Now that she was actually burying him, though, she wasn't ready. He'd been doing so well the past few years. The war was over, he had an office job that didn't mind hiring a man on crutches, and they had grandchildren. Beautiful, intelligent grandchildren. It seemed like for all the heartache the war had brought them, they'd finally gotten the life they wanted.
And now this. Now she was standing in the receiving parlor of a funeral home listening to everyone tell her how sorry they were for her loss, how much they'd liked Bob, all the wonderful things he'd done for them. She'd seen so many girls from VicMu, even ones from Red and Green shifts. They'd all been so kind to come, especially since she knew that some of them had had to travel from other parts of Canada or the world to do it.
If one more person told her that it was for the best, that he wasn't hurting anymore, she was going to scream.
She took a moment to turn away from it all, away from his casket with his medals and his flag. She just needed a moment, but that moment was broken by a quiet clearing of the throat. She put on a stoic yet welcoming face and turned back to see the new mourners, then blinked in surprise.
She'd met Gianna Moretti no more than three times in her life, and she had no idea why the older woman had come. She thought she knew why Marco was here, though. He was translating for his mother. He couldn't be here for himself. They'd inevitably lost touch after she'd left VicMu, though the drift had started much earlier. Their friendship hadn't been able to survive the end of their affair or her loss of his child.
Mrs. Moretti spoke compassionately in Italian, then glanced at her son to translate.
"My mother extends the condolences of our entire family to your family," he said gently and sincerely as he put his hand on his mother's shoulder. Lorna fleetingly noticed that he didn't have a wedding band on, then wondered why she had even been aware of that. But she'd been doing that for the last three days. She'd notice tiny, insignificant things in the middle of the worst moments of grief.
"Thank you," she said for the hundredth time. "I appreciate you both for coming. You didn't have to."
"Yes, we did. I did," Marco told her seriously, and she remembered the caring man that had seen past her facade of floor matron, her need to be tough to face everything her life had tossed at her. His hair was greying now, and his eyes had lines around them, but then so was hers, and so did hers. Hers were worse.
His mother spoke again and offered a basket of food. Lorna had so much food that she'd never be able to eat it all, but she knew the basket was offered out of kindness and generosity, so she took it with grace.
"She says there's a recipe card inside the basket, in case you aren't sure how to cook the ingredients," Marco translated again, and she thought she saw a spark of humor in both Morettis' eyes. Suddenly she thought of that long-ago dinner when she hadn't known how to eat spaghetti and he and his mother had been so understanding and kind.
It made her smile, at least a little, for the first time in hours, maybe even days, and his mouth turned up in a return smile. He looked a little smug, but then he always had when he managed to make her smile in spite of herself.
"Thank you," she said again. She felt like a broken record, but what else could she say? Marco's mother seemed to understand and they both left with a squeeze of her hand from Mrs. Moretti and a warm smile from Marco.
When she finally remembered to open the basket a few days later, a phone number was inside, along with the recipe card. It was a final caring touch that she should have expected from Gianna Moretti.
She didn't call them, of course. Part of it was that she got busy with everything related to settling Bob's affairs and part was that she simply didn't know what she would say to either of them. So many years had passed now. She was sure they had nothing in common now. Marco was probably married to some good Italian girl and had several children, all with their father's intense brown eyes. Would her child - their child - have had his brown eyes? There was no way of knowing. And Mrs. Moretti was probably doting on all of them, feeding them cannoli and spaghetti at every opportunity.
A few months later, though, her path crossed Marco's again. She had brought the grandchildren to Saturday story time, which Lorna didn't ever miss, if she could. But now the kids had gone home with their mother and Lorna was going to go home to an empty house. Again. She kept expecting to hear the tap-squeak of Bob's crutches on the floor, and they never came.
She had her grief under control most days, but today it bubbled to the surface and she had to sit down on the bench outside the library before her vision blurred with tears.
"Lorna?" she heard Marco say before his warm weight landed on the bench next to her and his arm was around her shoulders. She shouldn't have been so weak, shouldn't have let herself lean on him, especially not somewhere that everyone could see them, but for a moment she did. For a moment she felt like she was back in his kitchen all those years ago, being held by him after she told him she'd be taking care of her growing problem. His growing problem. The kitchen had smelled like basil and oregano, and he had smelled like the cologne he always wore back then. He still smelled like that cologne.
"Shh, hey, it's alright," he soothed her, and she leaned into him for just a moment more. Soon enough, though, she knew she needed to be strong again, so she straightened. She pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket and dabbed her eyes, then spoke in an approximation of the quelling tones she always used with him on the floor at VicMu.
"Thank you for your concern and your assistance, Mr. Moretti, but I'll be fine now."
She glanced up at him as she said it and her voice faltered slightly at the skeptical look he was giving her, but she finished the sentence.
"Don't you think you ought to call me Marco once and for all?" he suggested. "You can't say we don't know each other well enough for that."
She could, though, and she did. They'd once known each other very well in some ways, but not at all in others. They'd never worked through the little things that made a relationship, made a marriage. She'd done all that with Bob so many times over, and there the grief was again. She pushed it down ruthlessly.
"I'm certain your w-wife wouldn't be pleased to hear that." She wasn't fishing. She just couldn't imagine that he didn't have a wife. He wasn't a man that was meant to be single.
"I don't have one," he said plainly, and looked down for a moment. She remembered suddenly that he'd enlisted a few weeks after Vera's memorial service and been shipped out to the Pacific almost immediately. "After Vera - after the war it took me a long time to get my head together. Never got married."
"How does your mother feel about that?" she asked, because she was a mother, and she knew how she felt about having her children happily settled. She couldn't imagine that Mrs. Moretti felt any differently.
"She keeps telling me there's room for a wife in our house, in our lives, but I don't know. I worry about her, especially now that my father's gone."
It was an honest and loving statement from an honest and loving son, and Lorna nodded. She'd just about got herself under control now, so she cleared her throat and stood up.
"Well. Thank you again for the rescue, Mr. Moretti. It was good to see you. Please tell your mother I appreciated the excellent recipe. And it was kind of her to include her number."
"She put our number in there?" he asked in surprise, and Lorna nodded. Hadn't she just said that?
"Maybe you should call it sometime," he suggested, and she couldn't quite identify the look on his face. She didn't have time to decipher Marco Moretti, though, so she just smiled and wished him a good day
She wondered about that look for a few days, though.
She found his number over a year later as she was cleaning out the storeroom. It was still in the basket from Mrs. Moretti, although the recipe and the food had long since been eaten or added to Lorna's recipe box. She made that recipe at least once every few months, and she thought of Mrs. Moretti's kindness every time she did.
Some impulse she decided not to examine made her put the yellowing piece of paper on the refrigerator, and it was still there when Edith came over with her second husband and their kids. Edith got the milk out at Lorna's request, but paused to look at the number.
"Some fella give give you his number recently, Lorna?" Edith asked, but there was no spite in it. Edith was Lorna's best friend, especially now that they'd both lost husbands. They'd spent many hours crying with each other and Lorna would always be grateful to her friend for taking that time.
"What?" Lorna asked distractedly, and then looked at the number. "Uh, no, no that's been there for awhile."
"And who's the Romeo in question?" Edith gently pried. Her choice of names made Lorna chuckle, but despite Edith's questioning, she didn't ever admit whose number it was or how she'd gotten it. Eventually Edith gave up and changed the subject, or at least Lorna thought she had.
When they left that evening, though, Edith paused on the doorstep and said, "Y'know, Lorna, Bob wouldn't want you to mourn forever. If you kept that number for a reason, maybe you should call it."
Lorna scoffed good-naturedly, but when she went back inside, she ran her fingers over the number one more time.
Maybe Edith was right. Bob wouldn't want her to mourn forever. But on the other hand, she could also see Bob not wanting her to call that particular number for his own very good reasons.
Sometimes she imagined that she was having a conversation with him. She could play both parts after so many years of marriage, though she was starting to feel like his gravelly voice didn't quite ring true even in her head. She was starting to worry that she was forgetting him.
"Lore, I can't say I'm all that fond of the fella. I got a damn good reason for that too. On the other hand, he saw something I saw and then forgot about. He saw you. And if he's smart enough to see you, he's pretty smart."
They had several versions of this conversation in her head, and she was sure to play some of them as if Bob was angry at her for even thinking about this, but they never felt as right as the ones where Bob reminded her that she was still alive, still attractive, and still a woman.
So she picked up the phone.
She didn't buy a new dress for it. It was only dinner with two old friends, catching up. Instead she wore the dress she'd bought for the Armistice celebration at VicMu. It had gone out of fashion and then back in again in the time she'd had it, and now it was charmingly dated. It still fit, too, which she was proud of. She'd kept her figure as well as any woman with multiple children could be expected to do, and she hadn't let herself go when Bob had died either. She'd wanted to, sometimes, but Lorna Corbett had never let anything in her life get her down permanently.
The Jewel Box was long gone, but there was a nice restaurant near her house. It was the kind of place where a middle-aged lady wouldn't feel out of place, even if she was dining with a younger male companion.
Marco greeted her with a smile and a kiss on the cheek, then guided her to their table. It was in the corner but not isolated. Quiet, but not intimate. And he'd worn a suit that made his handsome features and still-trim figure stand out. She was sure she wasn't the only woman aware of him that night.
Once they had their wine and had ordered their food, he looked at her and smiled again.
"I remember that dress," he told her quietly. "And it looks just as fantastic on you now as it did then."
"I'm not sure about that," she deflected the compliment, but she knew she blushed.
"I am," he said firmly. "Lorna, how many years has it been, and you still can't take a compliment?"
"Well, when it comes from you, Marco, a woman knows better than to trust a compliment," she reminded him as she sipped her wine.
"I never said anything that wasn't true to anyone, and I'm not the man I was during the war. None of us are who or what we were during the war," he pointed out.
He was right, and it was a good thing too. No one and nothing could stay the same, as much as she'd tried so hard to make them do that, especially during the war.
"I'll drink to that," she agreed, and raised her wine.
From there the conversation meandered for hours. They caught up on their lives, on the lives of their friends and former coworkers, talked movies, and even politics. It was wonderful. She mentioned Bob a few times, and he mentioned Vera, but even that fit. They wouldn't be the people they were without Bob and Vera, after all.
When they left the restaurant, Marco offered his arm.
"I'll walk you home," he said.
"I remember the last time you walked me home," Lorna warned him, but took his arm all the same.
"I can't promise I won't do the same thing," he replied in the tone of voice that always made her heart beat faster. Honestly, she shouldn't be reacting like this, not at her age.
"What was it you said?" she asked idly, trying to remember his phrase from that night. She'd been much more focused on the possibility that he'd kiss her and whether she wanted or didn't want that to happen. Just like she was now. "Something about secrets."
He thought for a moment while they walked, and she wondered whether he was considering how many things about secrets he'd said to how many women.
"You can hide it if you want, but I know you've secretly got a good heart in there," he finally quoted himself. "Something like that."
"And I told you I don't have any secrets," she said, as they turned up the walk to her house. It was dark except for one lamp she'd left on, as it always was. Maybe she ought to think about Sheila's offer to have her move in with them, but she just didn't want to be a burden. And she liked having her own space, especially when she was getting ready for work in the morning.
She paused on the doorstep and turned to him. How was this night going to end? How did she want it to end?
"Lorna," he said quietly, and brushed a hand down her cheek.
"I want to see you again," he told her, and she just nodded, lost for a moment in the warmth of his hand on her cheek. No one had touched her like this since Bob died and she missed it.
"Lorna," he repeated, and she looked up at him long enough to see that he was asking for permission. She nodded again, because honestly she wasn't sure she could speak.
Their first kiss in nearly ten years was gentle, more gentle than she thought it might be, but she felt it all the way to her toes. This had never been the problem between her and Marco, although she still didn't understand why a man who looked like him would want a woman like her. It was clear that he did, though, and she knew she wanted him too.
The kiss didn't last long, but it was long enough for her to be a little out of breath when it ended. He didn't seem unaffected either.
"I'll call you," he promised. "And I'm glad you called me. I'm glad we did this."
"I am too. Thank your mother when you get home," she replied, because credit for the evening needed to go to Mrs. Moretti too.
"Mother knows best," he agreed. "She always tells me so. From now on, I'll be sure to listen."