“Do you trust me?”
“Yes,” she said breathlessly.
“Then marry me.”
“Gabriel, I—”
He cut her off with his kiss, pulling her against his chest. Somehow his hands were in her hair, clutching her tightly. And then as he gently slid his hands to caress her naked shoulders, he tentatively pressed into her mouth.
Julia released his bow tie to wrap her arms around his neck, tugging him until their bodies were flush against one another. She nibbled his full lower lip and moaned as his tongue slowly traced the curve of her mouth.
Suddenly, his fingers were touching her collarbones and moving to her back, gliding across the surface of her skin as it began to flush and heat.
“Let me do things the right way,” he pleaded, his hands cupping her face.
“How could this be wrong?” she whispered back, eyes dark and desperate.
He kissed her again, and this time she shamelessly wound her right leg around his hip, trying to recreate their tango against a wall from the Royal Ontario Museum.
He pressed forward until her back was flush against the door to her room, his hands roaming up and down her thighs, before pulling back suddenly. “I can’t.”
Julia removed his glasses in order to smooth the creases around his eyes, and saw passion, conflict, and love staring back at her. She unwound her leg from his hip and pressed their lower bodies together.
“Gabriel.”
He blinked at the sound of her voice, as if she was awakening him from a dream.
When he didn’t move, she placed a few inches between them and handed him his glasses. “Goodnight, Gabriel.”
He looked stricken. “I don’t mean to hurt you.”
“I know.”
He remained perfectly still, staring down into eyes that were filled with sadness and longing. “I’m trying to be strong for both of us,” he whispered. “But when you look at me like that…”
He kissed her lips softly and nodded his acquiescence as she fumbled for her slide card, and the two of them disappeared behind her hotel room door.
* * *
Early the next morning, Julia left the comfort of Gabriel’s warm embrace to tip toe to the washroom. When she returned, she found him wide-awake and gazing at her with concern.
“Are you all right?”
Blushing, she smiled. “Yes.”
“Then come here.” He opened his arms, and she snuggled close, placing a leg over both of his.
“I’m sorry if I embarrassed you in the hallway.”
“You didn’t embarrass me.” The urgency of his tone took Julia aback. “How could I be embarrassed by the woman I love showing me that she wants me?”
“I think we gave some of the other guests a bit of a show.”
“And some inspiration,” he spoke against her lips, kissing her.
When they broke apart, she rested her head on his shoulder. “I guess you’re serious about waiting until the wedding.”
“You weren’t complaining last night.”
“You know me.” She winked at him. “I don’t like to complain.
“Thank you for compromising, Gabriel.” She tightened her arms around his waist. “Last night was important for me.”
“For me too.” He smiled. “I could see that you trust me.”
“I’m glad, because I’ve never trusted you more.”
He kissed her again, before pushing a lock of hair away from her face. “I have something to tell you,” he said, his fingers gently running up and down her neck. “Something strange.”
Her eyebrows knit together curiously.
“Go ahead.”
“When I was back in Selinsgrove, I saw something. Or rather, something happened to me.”
Julia covered his hand with hers, stilling his fingers. “Were you hurt?”
“No.” He paused uncomfortably. “Promise me you’ll keep an open mind.”
“Of course.”
“I thought it was a dream. When I woke up, I wondered if it was a vision.”
She blinked. “Like when you thought you saw me in Assisi?”
“No. Like what you said about the Gentileschi painting while we were in Florence—about Maia and Grace.
“I saw her. Grace. We were in my old room at my parents’ house. And Grace told me…” Gabriel’s voice broke. He struggled to compose himself. “She told me that she knew that I loved her.”
“Of course she did,” Julia murmured, hugging him more tightly.
“There’s more. She had someone with her. A young woman.”
“Who was she?”
Gabriel swallowed roughly. “Maia.”
Julia gasped, her eyes wide.
“She told me she was happy.”
Julia wiped a stray tear from Gabriel’s face. “Was it a dream?”
“Perhaps. I don’t know.”
“Did you tell Richard? Or Paulina?”
“No. They’ve both made their peace.”
Julia placed her hand against his cheek.
“Maybe you needed this in order to forgive yourself—to see that Grace and Maia forgave you and that they’re happy.”
He nodded wordlessly, burying his face in her hair.
Chapter 50
On their flight back to Boston, Julia surprised Gabriel by telling him that she would welcome his proposal. His happiness could barely be contained in the first class section of the airplane. She expected that he would drop to one knee immediately.
He didn’t.
When they arrived in Boston, she expected him to take her shopping for wedding rings.
He made no such plans.
In fact, as September flew by, she wondered if Gabriel was going to propose to her at all. Perhaps it was the case that he merely assumed that they were engaged and planned to pick out wedding rings at some later date.
Gabriel warned her that the doctoral program at Harvard was challenging and that the professors were highly demanding. In fact, he remarked more than once that the average faculty member who taught in her program was far more pretentious and ass-like than he had ever been.
(Julia wondered if such astronomical ass-like levels were humanly possible.)
Nevertheless, his warnings hadn’t quite prepared her for the amount of work she was required to do on a daily basis. She spent long hours in seminars and also in the library, keeping up with her homework and supplementing the reading from her classes. She met with Professor Marinelli regularly and found that they enjoyed a professional but comfortable rapport. And she worked tirelessly on her Italian and other languages, in preparation for her competency exams.
Gabriel encouraged her, of course, and he did his very best not to pressure her about spending time with him. He was busy with his new position and had immediately taken over the supervision of three doctoral students, having relinquished Paul to Katherine’s capable direction. But full professors have more leisure time than graduate students, and so Gabriel spent many an evening and weekend alone.
He began volunteering as a tutor at the Italian Home for Children in Jamaica Plain. Despite his somewhat limited success, under his supervision a small group of teenagers developed a lively interest in Italian art and culture. The Professor promised to send them to Italy if they graduated high school with a respectable grade point average.
Though he kept himself busy, each day ended as it began, with him alone in his now renovated house, missing Julianne.
He seriously contemplated buying a dog. Or a ferret.
Despite her overall busyness with graduate school, which was a welcome distraction, Julia continued to be frustrated. Their separation was unnatural, uncomfortable, cold, and she ached to breach that separation and be one with him again. The fact that she couldn’t made her terribly sad. All the romantic activities short of intercourse couldn’t erase that kind of loneliness. And there were only so many times she could listen to comforting music while lying alone in her single bed.
Sexual
desires can be satisfied in many ways, but she longed for the attention that he paid to her when they were making love, the way he lavished single-minded devotion on her as if there were no one and nothing else on earth. She coveted the way she felt when he touched her naked form. For in those moments, she felt beautiful and desirable, despite her innate shyness and unease about her body. She desired the moments after sex, when they were both relaxed and sated, and Gabriel would whisper beautiful words in her ear, and they would simply be in one another’s arms.
As the days passed, Julia wasn’t sure how long she could tolerate their disconnection without lapsing into a depression.
* * *
One day at the end of September, Julia opened the door of the Range Rover and silently slid into the passenger seat. She buckled her seatbelt and gazed out the window.
“Sweetheart?” Gabriel reached his hand out to push her hair away from her face.
She stiffened.
He withdrew his hand. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“Sharon,” she mumbled.
Gabriel reached over to gently turn her chin in his direction. Her face was puffy, and her skin was blotchy and uneven. She’d been crying for a while.
“Come here.” He unfastened her seatbelt and tugged her over the center console and onto his lap, which was no easy feat. “Tell me what happened.”
“Dr. Walters brought up all this stuff about my mother. I didn’t want to talk about it, but she said that she wasn’t doing her job if she let me suppress everything that happened in St. Louis. I took as much as I could take and then I left.”
Gabriel grimaced. Dr. Townsend had been making similar comments about his own mother, but he seemed to be closer to making peace with his past since his trip to Italy. Certainly, his continued presence at Narcotics Anonymous meetings seemed to be helping.
“I’m sorry,” he offered, kissing the top of her head. “But didn’t Nicole address your relationship with your mother?”
“Briefly. Mostly we discussed you.”
Gabriel winced. He would always feel guilty for the pain he had caused her, but the fact that he had bumped Sharon off Nicole’s priority list for helping Julia made him cringe.
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
Julia laughed mirthlessly as she wiped her tears away. “Find me another therapist.”
“I wouldn’t be helping you if I did. Any therapist worth her salt would insist that you address what happened with your mother. And her boyfriends.”
Julia began to protest, but Gabriel interrupted her. “I understand what you’re going through. Even though our mothers were abusive in different ways, I understand.”
She wiped her nose with a tissue.
“I’m here to listen, whenever you want to talk about it. But in order to be healthy, you have to deal with your past. I’ll do everything I can to help, but this is something only you can do—for yourself and for us.” He gave her a sympathetic look. “You realize that, don’t you? That the healing process not only helps you, it helps us?”
She nodded begrudgingly. “I thought all the angst was behind us. I thought that after everything we’d been through, we’d have our happy ever after.”
Gabriel tried to repress a snicker. And failed.
“What? You don’t believe in happy ever after?”
He smirked at her and tapped her nose with his finger. “No, I don’t believe in angst.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not an Existentialist; I’m a Dantean.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Very funny, Professor. With a name like Emerson, I would have thought you to be a Transcendentalist.”
“Hardly.” He kissed her wrinkles affectionately. “I exist in order to please you.
“We will be happy, Julianne, but don’t you see that in order to get to the happiness, you have to address the pain of the past?”
She squirmed but didn’t respond.
“I was thinking about visiting Maia’s grave.” He cleared his throat. “I’d like to take you with me.” His voice was hesitant and barely above a whisper. “I’d like you to see it. That is, if you wouldn’t find it morbid.”
“I’d be honored. Of course I’ll go with you.”
“Thank you.” He pressed his lips to her forehead.
“Gabriel?”
“Yes?”
“I didn’t tell you everything that happened with Sharon. Or with Simon.”
Gabriel rubbed at his eyes. “I didn’t tell you everything about my past, either.”
“Does it bother you? That we haven’t told one another everything?”
“No. I’m willing to listen to anything you have to say. But truthfully, there are some things I don’t want to discuss about my life. So I understand your reticence to lay bare your history.” He locked eyes with her. “The important thing is that you address those events with someone. I’m sure that talking things over with Dr. Walters is good enough.”
He kissed her once again and held her close, meditating on how far they’d come in their individual journeys and how far they still needed to go.
Chapter 51
In October, Gabriel persuaded Julia to travel to his house in Selinsgrove for the weekend in order to congregate with their relatives. Rachel and Aaron insisted on doing all the cooking during the weekend, while Tammy’s little boy, Quinn, entertained everyone, including Tom, with his smiles.
“How is married life treating you?” Gabriel asked Aaron as he assembled the ingredients for a salad.
“Really well. You should try it sometime.” Aaron winked at Julia as he took a long pull from his Corona.
“That’s an idea.” Gabriel smiled smugly and went back to his salad.
“Cut the crap, Gabriel. When are you going to put a ring on that woman’s finger?” Rachel’s voice floated across the kitchen from the oven.
“She has one.”
Rachel left her chicken Kiev unattended and raced across the kitchen to examine Julia’s left hand.
“That doesn’t count.” She pointed to Julia’s thumb, which was encased by Gabriel’s platinum band.
Julia and Rachel exchanged a look and shook their heads.
Gabriel regarded the way that Julia’s countenance fell and quickly abandoned his salad (which was laden pretentiously with both fruit and nuts), and hastily embraced her.
“Trust me,” he whispered, so quietly that no one else could hear.
She murmured her acquiescence, and he squeezed her tightly before kissing her.
“Get a room.” Aaron snickered.
“Oh, we have one.” Gabriel glanced at him sideways.
“We have two, actually.” Julia sighed in resignation.
When they sat down for dinner, Richard asked everyone to hold hands while he said the blessing. He thanked God for his family, for Tammy, Quinn, and Julia, for his new son-in-law, and for the friendship of the Mitchells. He thanked God for his wife and her memory and he pointed out that the seeds she had planted with her children, her husband, and her friends had come to fruition. And when he said “Amen,” everyone wiped at their eyes and smiled, more thankful than they could say that the family was together and strong once again.
Chapter 52
After dinner, Tammy and Scott cleaned up while Rachel and Aaron practiced their parenting skills with Quinn. On the back porch, Richard and Tom smoked cigars and drank Scotch, while watching old Mr. Bancroft carry things from the garage into the woods. Richard gave Tom a knowing look, and the two men clinked glasses.
Inside the house, Gabriel took Julia’s hand and led her upstairs. “Wear something warm,” he said as they walked into her room. “I want to take you for a walk.”
“It isn’t that cold out,” she remarked, as she pulled on one of Gabriel’s old cashmere cardigans.
He’d divested his wardrobe of cardigans after Julia informed him that they made him look like a grandfather.
(Or a PBS host.)
Upon hearing tha
t, Gabriel was only too glad to donate his cardigans to the Salvation Army, with the exception of one or two that Julia rescued.
“I don’t want you to catch cold,” he protested, tugging playfully on her sweater.
“I have you to warm me,” she countered, winking at him.
After winding her Magdalen College scarf around her neck, Gabriel escorted her downstairs, through the kitchen and outside.
“Going for a walk, Emerson?” Tom’s voice surprised them.
“With your permission, Mr. Mitchell.”
Tom patted the Swiss Army knife in his coat pocket. “If you make her cry, I’ll gut you like a fish.”
“I’ll take good care of her, I promise. And if I make her cry, I’ll dry her tears.”
Tom snorted and muttered something under his breath.
Julia gazed between Gabriel and Tom quizzically. “What’s going on?”
“Gabriel is taking you for a walk, with my blessing.” Her father spoke with only the slightest of scowls.
“And mine,” interjected Richard, his gray eyes alive with amusement.
“You two need to lay off the Scotch.” Julia shook her head at the men as Gabriel pulled her into the dense, thick trees.
“What was that all about?” she asked as they trudged hand in hand toward the remains of the old orchard.
“You’ll see.” Gabriel kissed the top of her head before quickening their pace. He grinned as he inhaled her scent. “You smell like vanilla.”
“I got sick of lavender.”
“So did I.”
Within minutes they were at the edge of the orchard. Despite the fact that the trees were very thick, Julia saw light streaming through the branches.
“What’s going on?”
“Come and find out.” He led her through the trees.
There were small white lights decorating some of the branches of the trees overhead and lanterns scattered on the ground containing flameless flickering candles. Amidst the gentle light, which cast a warm glow over the stark, bare trees and the old grass, there stood a white tent. Inside, a bench was spread with a familiar looking blanket and decorated with cushions.
Gabriel's Inferno Trilogy Page 99