Before Ever After

by Samantha Sotto

  An email from Shelley

  Broadway tickets for two

  Shelley closed the book. It didn’t end with “happily ever after.” And now, after three years of crying herself to sleep and one night curled on her foyer floor, she knew why: The story went on.

  She took a deep breath. It was time to try to write the rest of it. She had said good-bye to Max the night before, but as she closed her eyes and felt his kiss on her neck, something told her that he wasn’t far away. He was there, holding her hand, steadying her fingers as she turned the pages. She would start small, she decided. A paragraph—she bit her lip—or perhaps something smaller. Shorter. A list. She rummaged through a drawer for a pen. She pressed its tip to paper. Milk. Bread. The pen shook. She gripped it tighter. Eggs.

  LONDON

  Now

  The rubbery yellow mess in front of her would have made a less determined person give up on the idea of re-creating Max’s Sunday breakfast staple, but Shelley was made of sterner stuff. She pinched her nose and shoveled in a mouthful of what used to be eggs. Waste not, want not.

  Strictly speaking, she would have to waste an inconceivable amount of eggs before she would ever want for anything again, at least money-wise. Max had seen to that. Shelley had gotten the second biggest surprise of her life when she found out how much Max had left her in his will. The biggest surprise was going to come three years later—today, in fact, in exactly three minutes and thirty-two seconds.

  00:03:30

  Max had willed to Shelley an obscene amount of money and a diverse investment portfolio ranging from office blocks in Stockholm to a private island in the Venetian lagoon. The only explanation Shelley had ever gotten from the solicitor was that Max had inherited his estate years before and that she was one of the two beneficiaries stated in his will. The other was an orphanage in Cambodia.

  00:02:15

  Shelley struggled to understand why Max would keep such a secret—not that there was anything to complain about in the life they had shared. He had operated a small tour company and spent his weekends at his small free-range chicken farm. When she wasn’t in their 1970s Volkswagen van traveling around Europe with Max or helping him run after chickens, Shelley worked on her mosaic commissions. It was an art Max had introduced her to on their first trip together, and it had instantly become a passion. Working with the chaos of pebbles and broken tile reminded her that almost everything made sense after one took a few steps back.

  00:01:24

  In spite of her new status as one of the wealthiest women in the U.K., Shelley didn’t scoop up the nearest castle on the market. Nor did it even cross her mind to move back to the States. With Max gone, she wanted to keep everything else in her life as unchanged as possible. She did, however, sell the chicken farm. Chicken chasing just wasn’t the same without Max.

  00:00:58

  Shelley also continued to make mosaics. Her career as an artist had given her the fulfillment she had craved since she had first channeled Bridget Jones, quit her advertising job, and signed up for Max’s tour five years ago.

  00:00:45

  She considered what had gone wrong with this batch. Definitely more edible than last week’s, but perhaps it could have done with a bit less cream and a little more tarragon—or perhaps a dash of cayenne?

  00:00:37

  The doorbell rang.

  She swallowed the mouthful she was chewing, belted Max’s plaid blue bathrobe around her, and padded to the foyer in her furry purple slippers.

  00:00:24

  If Shelley had known what would be standing on her doorstep that Sunday morning, she might not have laughed off Brad’s constant prodding to hire a butler. He had never given up trying to persuade her to live the whole lady-of-the-manor lifestyle he had dreamed up for her. She ignored him, but she promised to rent the same Scottish castle Madonna had used for her last wedding reception when he kissed the right frog someday. Brad had found a couple of promising ones hanging around his watering holes lately.

  00:00:05

  Shelley was still preoccupied with planning next week’s baked eggs and cheese attempt when she opened the door.

  There, waiting patiently behind it, was the surprise—or rather the shock—that would change all that she knew.

  00:00:00

  Max.

  Shelley blinked.

  And blinked again. She tried to speak, but the stars swirling around her whisked her away.

  “Mrs. Gallus?”

  The voice called to Shelley from somewhere far away. She could not place its accent, though she was almost certain that it sounded like hot chocolate, the dense and dark kind you slurped rather than sipped.

  “Mrs. Gallus? Are you all right?”

  Shelley nodded through the haze in her head. She kept her eyes closed to keep the constellation at bay. She felt the cushions against her back and wondered where she was. She vaguely recalled that she had recently been lying down on something much harder.

  “You had me worried there,” the voice said. “I’m really sorry to drop in on you like this.”

  Shelley’s thoughts began to take form. Eggs. The doorbell. The door. Max.

  She sat up. Her living room spun around her. Her stomach lurched. She squeezed her eyes shut until the sofa came to a halt. She peeked through her lashes. Max’s warm amber eyes gazed back at her. She covered her mouth to stifle a scream. It didn’t work.

  The ghost stumbled back from Shelley’s high-pitched shriek and fell on the mosaic on the floor.

  Shelley peered over the edge of her couch. She gasped when she realized her mistake. The very much alive man on her floor wasn’t her dead husband after all.

  The man was in his early thirties, the same age Max had been when he died three years previously. His face was almost identical to Max’s—Shelley swallowed—but now she could see the subtle differences between them. The stranger’s brown hair was a shade lighter than Max’s. The bow of his lips curved more deeply. His chin bore the hint of a cleft. Still, the man looked similar enough to Max for her to be almost certain that they shared more than a few strands of DNA.

  The stranger picked himself up and took a step toward her.

  Shelley scrambled to the far end of the couch. She wasn’t a huge fan of strangers showing up at her home not carrying a box of pizza and change. “Who are you?”

  “Who am I? Yes, right. Good question.” The man moved closer. “I’m not really sure how to answer it though.”

  “Try.”

  The man dug into his pocket.

  Shelley’s chest tightened. She inched her hand toward the jar on the table beside her, ready to defend herself with her Mexican pottery.

  The man pulled out his wallet and took out a photograph. He held it out to her.

  Shelley kept her fingers wrapped around the clay jar. “What’s this?”

  “Your answer.”

  Shelley glanced at the picture. It was yellowed and worn around the edges, but she could see the two figures in it clearly: A grinning man with sideburns and bell-bottom jeans was holding a ruddy-faced toddler in his arms. They were standing in front of St. Peter’s Basilica. Shelley flipped the photo over. A date, written in an all-too-familiar hand, was fading in the bottom left-hand corner. Aprile 1978. She gasped. “What sort of sick joke is this?”

  “So you recognize him?”

  “Yes. I … mean, no. No, I don’t.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  Shelley felt the stranger’s eyes bore into her. “Who are you? Why are you here?”

  The man took a deep breath. “I’m Paolo Rossi. I’m the boy in the picture. And I’m here because the man carrying me is my grandfather and …”

  Shelley loosened her grip on the jar. His grandfather—of course. She felt foolish for even thinking for a moment that the grinning man in the old photograph was—

  “Max,” Paolo said, “your husband.”

  Hearing her thoughts spoken out loud made them sound a thousand times more ab
surd. It gave Shelley the strength to deny them.

  “Mr. Rossi, my husband died three years ago, and he wasn’t much older than you. I think you should go now or I will have to call the police.” She reached for the phone.

  “Wait. You don’t understand.” Paolo fumbled with the zipper of his leather messenger bag. He pulled out a manila envelope. “There’s something else you need to see.”

  Shelley arched a brow.

  “Open it,” he said. “Please.”

  Curiosity won over caution as it often did with Shelley. She kicked herself for what she was about to do. She took the envelope from Paolo and opened it. “More photographs? What is all this?”

  “Proof.”

  Shelley flipped through the stack of photos. She darted looks at Paolo to make sure he stayed glued to her couch. The photos were of her husband’s doppelgänger and the same boy taken on various occasions—birthday parties, Christmases, vacations. The boy grew taller and older with each picture, evidence that the pictures were taken over a period of several years. The man beside him aged as well. His hair turned grayer and at some point he started wearing glasses. By the time the boy was in his teens, the man’s hair had gone completely white and he sported an equally white full beard.

  Shelley set the last picture down and exhaled. If the photos had proven anything, she decided, it was that Paolo was a very disturbed young man. “Mr. Rossi, thank you for sharing your lovely childhood memories with me, but I’m afraid that I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Now.”

  “But the pictures … Didn’t you see …”

  “I saw that your grandfather was an old man whom, I will admit, looked very much like my husband when he was younger. But I assure you that unless my husband discovered some damned good face cream and magical Viagra, they were not the same person.”

  “No. Look at them again. Look closely at my grandfather’s face.”

  “Please go.” Shelley handed the pictures back to Paolo and stood up. “The police will not ask you as kindly, so I suggest you hurry.”

  “No. Wait. I’ll go, I promise. Just look at them one more time. Please.”

  Shelley rubbed the crease that was digging deeper into her forehead. She now believed that the stranger in her living room was more annoying than dangerous. She snatched the pictures back.

  “It might help if you laid them out next to one another,” Paolo said.

  Shelley glared at him but then decided that the fastest way to get the stranger out of her house was to play along. She spread the photos on the coffee table, not expecting to see anything different. Looking past the graying hair, the beard, and her own perceptions of how the world worked, she now saw that unlike the boy in the picture, whose face subtly aged over time, the face of the man did not.

  A thousand questions careened into one another on their way to Shelley’s lips. She did not know which stunned her more—the fact that this man was frozen in time or that, defying all logic, he was indeed Max.

  Paolo reached for one of the photographs. “This was taken ten years ago when I was attending university in the States. My grandfather flew in from Italy for my graduation. He died a week later.”

  Shelley glanced at the top of Paolo’s head. She thought that it was funny that she had just now noticed that his hair was twinkling.

  Shelley woke up with the pain of the morning’s events lodged behind her tonsils. She coughed and swore to have her blood sugar checked. She did not like fainting.

  “Would you like me to get you some water?” Paolo asked.

  She nodded. The pain in her throat prevented her from doing anything else—like continue screaming.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  Shelley watched Paolo as he walked toward the kitchen. His stride was identical to Max’s. He was a fraction shorter than Max’s six-foot-three frame, but he had the same lean build. Max was this man’s dead grandfather, she thought.

  Paolo returned with a glass of water. She gulped it down, wishing that it were a much stronger drink.

  “Feeling better?”

  Shelley stared at him blankly. In the time it had taken her to empty her glass, she had decided that she had gone mad and that Paolo and the morning’s events were part of some delusional episode. It was all those eggs that did it, she thought. “Salmonella.”

  “I’m sorry, did you say something?” Paolo asked.

  She couldn’t help but smile. So this is what it felt like to fall off your rocker. Not too bad, really. She could have done much worse, hallucinating a circus of pink elephants and creepy clowns. Paolo at least looked like Max. She was now in fact quite proud that her subconscious had whipped up such an entertaining storyline. It would make a good plot for a book she could write someday. This was assuming, of course, that this was only a temporary bout of insanity. If the madness was more permanent in nature, well, Shelley didn’t want to think about that right now. She distracted herself by studying the imaginary fellow in her living room. Nice smile and a good behind. He was Max’s grandson, though. Slightly perverted, but three years of celibacy could do that to you.

  “All of this must be quite disturbing,” Paolo said. “Believe me, I know. But I’m afraid there’s more. Do you have a computer I could borrow?”

  “A computer? Certainly. Follow me.” Shelley let her hallucination run its course, not really knowing what else she could do. She led Paolo upstairs to Max’s old office.

  Paolo walked over to the laptop. “May I?”

  Shelley grinned.

  Paolo sat down at the antique mahogany desk and tapped away on the keyboard: T-h-e-B-a-c-k-p-a-c-k-i-n-g-G-o-u-r-m-e-t. Reggae music played as the website loaded.

  “Mrs. Gallus …”

  Shelley put her hand on Paolo’s shoulder and smiled. “Please, call me Shelley.”

  “Uh, okay. Shelley. I have to warn you that what I’m about to show you will be a … well, a bit of a shock.”

  She doubted him. Sanity was overrated. Going mad was surprisingly refreshing. In fact, she should have done this earlier.

  Paolo clicked on an archived entry. “I also have to tell you now that I can give you no explanation for what you are about to see.”

  Shelley liked what she had seen so far and grinned even wider. She wandered through the familiar sun-kissed landscape of Paolo’s face, pausing to admire the flawed perfection of his slightly hooked nose. She sighed, wondering why she couldn’t be hallucinating about her husband and not just his facsimile.

  “Shelley? Did you hear what I said?”

  “What? A shock? Oh, yes.” She turned to the computer screen. A picture of baked eggs and cheese appeared in front of her. There was a caption beneath the familiar dish:

  “Sundays with Shell,” an unforgettable masterpiece I found on my recent trip to Boracay Island.

  Shelley frowned, trying to comprehend what she was seeing.

  “Go on. Read the rest of it.” Paolo let Shelley take the seat in front of the desk. She was going to need it soon enough.

  She skimmed over the article that praised the dish as the surprising find on the anonymous blogger’s backpacking trip to Boracay, a resort island in the Philippines. The dish was served at The Shell, a rustic café perched on a limestone cove overlooking the sea.

  I was lucky enough to find an old friend in Boracay, which brought back all of the memories of my very first backpacking adventure. And then there were the eggs. Be warned: The Shell is only open on Sunday mornings and only serves eggs, so don’t make the mistake of dropping in at any other time, because my friend has made it clear that he will not throw the rope ladder down even if you are drowning or being feasted on by sharks. Check out the gallery to see the pictures from my trip.

  “I don’t understand. Why did you show me this?” Shelley asked. True, the baked eggs looked uncannily similar to what Max used to make. True, it was an odd coincidence that the dish shared her name—then again, shells weren’t exactly unheard-of on tropical beaches. But what did a café halfway
around the world have to do with Paolo’s preposterous claims about Max? It began to dawn on her that perhaps she was not experiencing a mad delusion after all, and that she had just let a very strange man into her home.

  “Go to the gallery and take a look at photo number three,” Paolo said.

  “All right. But after that you’ll have to go. I mean it.”

  Shelley clicked on the gallery button. A dozen thumbnail pictures appeared on the page. She double-clicked on the third picture in the series.

  An uncropped photo of the baked eggs and cheese dish filled the screen. In the background was a shirtless man sipping a mug of coffee. His face was turned sideways to the camera, the profile of his slightly hooked nose distinct against the sunlight. Catching the sun on his tan chest was the chain and Scrabble pendant she had given Max. The date printed at the bottom of the picture showed that it had been taken less than two months ago.

  It was an hour before Shelley spoke again. There was a bitterness in her voice that hadn’t been there before. “How is this possible? Max is dead. He’s been dead for three years.”

  “That’s why I came looking for you, Shelley,” Paolo said. “To find answers.”

  “Answers? You came to me for answers? Jesus, I don’t even know what damned questions to ask. How? What? Why?”

  “Actually, ‘who’ might be a good place to start.”

  Shelley looked out the window. The row of brick town houses across the street looked exactly as it always did. And so did the parked cars and the people walking past them. This was odd, she thought, considering how her world had just turned upside down. She had half expected to see at least one goldfish fly by.

  “You do know that this is mad, right?” Shelley said. “I can’t believe we’re even letting ourselves think for one second that what you’re suggesting could be true. There must be some logical explanation. A relative, perhaps? A look-alike? A … er … clone?”

  “A clone? This isn’t science fiction, Shelley.”

  “Oh, and your theory that I was married to a remarkably resilient and well-preserved old man is more plausible?”