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Samantha walked Pearl outside to their favorite wood-slatted bench. It was a beautiful day, with lovely puffy clouds to keep the sun from being too bright and just enough of a breeze to keep it from being too hot. One of those perfect early summer days when you know it's going to swelter soon, so you'd better enjoy it now.
Pearl lowered herself to the bench with a sigh and a little chuckle. “That gets harder every day.”
“What are you talking about? If I let you, you'd still be turning cartwheels.” Samantha lowered to the bench beside Pearl.
“No, no. I'm getting old. Now I have to live vicariously through young people like you.” She poked at Samantha with a bony elbow. “Speaking of which, you've still not told me much about your trip.”
Samantha hesitated. She still wasn't ready to talk about it, even after six weeks. It had just started to feel a little like a nice dream, but putting words around it might make it feel too real again.
“I know things have been busy lately, and I've been a little distracted with Pete," Pearl said. Her already wrinkled face wrinkled a little more as she talked about her husband, and Samantha's heart ached. Pete had been getting worse in his dementia for a while, but in the last couple weeks he'd gone downhill quickly. Now he only remembered Pearl some days, and only if she spent significant amounts of time telling him stories about the two of them and singing his favorite songs.
It was selfish of Samantha to not share any story that might distract Pearl from her current reality. She could at least make Pearl smile for a while. “Well, I told you it was a wonderful trip, and that I saw some beautiful things. I didn't tell you about my little vacation romance.”
“Romance? You didn't tell me about a romance?” Pearl's eyes were wide with anticipation. “I spoon fed you every detail of my courtship with Pete, and you didn't even tell me you had one of your own?”
“It wasn't exactly a courtship. I wasn't even there for two weeks.”
Pearl waved this away. “What does time have to do with it? The real question is... Well, just tell me about it.”
And so, sitting there on a sunny June day in Georgia, Samantha told someone, for the first time, about Edo, and how he'd shown her all of Florence, and how he'd held her hand, kissed her, and even tried to get her to stay.
When she paused, Pearl turned to face her fully. “Why on earth did you come back?”
Samantha laughed uncomfortably. She'd asked herself that, usually late at night while eating ice cream that was not gelato and watching movies about leading men who were not handsome Italians. “I live here.”
Pearl held up a finger. “You exist here. I've never seen you do much living.”
Samantha was stunned, and a little hurt. She was used to her old friends being more blunt than most people—when you were nearing the end of your life you didn't care so much what people thought of what you said—but this was not something she’d expected to hear. “I'm doing fine here. I have a good job, the house, and friends like you. Why would I give that up for a vacation romance that could fizzle out in another week?”
Pearl pressed her lips together, searching Samantha's face for something and apparently not finding it. “Did it feel like it was fizzling?”
No. It had most definitely not. Samantha's face went red and hot.
Pearl pushed Samantha's forehead with her finger. “That's what I thought. You ran away.”
Samantha felt like a cloud had covered the sun, like the breeze was suddenly too chilly. She hadn't run away, she’d walked. She’d walked away from a fairytale dream before it could fall apart around her. She'd chosen it, consciously. That wasn't running away; it was making a strategic retreat.
Pearl groaned and put her elbows on the back of the bench, leaning backward with her face up to the sun. Pearl sat there, face up, eyes closed, and when she spoke it was not in her usual bossy, teasing tones, it was in the tones of someone who was dealing with something very heavy. “It's hard, you know, to see Pete the way he is now. It's hardest when he doesn't remember my name.”
Samantha knew exactly what Pearl meant. She remembered the day she'd cried and begged her grandmother to say her name, showing her pictures, telling her stories, only to have her confused and angry grandmother chase her from the house. “Maybe it would be easier for you to just visit him sometimes. You could live with your daughter.”
Pearl's eyes flew open, and the look she turned on Samantha held a fury Samantha didn't know the little old woman was capable of. “Pete and I have been together for sixty years. Sixty-one this August. I'm not going to walk away just because he can't remember. I can remember, and that's enough for both of us.”
Samantha sucked in a deep breath, suddenly feeling fragile. “But it's hurting you.”
“Yes, but life does that. It does that whether you love or not, so you might as well love.”
And there it was, laid out in the light of this beautiful June day. Samantha had many reasons for why she’d left Edo, many reasons for why their quick romance couldn't go anywhere. Many reasons for why she should not love. But she'd fallen for him anyway, and then she'd walked away from him without even giving him a chance. She'd thought if she walked away, she wouldn't get hurt. But his emails—emails she hadn’t answered, because she’d been sure each one would be the last, that any moment he’d forget her—were proof they were both hurting, and it was her fault. “What do I do?”
Pearl's eyes were gentle as she looked into Samantha's terrified face. “What would you want him to do if he'd left you?”
She'd want him to remember her, to not be able to let go. She'd want him to come back.
Suddenly, Samantha was the one crying. “But no one ever came back—not John, not my friends, not even my parents or my grandmother. No one who forgot me has ever come back.”
Pearl put her arms around Samantha and held her as she cried. She patted her on the back just as Samantha's grandmother once had, and shushed her gently. Then, when Samantha finally calmed, Pearl gave her a very firm look. “I don't know any of those people except Lucy, and if she’d had a choice, she never would have left you. And as for the rest, well, just because they made a mistake doesn't mean you have to.”
“But what if it all happens again? What if I try, and he gets bored of me and I'm stuck in Italy?”
Pearl's eyes twinkled. “Can't think of anywhere I'd rather be stuck.”
Samantha choked on her laughter. And that was that. She had to try, had to know if what she'd felt for Edo could become what Pearl had with Pete. She had to try, even if he did end up leaving her alone. Because if she didn't try, she was guaranteed to be alone.