Danielle Steel - The long road home

“I'm not ready.”

“You sound like Picasso. What's ‘ready’? Was Steinbeck ready? Hemingway? Shakespeare? Dickens? Jane Austen? They just did it, didn't they? We are not striving for perfection here, we are communicating with each other. Speaking of which, my dear, are you going home for Thanksgiving?” They were at a tiny Italian restaurant in the East Village, and she was startled by his question.

“I… no…” She didn't want to tell him there was no home to go to. He knew she had grown up in the convent, but she had never told him clearly that she had no contact with her family at all, and she was no longer welcome in the convent. The only family she had was him now. “I don't think so.”

“I'm happy to hear it,” he said, looking pleased. Mrs. Boslicki made a turkey for them every year, and he had been hoping Gabriella would be there. Only a few of the boarders there still had relatives, and the young divorced salesman had already moved to another city. “I was hoping to share the holiday with you.”

“So was I.” She smiled and went on telling him about her latest story. There was a flaw in the plot and she couldn't quite figure out how to solve it, with violence, or an unexpected romance.

“There's certainly quite a contrast in your options, my dear,” he mused, “although the two are sometimes related. Violence and romance.” His words reminded her of Joe again, and her eyes clouded over but he pretended not to see it. He wondered if she would ever tell him what tragedies she had lived through. For the moment, he was still guessing, but wise enough never to ask her directly. “Actually love is quite violent.” He went on, “It is so painful at times, so devastating. There is nothing worse. Or better. I found the highs and lows equally unbearable, but then again, the absence of them is more so.” It was a sweet, romantic thing for a man his age to say, and she could almost imagine him as a young man, in love with his bride, the youthful hero. But clearly he had been. “And you, Gabriella, I suspect you have found love painful as well. I see it in your eyes each time we touch on the subject.” He said it with the tenderness of a young lover, and touched her hand gently as he said it. “When you can bring yourself to write about it one day, you will find it all less painful. It is a catharsis of sorts, but the process can be brutal. Don't do it until you're ready.”

“I…” She began to say something to him, and then thought better of it. She wanted to, but she was afraid to, and it still hurt too much to say it. “I was very much in love with someone once.” She admitted it to him like a terrible secret, and in their case, it had been. But he suspected immediately that there was a great deal more to it than she was saying.

“At your age, Gabriella, once is pretty fair. You'll have a few more of those before it's over.” He had never loved anyone but Charlotte, but they had been both rare and lucky. Most people weren't. “I take it it didn't go well.” It sounded to him as though the affair was over, and she nodded, and took a sharp breath before she continued.

“He died in September.” It was barely more than a whisper. She didn't offer to tell him more than that, and he didn't ask her. He only nodded. “I thought it would kill me, and it very nearly did.” She remembered the miscarriage, or what she knew of it, all too vividly, and she still hadn't recovered completely, although she was feeling a great deal better.

“I'm very sorry to hear it.” He had known there was a tragedy in her life somewhere, perhaps even several. He could smell it. “Love doesn't always end that way, and it never should. It leaves everything so unfinished. Even after forty years, I still had so much left to say to Charlotte.”

Gabriella nodded, understanding what he meant, but she couldn't go on talking, and he covered for her for a while, chatting about his wife, and Gabbie's writing. He wondered how the man had died, he assumed an accident, but he would never have asked her. He was gone, and she was heartbroken, that was all that mattered. But he couldn't begin to imagine the tragedy it had been, or the toll it had taken. Gabriella knew that even he couldn't have written that story, it was far too ugly for his gentle imagination.

They took a cab back to the boardinghouse that night. It was cold and he was feeling flush, his social security check had just come in, and he knew it had cost her a lot to tell him about the man who had died two months before. He wanted to do something special for her, and she was grateful to him as they got out in front of Mrs. Boslicki's tired old brownstone. And they both looked up at the sky at the same time. It was snowing. The first snow of the winter, and suddenly she remembered how beautiful the first snow had always looked in the convent garden. As a child, she had loved to play there, and the nuns had always let her. She said something about it as they walked inside, and she smiled at the memory, and he was happy for her. She needed something happy to cling to. They all did.

“I had a wonderful time tonight,” she said softly as she stopped outside his room. “Thank you, Professor Thomas.”

“Not at all, the pleasure is always mine, my dear,” he said, executing a little bow as she smiled. She couldn't begin to imagine how he looked forward to these evenings, now more than ever. She was almost becoming a daughter to him… or a beloved grandchild, especially after she had shared her confidence with him that evening. It was a sign of trust, which he cherished deeply. “I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving,” he said gently.

“So am I,” she said, still smiling at him, and meant it. Before that, she'd been dreading it, but it didn't seem quite so bad now. She had lost a lot, but she had found something, like a diamond sparkling in the snow. And as she walked slowly upstairs, thinking of him, she thought of how sad it might have been if she had missed it.

Chapter 17

T HANKSGIVING WAS BEAUTIFUL for all of them. There was a thick blanket of snow outside, and the entire city stopped moving. People skied in Central Park, and children played in the streets, made snowmen, and threw snowballs. And Mrs. Boslicki made a turkey no one would ever forget. It was so large she barely got it into the oven. And as he did every year, Professor Thomas carved it. And everyone seemed to have funny stories to tell about Thanksgivings that had gone wrong, appalling relatives, or silly things about their childhoods.

They all went for a walk afterward, and everyone said they felt as though they were about to explode. Baum's Restaurant was closed that day, and Gabriella was happy to be at home with all of them. She was like everyone's favorite daughter or niece or grandchild. In the two brief months she'd been with them, they had all come to love her.

And for the rest of the weekend, they talked about Christmas shopping, and there were suddenly decorations everywhere. Mrs. Boslicki and Mrs. Rosenstein went downtown to go shopping at Macy's and reported on the crowds with amazement. And for the entire weekend that she was off, Gabriella stayed in her room and worked on a story, and on Sunday night she dropped her notebook in the professor's lap with a smug expression.

“There! Now stop complaining!”

“All right… all right… let's see what you've got here.” But even he was amazed this time. Her story was brilliant. It was a Christmas story of sorts, filled with pathos and moments that brought tears to even his eyes, but it was beautifully done, elegantly written, and the surprise turn at the end was nothing short of brilliant. He let out a whoop of admiration and glee when he finished. She had been watching him with her arms crossed from a comfortable old club chair in the comer.