Page 7 of Always

“Happy?” she asked, showing the pictures to her sister.

“Yes,” Stella said, extremely satisfied, but not so overawed as to actually say thank you.

As her sister opened her Instagram account to post her pic, Anika couldn’t help but notice the first picture displayed was Marco Moretti. He was paddle-boarding down some canal. The text was too small for Anika to read the location tag.

Anika had met Marco once when she was twelve or thirteen. This was before Eleanor had died, when her mother had forced Bennet to take Anika to one of his shows. Bennet had immediately abandoned her in the front row with Dominic Moretti.

Luckily, Dominic was kinder than her father and better with children. He passed the time whispering amusing gossip about the models (“That one there, she’s got a Tweety-Bird tattoo on her bottom. No, I won’t tell you how I know that. That one got in a fight with her roommate last week—the roommate wore her favorite dress to a party, and when she came home, the model had dyed her cat’s fur pink. Oh, the cat’s fine, don’t worry, he loved the new color. That one over there, the redhead, she just booked a Maybelline campaign. Did you know how Maybelline came to be? There was this boy, Thomas Williams. He saw his sister putting Vaseline and coal dust on her eyelashes. So he mixed that up and made the first mascara—he called it Maybelline after his sister Mabel and, of course, the Vaseline.”)

Midway through the show, a handsome young man came striding down their aisle to tap Dominic on the shoulder. Dominic followed the young man off to the side, and the two engaged in a brief, intense argument. The boy was very handsome—dark wavy hair, slim and romantic looking. But Anika had immediately disliked him for being so disagreeable toward the gentle and lighthearted Dominic.

“I’m sorry,” Dominic said when he came back. “That’s my son. He’s come to visit me. He lives in Palermo with his mother.”

Dominic hadn’t explained what the argument had been about, and of course Anika didn’t ask.

Perhaps it was unfair of her to hold a grudge against Marco after all this time. He was so young then—it was probably just a petty squabble over borrowing his father’s car, or something equally childish. Or maybe they hadn’t been arguing at all—Anika had been to Italy, so she knew how the most commonplace discussion between two Italians might appear as if they were about to come to blows.

Still, it amused her to see Stella so besotted. Her sister had engaged in any number of flings over the years, without bothering to bestow so much as the title of “boyfriend.” But she was thirty-four now—maybe she had decided it was finally time to settle down. Marco was an obvious choice—if they lived a hundred years earlier, it was a match both families would have orchestrated. The scions of two noble houses. What could be more perfect?

Anika was relieved to hear that Stella had dinner plans with friends, and Bennet wasn’t expected home from work until eight or nine p.m. at the earliest. After a hectic day, she welcomed the quiet.

The cook had left a variety of prepared meals in the fridge. Anika took a plate of fruit, cheese, hummus, and crackers to her room. It was quickly becoming a favorite place to her, sheltered and distant as it was from the rest of the apartment. She had only half unpacked, still thinking that it might be best to find lodging somewhere else. But she’d taken out some of her favorite books and stacked them on the shelf under the window and laid her old blanket across the bed—worn blue velvet, with a pattern of moons and stars.

As she ate, sitting up on the bed with her back to the brick wall, she opened her laptop to check her email.

Right at the top was a message from Liam Doyle:

My dear Ms. Knight, it read.Your aunt Molly has given me your email address. I would like first of all to tell you how much I’ve been enjoying your beautiful house. Molly told me how painful it was for you to leave it, so I won’t go on about all its wonderful features of which you are well aware. I’ll only tell you that I’m taking very good care of it, most especially your four-legged friends in the stables. Tom would like you to know that Domino is completely recovered from whatever was bothering her hoof, and Monte, Goliath, and Fargo are likewise in perfect health and spirits.

Now onto my main point: as Molly may have told you already, she’s been rending my heart with tales of your impoverished students and the salubrious effects of your educational program. Like most people in my position, I spent the early years of my adulthood being selfish and aggrandizing, and now that I’m too old to be useful or interesting, I would like to make myself feel better by dumping my ill-gotten loot into all the good works I can find. If we can’t quite buy our way into heaven, we can at least improve the Philanthropic Efforts section of our Wikipedia page, don’t you think?

I’ve already written Molly a check, which is the easy part, but I’d like to offer you my help in any other way that you need. I know what you’re thinking, what good is this old man way out on the other end of the peninsula? Well, to start with, I will send you a very useful assistant. One of my old colleagues is coming to the city for a few months, and as Molly has roped me in, so I’ve done the same to him. I told him to come by your office so he can make himself useful - he just sold his company and he’s got time and money on his hands. Take as much of both as you can from him! His name is James Dawson. He should be dropping by next week.

The email went on a few more lines, but Anika had stopped reading. Her heart was hammering away in her chest as if she had sprinted a mile. With shaking hands, she pushed away her plate of unfinished dinner and re-read those twelve words.

His name is James Dawson. He should be dropping by next week.

Anika knew James Dawson. She had known him very well eight years ago.

Actually she’d been completely in love with him.

They met at NYU. She was an Art History major, he was in Computer Science, but he’d taken “Renaissance Sculpture” as an elective. They sat together by chance their first lecture, and by choice every lecture thereafter. After a few weeks, he asked her out for a drink. They sat talking until the bar closed, then talked for three hours more walking around Washington Square Park.

He was skinny, slightly nerdy, but warm, funny, charming, fascinating. He wanted to know everything about her—where did she come from, what was her family like, what were her favorite books, movies, music, classes, foods, places to travel? What did she think about Kierkegaard and string theory, and why was Michelangelo such an ass to DaVinci?

Maybe it was only typical student chatter, but to Anika, whose opinion was always least wanted and least regarded at home, it was absolutely irresistible.

James’s thoughtfulness amazed her. Though he was completely broke, on scholarship at the university and scraping by with a part-time tutoring job, he was always turning up with little gifts for her—a bag of her favorite chocolate cinnamon bears, or a perfect origami flower he’d folded as he listened to his last lecture.

He was honest—he would answer absolutely any question she asked of him, without hesitation. If the answer was unflattering to himself, so be it. He was unafraid to show her exactly who he was, and that allowed Anika to do the same, to tell him things she had never imagined telling anyone.

He was brave, braver than Anika had been then. She was shy, fragile, barely recovered from her mother’s passing. But James was bold, clever. He could persuade anyone to his point of view or diffuse a disagreement with a well-timed quip. He had all kinds of plans. He made Anika feel that a world of possibilities lay open to them both.

And the sex—her face flushed just remembering it. He worshipped her body with the same intensity and interest he brought to everything. He was mechanically-inclined, he had these incredible hands that could fix or build anything—what they could do when they touched her, it hardly seemed legal.

They dated for two years; they were madly in love. But once they were set to graduate, they came to a crossroads.

James was moving to California. He had a hundred ideas for things he wanted to create, and he needed to be in Silicon Valley. He begged Anika to come with him.

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