Nerea started teaching him Spanish too, at first just words and phrases here and there. As Jamie caught on to those, she chatted to him, narrating whatever she was doing while she cooked or worked in the garden or painted. Whatever she did, Jamie was right at her side, watching her, helping her, and taking it all in.
After several days of such narration, Jamie blinked in the middle of reaching for an ingredient she had asked him for in Spanish. “This is what you do with babies, isn’t it?” he asked as he closed his fingers around the bowl. “Keep talking at them so they learn how words work?”
Nerea smiled as he handed the garlic to her. “Sí. Muy bien.”
Jamie grinned at her, looking exceptionally pleased with himself.
The inescapable downside to Jamie’s visit was the interest the rest of the village took in Nerea’s guest. The whole town, of course, had known about the Tonio affair. That had been a long time ago, but no one had forgotten. And the neighbors could hardly fail to notice the handsome young man Nerea had staying with her while her husband was gone. Especially when Jamie loved sprawling out in the grass of the garden and playing with the fingers of Nerea’s left hand while she balanced a sketchpad on her knees and drew with her right.
On one such afternoon Jamie put his head down on his folded arms and fell asleep. She put her hand in his hair, ruffling the soft sun-warmed strands while she worked. It was Jamie she was sketching, for the painting he had asked, so sweetly, if she would do. She wanted to capture him just like this — drowsy, happy, unselfconscious.
She looked up, she wasn’t sure how much later, to the odd sensation of being watched. This bit of the garden was right near the fence line that marked the boundary between Nerea and Callum’s property and their neighbor’s land. And right now one of their neighbors, Sra. Astorga, who had lived in the next house over since Nerea was a girl, was peering directly over the top of the fence and at Nerea and Jamie. She wore an expression of profound judgment and disapproval. Nerea stifled the reflexive urge to pull her hand out of Jamie’s hair.
Instead she called out, “Can I do something for you?” As Nerea stared at her, Sra. Astorga ducked out of sight on the other side of the fence. Nerea sighed. That was not going to be the last she heard about this from anyone. Jamie stirred.
“It’s all right,” she told Jamie, running a hand through his hair. “Go back to sleep.”
“Wasn’t sleeping,” Jamie said, but his eyes were closed before he even put his head back down.
Nerea bent over and kissed his forehead in case anyone was still watching.
TWO WEEKS IN TO JAMIE’S visit they went to the coast, for no other reason than that they could. Jamie dove gleefully into the surf. Nerea sat on the beach under a big umbrella, reading or watching the sun and the sea accentuate the fine cut of Jamie’s muscles like some youth depicted on an ancient amphora. He was so lovely, an artist’s dream and a middle-aged woman’s fantasy. But for Nerea, unaccountably, he was also real. The two of them stayed up each night nearly until dawn talking and listening to the sound of the waves on the shore.
It was a wonderful few days, but there was a melancholy to it that Nerea couldn’t put her finger on until they were packing up what little they’d brought to return home. There was beauty in falling in love with someone new and making them a part of her life, but there was a certain sadness to it, too. Even if Jamie continued to weave himself perfectly into her and Callum’s life — which was far from guaranteed — there was still a loss to be had if the three of them were to turn into something new together. No longer would it just be her and Callum, decadent and against the world. Or, for that matter, just her and Jamie enjoying luxuries and a companionship their lives were never quite supposed to have.
She wanted to talk about all of it, with Callum, with Jamie, with the world through the fibers of her paint brushes. But she also wanted to keep it close, a secret not even those involved would truly understand. They were men, and the story of what they were all doing together was different for them. It was, Nerea realized, not unlike her first pregnancy and Leigh’s birth. To a one, new things in life, no matter how wonderful, came with a cost. Even those closest to her could not fully share in that experience.
On the way back from the shore, Nerea and Jamie stopped in the village to buy groceries. Because the world seemed determined not to let her forget all that was both beautiful and sad in her life, they ran into Tonio. Jamie, in fact, ran literally into him, stepping aside in the street and apologizing in imperfect Spanish. Nerea looked up from her mobile, on which she’d been texting Piper, and came to an abrupt halt.
In other circumstances, Nerea would have stopped and chatted. Perhaps she would have inquired whether Tonio wanted to meet her for lunch again, since she was going to be in Spain for a while still. But with Jamie next to her not knowing any of this history — and how could she have failed to prepare him and herself for this eventuality? — she could only say hello.
“Nerea,” Tonio shot a questioning glance at Jamie, who hovered nearby.
“Hello Tonio. This is Jamie,” Nerea said in Spanish. She tucked her hand into Jamie’s elbow and drew him forward into the conversation. Trying to pretend they weren’t there together would only make the discovery more horrid. “Jamie, this is Antonio.”
Jamie said hello and looked confused.
“New friend?” Tonio asked, his voice teasing but hesitant, as if he wasn’t sure how to proceed. Which made two of them.
“The boy on the phone who interrupted us at lunch.”
“Ah.” The information did not make Tonio look more comfortable. “It’s nice to meet you,” he told Jamie even as he kept a wary eye on Nerea.
Jamie responded hesitantly, but correctly, in Spanish. He looked between her and Tonio, putting pieces together.
“I’ll see you later,” Tonio said in a rush to Nerea. She didn’t blame him; the moment wasn’t going to get less awkward. He nodded to both of them before walking off down the street.
“Who was that?” Jamie murmured, as they stepped out of the bright, hot street into the cool interior of a shop.
“A very long story,” Nerea said. Out the window, she could see Tonio scoop up his little daughter and press a kiss to the cheek of his wife, who had just emerged from another store further down the street.
Jamie took her hand, heedless of the people around them. “Do you want to go home?” he asked. “We can get food later.”
Nerea nodded. “Yes, thank you.” An evening at home, curled up with Jamie and perhaps an easy exchange of texts with Callum, was exactly what she wanted.
THEIR LAST WEEKS IN Spain slipped away. The worst of the summer heat passed, and the days grew shorter, the quality of the air clearer. Autumn was approaching.
On their last Friday alone before Callum was scheduled to arrive, Nerea watched as Jamie announced they should have a romantic candlelit dinner together, then stood on tiptoe to swipe a pair of silver candlesticks down from the top of one of the kitchen cabinets.
“Do you know what those are?” Nerea asked. She needed a step ladder to reach them.
He stared at them, testing the weight of them in his hands. “No?”
“Put them on the table, and I’ll tell you a funny story. Which is not actually funny, but that’s generally how stories work here.”
“Your house?” Jamie asked, still holding the candlesticks.
Nerea took them away gently and set them down. “No,” she said. “Spain.” She fished in a drawer for the tapers that fit them. It was easier than looking at Jamie while explaining something about her family that was the sort of secret not everyone took kindly to. But minding the gap between what her family was and what it should have been was something that mattered to her. Family, tradition, and the old stones of the house all demanded it of her. So did Jamie, finding those candlesticks.
“You know my name?” she said.
“Which part?”
“Nessim. It’s connected to both Arab and Jewish families here.”
She waited to see what Jamie would say, if there was any hate lurking there. It was too easy to be surprised. But he said nothing, merely looked at her curiously, a child waiting for the rest of the story. “There are a dozen ways to spell it and who even knows when it became my family’s name. Or why. It’s hard to be sure sometimes in a place like this.”
“Like what?” Jamie asked.
“Spain has been through many things. We were not even a democracy when I was a child,” she said simply. “Now, when I was very little — and we had food even when we were poor because we had a vegetable garden and because we had our fruit trees — every Friday night my grandparents lit these candles. My grandfather would pass his hands over his eyes. I asked why did he do this. It was different than how we used candles at church, and I assumed it was some sort of magic.”
“I’m going to be really disappointed if you tell me it’s not magic,” Jamie said.
Nerea shushed him gently. “No. Not magic. No more so than anything else. He did it because his family before him did it. It was, simply, what was done.” She finally found the candles and laid them on the counter. “But it seems, from these candlesticks, and from my grandfather’s stories about his own grandparents and their grandparents, that this family — my family — is converso.”
“I don’t know what that is,” Jamie said.
“At some point, before the Inquisition, we were Jewish,” Nerea said as she lit a match to melt the bottom of one candle before setting it into its holder. “At some point afterward, having done what was necessary to survive, we forgot that. But we remembered this.”
“How did you figure it out?” Jamie asked, as Nerea secured the second taper and adjusted the two candlesticks so that they were side by side.
“This is where the story gets odd,” Nerea said. “When I met Callum for the first time — and went home with him to his terrible flat to have very good sex — the next morning I got up and put on his bathrobe and went to get some water. I opened all his kitchen cabinets just trying to find a glass.”
“Bad housekeeper?” Jamie guessed.
“Terrible housekeeper. No glasses. One sad coffee mug. And a pair of silver candlesticks.”
“What the...?” Jamie breathed.
“This was my reaction! Was the whole world filled with people who lit silver candlesticks for reasons they could not recall?”
“You asked him?”
“Yes. What else were we going to talk about that morning? The other people we were seeing? His desperate need for kitchenware? How quickly I should get out before it got awkward? I had no idea if he felt as easy with me as I did with him.”
“So you accosted him about candlesticks,” Jamie said, his mouth turned up in a delighted smile.
“I did,” Nerea said with a shrug. “His father’s mother was Jewish. When she died, Callum inherited the candlesticks when his father — who is the most priggish atheist I have ever met — rather coarsely expressed his lack of interest in such superstitions. Callum was sheepish when he told me the story. Whether that was because he had dragged the candlesticks from flat to flat out of some affection for his grandmother or to spite his father, I am not sure. I told him my story. And he told me the word for it, that there is a Sabbath prayer that should go with the candles, and why when our families were something else, some of us covered our eyes. All things about God are about magic in a way.”
“Are you religious?” Jamie blurted. “I never thought to ask.”
Nerea shook her head. “Callum may like family lore, but he’s English. Where’s the spirituality in that? Me, I go to church so the neighbors don’t talk. My religion is my art, my family, this house, these candlesticks.”
“Which sometimes you light,” Jamie pointed out.
Nerea struck another match. “There’s certainly no reason to stop now.”
THAT NIGHT AFTER THEY had gone to bed, Jamie stretched out under the blankets that covered them both now that the evenings had grown cool and said quietly, “I keep thinking about those candlesticks.”
“Ah?” Nerea had been on the edge of dropping off, but Jamie apparently wanted to talk, so she rolled over to face him. He had his pillow bunched up awkwardly under his head, and the moonlight fell across his face in pale streaks. He was frowning.
“I hardly know anything about my own family. I mean we’re Irish and Catholic — I know that much. But my dad was adopted — ”
“His parents, the people that raised him, are your grandparents,” Nerea said curtly before Jamie could get any further. Biology could be fascinating but was often overrated. Family was what you built.
“Oh, I know. And they’re great. But my dad’s mum, the one he was born to, she was in the laundries. I don’t think she wanted to give him up, and I wonder, sometimes, about cousins or aunts or uncles I might have and don’t know about. I have my mum’s family, of course, and none of it bothers me, but you can talk about a tradition of centuries, and I can talk about what’s lost. It felt weird, sometimes, when I was growing up.”
“It’s hard to be different.” Nerea knew enough to understand that the circumstances of his father’s adoption were likely fraught. Jamie didn’t spend a lot of time talking about his family, but when he did it was always with evident fondness. That was what mattered. “But you have plenty of stories to tell,” Nerea said. “A loving family that chose to be together. That’s good, and it’s more than many people get.”
“I know.” Jamie nodded his agreement. “I do know, but if I ever have kids of my own I’d want them to know their history. All of it — my father’s parents that raised him and the ones that didn’t. But finding any of that out would be hard. And it would probably hurt.”
The world was full of difficulties, Nerea wanted to tell Jamie. He only twenty-four, and there was still so much time for life’s lost and founds to break his heart. She wondered if she would still know him when he had children of his own; she wondered how much it would ache if she did. But now was not the time to sort that out, not within herself, and certainly not with him.
“It can seem hard to have lost history,” said carefully, glad they could barely see each other in the weighty dark. “But all families do. True, only some know it or the terrible reasons for it, but we do the best we can. We make new traditions, and we go on.” She touched a finger to the tip of his nose. “There’s a freedom in that,” she said. “Choose wisely.”
JAMIE SPENT THE ENTIRE morning Callum was due to arrive up in his bedroom. He claimed he was packing his suitcase for his return to London in a few days, but Nerea wasn’t fooled. He was nervous and eager and those bedroom windows had the best view of the road as it came out of the valley. He saw the car before Nerea knew it was close and ran down the stairs announcing that Callum was home. But he hung back, lurking in the entry hall, when the car stopped in front of the house.
Nerea stood in the open doorway as Callum retrieved his suitcase from the boot. Homecomings could be hard. They were emotional, draining, and — more often than not — came at inconvenient times of the day or night. But they were also one of the sweetest parts of Nerea and Callum’s life together.
Nerea remembered them all, or liked to think that she did: All the many iterations of Callum appearing in the road, looking much the worse for wear after whatever flight he’d just disembarked from, his jacket folded over one arm, pulling his suitcase with the other.
“You made it,” Nerea told him when he was close enough that she could see how deep the lines of weariness were around his eyes and how much his smile brightened the closer he got to the house.
Callum didn’t respond; he never did, not in words. He dropped his suitcase and his jacket right there on the front step and swept her into his arms — there was no other word for it. Her feet left the ground as he kissed her, long and deep and like the existence of the rest of the world depended on it.
They broke apart slowly, her feet returning to the ground and Callum’s fingers warm on her face and her throat a
s they did.
“It’s good to be back,” he said softly. His eyes were gentle. They lifted over Nerea’s shoulder to Jamie, who was still hidden in the house’s shadows.
“Do I get a kiss like that?” Jamie said, or started to. In two huge steps Callum was on him and kissing him too. And just as enthusiastically. Nerea laughed and left the two of them to it while she retrieved Callum’s things from where he’d dropped them.
Three minutes after Callum finally walked through the front door they were all in bed. Upstairs, the slightly solemn intensity of their greetings downstairs gave way to laughter. Callum was frantic, his hands and his body trying to be everywhere. Nerea knew much was changing in their lives, and yet so much more was exactly as it had always been.
SWEET, STUNNED AND nearly submissive in the face of all that sensation, Jamie fell asleep forty-five seconds after he came. Callum chuckled as he crawled carefully around him on the bed to stretch out next to Nerea.
“He usually has more staying power than that.” Nerea laughed softly, as if Callum didn’t know that perfectly well himself. “He’s glad to have you back.”
“And you?”
“You know I’m glad to have you back. Stop fishing for compliments.”
Callum smiled and kissed her forehead. They had switched to Spanish, not to keep the conversation from a sleeping Jamie but because it was easier. Callum’s Spanish was far more polished now than it had been way back at the beginning, when his grammar had been atrocious and his talent for picking the words he absolutely shouldn’t had been the horror of the village. Now, choosing Spanish was a way Callum indicated he was fully present in their shared, private life. They had built such a wonderful home here, Nerea thought, as she lifted her head from the pillow to accept the kiss Callum pressed to her lips. Even if the neighbors never minded their own business.
Nerea stopped worrying about the neighbors — or indeed anything else — when Callum kissed her again, so gently she thought she would weep from it. As he shifted them so he could slip inside her, she sighed at the relief of it. Nerea wrapped her arms around Callum’s neck as he began to move. She’d been at the house for weeks, but now she was home.
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