We booked passage to Naples a few days later, and when the time came for us to walk down our road for the last time, I turned to look at what was left of the inn and was surprised to feel nothing but relief that the past had been purged so completely. Jewel, my sisters, Aaron, Seth, I let them all go now, like birds I had held in my hand. “And lo the bird is on the wing,” Omar would have said.
When we stood on the deck of the ship pulling out of New York harbor, I looked at my child waving to people she did not know and my husband’s profile as he gazed out at the receding land, and I felt what Eve must have felt on the first morning in the Garden. In the end, there was nothing left to do but sigh at the incoherent coherence of every life. Luca said the Italians had a saying: “Since the house is on fire, let us warm ourselves.” And we would.
Angels Unaware Page 21