it is a legacy that I wish you did not have to inherit. I kept my lifetimes from you so that I would not deprive you of your own
.
I wanted you to have your boring summer afternoons, your teenage angst, your days when your life’s meaning depended solely on whether you scored a goal in soccer. I wished the mundane for you, the small and unnoticed, the simple memories painted in black and white. The gray I live in was too cruel to share
.
Paolo blinked back a tear. The letter shook in his hands.
But please do not think that I kept who I really was from you. The past isn’t a coat you check at the door. I raised you in the full presence of my strengths and numerous faults. I shared with you all the lessons my lifetimes have taught me with the hope that you would be spared the pain of learning them for yourself
.
But, I suppose, a father cannot protect his children forever. I could not even protect my first daughter long enough to give her a name. This is the one law of the universe I have had the greatest difficulty accepting (even more than coming to terms with the fact that the world is not flat). This is perhaps the reason why it is something I have constantly had to relearn. When you found me, I realized that it was a lesson I had failed to grasp yet again. And so here you are today, released from the last of my protection, free to face the answers to all you wish to know—on your own—as it was always meant to be
.
You asked me who I am. I would like to think that you have always known the answer to this, as I have never hidden it from you. I am and always will be Nonno, the man who raised you as a son. As for who I was, you now have your answer. I was Maximus
,
Julien, and all those lives in between—stops on my journey to become the man I am today—a father who loves you still
.
By knowing who I am, the answer to your second question should become clear as well. Why did I leave you? I loved you too much to stay. You did not need my choices altering the course of your life. You had enough decisions of your own to make. I should have known though that the consequences of our choices would one day intersect. That is their nature, just as surely as the earth is round
.
That is why I taught you how to trade, because that’s what life is—a barter of choices and consequences. Nothing you have is without a price paid by yourself or someone else. Some days you will get more than what you paid for and on others you will pay more than what you should. (For the record, your blue stuffed elephant was always the standard price for a cup of water. I only charged extra if you wanted juice.) Our family has had a long history of getting more than they bargained for—I tried to raise you to be shrewder
.
Isabelle chose love and paid the price by dying alone
.
Adrien traded a moment’s pleasure for his youth’s years
.
Uri won wars to feed his family and lost his mind
.
Pavel tried to be a child forever and drowned his innocence
.
Abbot Thomas worked tirelessly to strengthen the spirit and wore his body to the bone
.
Ionus helped build a new world but had to leave all he knew behind
.
And Maximus … he wanted life. And for this I continue to pay the price
.
Today another trade will be concluded. You have chosen to accept the terms for the answers you wanted. You found Shelley and have brought her here. In return you have most of what you set out to find. You also, perhaps, have Shelley’s hate. That, unfortunately, is part of the cost. I hope that she will find it in her heart to forgive you, but her forgiveness is yours to earn—in the same way that I have to make my own amends
.
But the trade is not yet complete. You require one more answer, but I will give you two
.
Can you be immortal? If you had asked me that question before I met Mihael that night in Slovenia, I would have been very relieved to tell you that this was not at all possible. Until I saw him, I lived with the comfort that the cruelty of my life was mine alone to endure. Mihael—Gestrin—robbed me of that peace. Seeing him again confirmed the fear that had been shadowing me for centuries—that he was indeed immortal and that I had buried him alive. But while I was greatly pained by what I had done, I knew it had been necessary. He had become a monster and had to be stopped
.
What Gestrin said to me that night rekindled an ancient fear. He told me that he had searched for me ever since he escaped from his grave. That I had bound his hands and feet even in death had meant one thing to him: he had finally found a person who truly believed he was immortal, the companion he was longing for. But when years passed without finding me, he assumed that I had died
.
But as I said, all choices intersect
.
Gestrin never strayed far from Slovenia, returning now and then and sometimes staying for the course of a lifetime. Sentimentality always drew him back to the river where he was born. He reinvented himself as a researcher of its history. It was around this time that I had started bringing tours to the river as well. On one of these tours, he saw me. It was then that he discovered why I had believed him that night in the marshes: I was immortal, too
.
Gestrin waited before making his presence known to me, finally choosing that night I was in Ljubljana with Shelley. You cannot imagine the terror I felt when I saw him and realized the danger I had placed Shelley in. In my eyes he was still the murderer who had tried to take Pavel. I did not doubt his promise to find me and take those whom I loved
.
But he said he did not want vengeance. He said that he
wanted to set things right between us. He wanted to give me a gift. The next morning at the river, I discovered what he meant. He sent Shelley a vial of his poison. He planned to give her to me—a companion to spend eternity with. It was a trick and I refused it
.
Can you be immortal? Your grandmother asked me the same thing before she died. I never spoke to you about her and now you will know why
.
I met your grandmother in March 1944, right before Vesuvius erupted—again. I had volunteered to help evacuate the villages in the path of the eruption. I wanted to help spare whomever I could from my old demon. That’s where I saw her. Pale, crying and calling my name from the stream of dusty and frightened refugees. But she was not Livia, though it was her face that I saw in the crowd. And it was not my name she was calling, though it was what I heard
.
It did not matter. What I saw and heard was the chance to make things right
.
She told me her name was Sophia. She had a broken ankle. I put my arm around her and never let her go
.
A part of me knew that I was marrying her for the wrong reasons, that I was marrying a ghost. That’s why I decided to tell her who I was—I wanted at least one of us to be marrying the truth
.
I was taken aback at how easily she had accepted what I had laid before her. I suppose it was at that moment that I began to love her. Or at least I tried to. Her faith was what endeared her to me, but it was ultimately how I lost her as well
.
Sophia and I did not speak of my secret again until long after your father was born. Ten years had passed. Sophia was older and I remained the same. She was no longer the young girl I had met, but in my eyes the passing of the years had only made her more beautiful. Sophia saw things differently. The fine wrinkles that were beginning to line her face reminded her that she was bound to time—and that I was not. She asked me if she could be like me
.
The answer I gave her is exactly the answer I am giving you now: all you know of death is a lie
.
I stood on a beach in Herculaneum waiting for death to take me away. I saw it hurtle down the mountain, devouring all life in its path
.
I imagined that dying was a battle. I was wrong. It is a trade
.
Morta will invite you to sit with her. She lays the cards of your life in front of you, but there is no point in looking back. You already know what has happened. What you do not know is what will be. This is what she brings to the table
.
Life will go on without you just as it did before you were born. It has not stopped for the passing of the greatest of men and it will not stop for you. At death’s table, you watch it leave you behind
.
There is the part of you that will look at the future unfolding without you and be at peace. There is another part that will not
.
Morta hands you the shears. You are given the choice of severing yourself from what anchors you to this world or staying behind. The halves of your soul take sides. They wrestle for the shears
.
Looking at the world you know, it is not hard to guess which side always wins
.
But I cared little then of what the world expected of me. If death had not shown me that Livia and my daughter had sailed to safety, I would have cut my life’s thread in an instant. But what I saw was the cusp of my dream. I was not about to give up without a fight. I claimed the shears and stabbed the part of myself that dared to abandon my family. It bled into nothingness. I made my choice—and it was binding. I did not know and could not know then what I had just traded for my dream
.
There was darkness
.
And Silence
.
I clawed out of the grave Herculaneum had become that evening. My body was whole again, but I knew that inside it, I was
not. I had killed the half of my soul that knew the way out of this life. The Silence was the void left by my own voice, the voice you hear when you have conversations with yourself, the voice that tells you that you are never alone
.
I bartered death for a dream I could never live. I decided then that it was better that my wife be a widow to the man I had been than wife to the monster I thought I had become. Through the centuries I watched my dream unfold from a distance, stepping in only when my children needed me the most. I learned to be content. I learned to make peace with who I was. But when that dream ended with Isabelle, I was left with nothing but the memory of the choices I had made
.
When I met your grandmother, I dared to dream again. But Sophia could not be with me. She was not content with what I could offer her. She wanted forever, but this was not mine to give
.
What happened next is her story to tell, and her words are enclosed in the second envelope I have left for you. Perhaps after reading her letter you will be able to answer your last question yourself. Choose well
.
I love you
.
Forever,
Nonno