“No, you didn’t.”
He retrieved his phone. Scrolling through a few screens, he settled on something. Then he fixed distressed and haunted eyes on hers.
“After the hearing, I ducked into the men’s room and quickly sent you an email.” He gently took her hand. “Here,” he said, giving her the phone.
Julia quickly glanced at the screen.
Beatrice, I love you. Never doubt that. Trust me, please. G.
She blinked several times, trying to assimilate what she saw typed in black and white with what she’d experienced. “I don’t understand. I didn’t receive this.”
Gabriel gave her a tortured expression. “I know.”
She looked at the screen again and saw that the date and time of the email corresponded with Gabriel’s story. But the addressee of the email was not her. In fact, the actual recipient was someone entirely different.
J.H. Martin.
Julia’s eyes widened as the magnitude of Gabriel’s error suddenly became very, very clear. Instead of sending the email to Julianne H. Mitchell, he’d sent it to Jeremy H. Martin, the Chair of the Department of Italian Studies.
“Oh my God,” she breathed.
He plucked the phone from her hand, muttering curses. “Every time I tried to do something for you, it backfired. I tried to save you, and the hearing officers were suspicious. I tried to give you a clue in conversation, and I made you feel like I’d abandoned you. I tried to email you, and I sent the email to the very person who’d forbidden me to contact you. Honestly, Julia, were it not for the fact that I hoped that someday we would be having this conversation, I would have stepped out into rush hour traffic on Bloor Street and ended it.”
“Don’t say things like that. Don’t even think it.”
Julia’s sudden show of fierceness pleased him, but he found himself back-pedaling quickly. “Losing you was a low point for me. But suicide isn’t an option I’d entertain again.” He gave her a look that seemed to signify much more than he could say at that moment.
“Jeremy was furious. He’d put his career and his department on the line to help me and I’d gone behind his back two minutes later. Now he had proof, in writing, that I was breaking my agreement with the committee. I had no choice but to do whatever he said. If he sent my email to the Dean, the repercussions would have been devastating for both of us.”
At that moment, Gabriel and Julia were interrupted by Rebecca, who joined them on the patio, carrying a pitcher of homemade lemonade garnished with a few frozen raspberries that floated delicately in the cloud of yellow. She served their drinks with an encouraging smile and vanished back into the house.
Gabriel drank greedily, enjoying his reprieve.
“So?” prompted Julia, sipping her lemonade.
“Jeremy told me to stay away from you. I had no choice. He held Damocles’s sword in his hand.”
“He let you go?”
“With a handshake and a promise.” Gabriel grimaced as the memory of that dreadful conversation haunted him. “He showed me mercy. Then more than ever I felt obligated to keep my word. I resolved not to contact you directly until you were already assured your place at Harvard.”
Julia shook her head stubbornly. “But what about me, Gabriel? You made a lot of promises to me. Didn’t you think about keeping them?”
“Of course. Before I left Toronto, I put the textbook in your mailbox. I thought you’d find the passage in Abelard’s letter and read what I wrote on the back of the photograph.”
“But I didn’t realize it was from you. I didn’t even look at it until the night you came to see me. That’s why I was running outside. I didn’t have an internet connection in my apartment and I wanted to email you.”
“What would you have said?”
“I don’t know. You have to understand that I thought you’d had enough of me. That you’d decided I wasn’t worth the trouble.” Tears sprang to Julia’s dark eyes, and she brushed them aside.
“I’m the only one in this relationship who was never worth the trouble. I knew I’d put myself in a situation in which I was careless with your heart. But it wasn’t done to hurt you. It was pride and bad judgment and mistake after mistake.” He looked down at his hands and began to turn the wedding ring around his finger.
“Katherine Picton tried to help me. She said she’d see that the university left you alone during my absence and that she would do everything she could to help you graduate on time. She mentioned that an old friend of hers had left the Department of Romance Studies at Boston University in order to take a position at UCLA. She wanted my permission to nominate me as his replacement. I asked her to go ahead.
“I interviewed for the position, and while I waited for their decision, I went to Italy. I had to do something to shake myself out of my depression before I did something I would regret.”
Julia’s stomach suddenly tightened. “Something you would regret?”
“Not women. The mere idea of being with someone else made me sick. I was more worried about other—vices.”
“Before you go any further, I need to tell you something.” Her voice was stronger and more determined than the will behind it.
Gabriel began to watch her carefully, wondering what in the world she was about to reveal.
“When I told you that my relationship with Paul didn’t go beyond friendship, what I said was true. Technically.”
“Technically?” Gabriel’s eyebrows flew up and his voice lowered to a growl.
“He wanted more. He told me he loved me. And we—kissed.”
Gabriel was silent for a moment or two, and Julia watched as his knuckles whitened.
“Is Paul who you want?”
“He was a friend to me when I needed one. But I never had romantic feelings for him. I think you know this already, but you ruined me for other men when I was seventeen.” Her voice trembled.
“But you kissed him.”
“Yes, I did.” Julia leaned over and with a gentle hand, brushed a lock of hair away from Gabriel’s forehead. “But that’s all. I had no idea you were coming back to me, but I still turned him down.” She withdrew her hand. “Not because I wouldn’t have had a good life with him. But because he wasn’t you.”
“I’m sure that distressed him.” Gabriel sounded sarcastic.
“I broke his heart,” said Julia, her shoulders hunching. “And I took no pleasure in doing so.”
The sight of Julia’s obvious discomfort tugged at him, but he couldn’t disguise the relief at her admission that he had no rivals in her affection. He squeezed her shoulder before he spoke.
“I was worried that if we had any contact and Paul found out about it, he’d run and tell Jeremy.”
“He wouldn’t have done that. He was good to me, even after I broke his heart.” Julia smoothed imaginary wrinkles out of her yellow dress. “I know you said you were faithful, and I’m not questioning you on that. But did anyone—kiss you?”
“No.” He smiled ruefully. “I’d make a good Dominican or Jesuit, don’t you think? With my new virtue of celibacy? Although I discovered during our separation that I don’t have the disposition to be a Franciscan.”
Julia gave him a quizzical look.
“That’s a story for another day.”
She squeezed his hand in affection and withdrew it, silently willing him to finish his story.
“If I wasn’t offered the position at BU, I was going to resign my job in Toronto. All I had to do was keep myself together until after graduation.
“I wanted to feel close to you, to remember a happier time, so I went to Italy. Truthfully, Julianne, those days with you in Florence and Umbria were the happiest days of my life.” He averted his eyes. “I even went to Assisi.”
“To become a Franciscan?” She smirked.
“Hardly. I visited the Basilica and I thought I saw you.”
He looked over at her hesitantly, wondering if she would think that he was disturbed. “Your doppelgänger led me to the lower church and down to the crypt, to the tomb of St. Francis.
“At first, I stared at the young woman, wishing she was you. Wishing I hadn’t made so many mistakes. I was confronted by my own failures. My sin. I’d made an idol of you. I’d worshipped you, like a pagan. Then when I lost you, I was in danger of losing everything. I told myself I needed you to save me, that I was nothing without you.
“I began to see how I’d been given chance after chance. Through no goodness of my own, I’d been given grace and love. And I’d thrown it away or treated it cheaply. I didn’t deserve the family who adopted me. I didn’t deserve Maia, who was the best part of my relationship with Paulina. I didn’t deserve to survive the drugs and graduate from Harvard. I didn’t deserve you.”
He paused and brushed at his eyes again, but this time the moisture didn’t abate.
“Grace isn’t something we deserve, Gabriel,” Julia said softly. “It comes from love. And God wraps the world in second chances and sticky little leaves and mercy, even though some people don’t want them.”
He kissed the back of her hand. “Precisely.
“In the crypt of the Basilica, something happened. I realized you couldn’t save me. And I found—peace.”
“Sometimes we search for grace until it catches us.”
“How are you not an angel?” he breathed. “Whatever happened to me, it made me want to be good. My experience caused me to focus on God, but also to love you more. I’ve always been attracted to your goodness, Julianne. But I believe I love you more deeply now than before.”
She nodded as her eyes suddenly blurred with salt water.
“I should have told you that I loved you sooner. I should have asked you to marry me. I thought I knew what was best for you. I thought that we had all the time in the world.”
Julia tried to speak, but her voice caught in her throat.
“Please tell me that it isn’t too late, Julianne. Please tell me I haven’t lost you forever.”
She stared at him for a moment, and put her arms around him. “I love you, Gabriel. I never stopped. We both made mistakes—with our relationship, with the university, with each other. But I hoped that you would come back to me. That you still loved me.”
She kissed him on the lips, and Gabriel felt an overflowing of joy mixed with guilt.
He was embarrassed, she could tell. But Julia also knew that his damp eyes were the result of a myriad of things—exhaustion and frustration, and the pain that lingers from a prolonged depression.
“Then you’ll stay?” His voice was soft.
She hesitated just long enough for him to feel worried.
“I want more than what we had before,” she said.
“More than I can give you?”
“Not necessarily, but I’ve changed over these past few month, and I see that you have too. The question is, where do we go from here?”
“Then tell me what you want. Tell me and I’ll give it to you.”