Yet come again, for thou perhaps mayst move that heart, which now abhors, to like his love.
— William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night
During their first year in Italy, they visit Florence. Elliot walks along the Ponte Vecchio and stares at the body of water beneath him. He keeps a distant track on Eli—the boy runs across the old stone, his mother trailing behind, their laughs loud and free and mixing with the sounds from the other happy families—but Elliot's mind is elsewhere. The water's ripples are gentle, indistinct; the sun shimmers against the surface, gold and glittering.
You really didn't have a passport? Olivia had asked him, once, more than ten years ago. She'd been teasing, eyes bright and smile one-sided, the case with Tassig carefully not mentioned. What would I need one for? he'd shot back. He was a Queens boy: born and raised and—he'd thought—set to die there. He's travelled, now, though. When they decided to leave New York, they'd promised to do it properly.
It's strange, to think of himself differently. Cultured, Kathy calls it, and every time she does, he can hear Olivia's laughter. Who would've thought.
A few meters away, Eli kicks a soccer ball against the bridge's walls, and Elliot shifts to watch him. It's his new obsession, the game. Calcio, his son already calls it. Elliot watches the ball roll: back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back.
Paris had been on the top of Kathy's list. Venice, Vatican City, Prague. When he'd asked about the last one, she'd told him a tale of the Charles Bridge and its saints, of the City of a Hundred Spires. He'd smiled, tight lipped, and promised himself he'd be working when she eventually made the trip. He couldn't bring himself to tell her why. Prague did not belong to the saints. Prague belonged to his job, and his job—
His job belonged to Olivia.
Their third year in Rome, the Vatican Library does an exhibit on Italian dramatists and playwrights. It'll be fun, Kathy says. We'll take Eli. Elliot knows he's been busy with work. He knows the invite is an attempt to recapture the magic of that very first year, where every week was filled with a new adventure: the Uffizi, the Borghese Gallery, the Vatican Museums. It's that which makes him go, not a sudden interest in Renaissance literature. They are here to be a family, he reminds himself; they have moved across the North Atlantic Sea just for a chance to be happy. He owes them this much.
But from the moment he walks in, he wishes he hadn't. His grasp of the Italian language is not quite strong enough to fully understand the guide's insight to the works of Giambattista Giraldi, and so his mind wanders. It's no surprise who his thoughts stray to.
My mother is an English professor, Olivia had told him, sometime during their first year as partners. Did you ever read Twelfth Night in school? She named me after Olivia. It'd been a throwaway comment, the mindless chatter meant to fill the silence of a stakeout. She'd looked up at him and quoted it, reciting memories he wasn't yet privy to, and he'd caught a glimpse of the person she might've been—could have been—if only she weren't drawn to the job. I have said too much unto a heart of stone, and laid mine honour too unchary on't. It'd been little more than a whisper, the words murmured under her breath, but it'd been beautiful all the same.
It was her favourite, Olivia had added as she looked away, and it was only because he was watching so closely that Elliot saw the soft, sad smile. I never understood why.
He'd been stunned into silence, his eyes locked on her even as her attention returned to the case, completely oblivious to what her words had done to him.
He thinks of that night, now, as the guide drones on and on. He wonders if Olivia would have anything to say on Giraldi's Orbecche, or if she's ever read it, or if he could convince her to read it to him. He wonders what her voice would sound like, curling around the Italian. He wonders if her eyes would light up like they had that night, if she would smile at him after, small and soft but with none of the sadness.
As he drifts through the Vatican Library, he wonders if this is what his life will be like forever: a relative happiness, broken only by the memory of what might've been. What almost was.
It's not until later—year four, almost five—that Kathy turns to him in the dead of the night and asks, You miss it, don't you?
There's an air of resignation about it, like she wants to say, you can't say we didn't try. Elliot doesn't need to ask what it is. It means New York, means his old job, means Olivia. He wants to tell her no—he wants to tell her don't—but instead he says nothing, only sighs, low and long and soft. He hates when she breaks their unspoken truce, their silent agreement to leave New York in New York. There is never any answer that would do anyone any good, he thinks. Yes, he misses Olivia; he's missed her since before he left. But it achieves nothing. His longing is inconsequential compared to his guilt. He isn't even sure if he could face her.
I got everything I need right here, he says, but after too much time has passed already.
The lie is not one he'll seek forgiveness for; in another life, it might've been the truth. It could have been, he thinks. If only.
In the end, he's not the one who makes the decision. You should go, Kathy tells him. You need to. You'll be there anyway. To fight is futile; he can't deny what he wants, not when he wants it as much as he does, not when he's been given permission.
If Rome belonged to Kathy, New York belongs to Olivia. It's obvious from the second he steps foot in the city, but the truth of it is overwhelming when he's beside her. Instinct awakens in him, muscle memory; old, out of use, but ever-present. How stupid, Elliot thinks, the first time he has her near, to think he could ever bury this. How naïve to think he'd be able to walk away again.
He's almost glad he doesn't have to.
I can't believe you lived in Rome, Olivia tells him, and Elliot wants to laugh, because he can't believe it, either. In his heart, he's still just a kid from Queens. It's no more obvious than when he's finally home.
We were happy, he'd told her. He'd wondered, later, if she'd heard the finally that almost came with it. If she knew that happy was a relative term. That they'd had to move a continent away from her to achieve it. You'd have loved it, he says, as they stand beneath the falling snow, and he thinks he sees the answers in her eyes—
—but he also sees the hesitancy. The way she looks at him as if she's waiting for him to leave again. It breaks his already-broken heart, to know he'd single-handedly shattered the trust she'd once had in him, and it makes him itch to offer another apology, to let them spill out of him, ten years' worth of pent-up emotion sitting between his teeth.
He swallows them down and reaches into his pocket instead.
I wrote this, Elliot tells her. Take it. Read it, don't read it, throw it away. It's her choice, he knows that—he needs her to know he knows that—but he can't quite quell the simmering hope. He wants her to read it. He wants her to read every word. He wants her to realise just how much he's missed her.
In Rome, he hadn't sought forgiveness for his lies, but when he hands Olivia the letter, he is seeking hers.