Before Ever After (34 page)

The large church dominated the sprawling colonnade of St. Peter’s Square. The elliptical line of pristine white columns surrounding the square symbolized the church’s embrace of all humankind, but in that moment Shelley felt the colonnade defy its vastness to give her the hug she desperately needed. Maybe she hadn’t changed so much after all.

When she was a young girl, there was one image that had fascinated Shelley from the first time she had seen it on a postcard stuck on their refrigerator door. She was gazing up at it now.

“The Creation of Adam,”
said the recorded voice in her headphones.

Shelley switched off the Sistine Chapel’s audio tour. She wanted to keep the moment to herself—at least as much as she could, standing shoulder to shoulder in a chapel full of tourists. She stared at the two hands outstretched toward each other, one giving life, the other receiving it. It spoke to her now as much as it had when she was younger, when she had not yet known that the hands were part of a much larger painting and what they actually depicted. She had simply seen them as two hands lovingly reaching out to each other, desperately close but unable to touch. They had made her feel sad. They still did.

But as Shelley looked up at the masterpiece, she realized that something
was different. She wondered if it was because she was now craning her neck up to see it and not straining on her tiptoes to view it in its honored place beneath the pot roast recipe her mom had cut out from a magazine. She studied the ceiling, ignoring the pain throbbing in her neck. Something else had changed, not just her perspective. The colors were much brighter than those in the picture in her head. The painting had been restored.

The conservation work was meant to reveal Michelangelo’s original palette—and it did—but at a cost. Shelley missed the depth the painting had when it still wore the patina of age. It was in the eyes of the saints that this was the most obvious. They were flat, stripped of all they had witnessed through the centuries. They appeared so young now compared to … Max’s? She dismissed the thought just as quickly as it had popped into her head. She blamed it on the cocktail of mildew spores, caffeine, and longing in her system.

“And that concludes our tour, campers.” A deep voice sliced through the crowd.

It punched Shelley in the throat.

“So, you see, if not for Isabelle’s lovely ancestor and her brave rooster, you would not be standing under this great masterpiece today.”

“That was the best story on the entire tour, Max,” Brad said. “No cats, lots of sex, and a happy ending.”

Simon nodded. “That really was an eye-opener. What a finale!”

Max smiled. “I’m glad you enjoyed the tour.”

Shelley fumbled through her pockets for the volume of napkins she had written on. Her fingers found another list. She pulled it out. It was tattered and stained from a cycle in the wash. Her words had melted into inkblots, but she remembered them well.

Meet. Date. Run
.

She prepared for a sprint. Max had not yet seen her. There was still time for her to slip out of the chapel. She glanced at Max. He was walking away. A rock fell in Shelley’s gut. She could not bear to watch him leave—at least not before she had given him her answer. She tried to go after him, but her feet were welded to the floor. She tried to call him
back, but her voice abandoned her. She looked to the painted heavens for help. The blue sky turned into night and a halo of stars twinkled around Adam’s head, signaling the inevitable. She was going to faint.

Shelley peeked through her lashes. The sky. White feathery clouds were brushed across it. Michelangelo was a true master. Very realistic, she thought. A bird flew overhead. She choked. It
was
the sky—and she was being carried away beneath it.

Max grinned down at her. “So, have you thought about your answer yet, luv?”

Shelley stared back at him openmouthed. There was no trace of bitterness on his face. “You’re … you’re not mad at me?” she asked.

“Should I be?” He set her down on her feet. “I asked you to think about it, didn’t I?”

“But …”

“When you left the island, I assumed that you had taken some time—and poor Mrs. Bianchi’s boat—to think about my question,” Max said. “Was I wrong in that assumption?”

“Well …”

“My only fear was that you didn’t fully understand what I was asking you. It was physically impossible, you see, to fit the entirety of my question on one hard-boiled egg.”

Max smiled and got down on one knee. He took Shelley’s hand in his.

“Once, in front of a sundial, I asked you not to run from the seconds you stood upon. Later, I showed you an egg timer and asked you to hold on to the moment in your hands. On one of the darkest nights of my life, I asked you to stay by my side,” he said. “I know that I have already asked far too much and have no right to ask for more, but I must ask you this one more thing.”

She inhaled sharply.

“Shelley, will you let me hold your hand as we outrun reason, brush past elephants, race up steps, tumble down hills, roll in the hay, leap over crumbling walkways, and dangle our legs over ledges?”

“Max …”

“Wait, luv,” he said. “Let me finish. What I’m really trying to ask you is …” He took a deep breath.

Shelley’s heart pounded in her chest, pumping blood to her head, away from her legs. Her knees began to buckle. She gripped Max’s hand tighter for support.

“Shelley Sullivan, will you let me be the one who makes you eggs for breakfast—only on Sundays mornings, of course, because to be honest, I’ve been feeding you far too much cholesterol on this tour—and kiss the spot behind your ear before you sleep, till death do …”

Shelley drew a sharp breath as she silenced Max with her hand. She felt his lips against her palm. She had grown up with the words he was about to say echoing in her head. She could not bear to hear them again. It was what she had spent her entire adult life avoiding: her mother’s pain. But as she stood still, locked onto Max’s eyes and unable to run, it crashed into her—a wave that found every empty space inside her. It filled her to the brim with every moment she had shared with Max. Eggs. Sleep. Mornings. None of these would ever be the same. She could spend a lifetime wringing him from her memories without extracting a drop. He was a part of her now.

She exhaled. Her only choice became clear as the air rushed out of her chest. A peace settled in its place. Decision bridged action as a well-rehearsed answer rolled off her tongue. “No.”

Max dropped his hand to his knee. He turned his face away from Shelley.

She had thought that Dex was being naive for welcoming the wound Sheila would leave him with. As the tragedy of a life without Max washed over her, Shelley began to think otherwise. Dex’s and her mom’s pain was not because their lives were without love. It was because their lives had been drenched in it. She had believed her mom was the saddest person she knew. Now she saw that her mom was, perhaps, also one of the luckiest. She had known a love worth mourning, a love worth remembering.

Shelley knelt down beside Max and cradled his face in her hands.
“What I meant, Max,” she said, “was will
you
let
me
remind you to floss every night for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health?”

The question was the only honest answer she could give him, the only answer worthy of what he had asked. Shelley asked Max to marry her because simply saying yes fell short of how she felt for the man who cared about her arteries and wanted to hold her hand through the adventure they were already having. She was still very aware that this journey would inevitably end one day, but if they watched what they ate, took care of their teeth, and held hands as they crossed the street, it would at least be a long one. She remembered Dex and swore to take lots of pictures along the way.

Max’s face lit up with a grin. He gathered Shelley in his arms and kissed her. “I thought you’d never ask.”

A
nd that’s how Max and I got engaged.” Paolo smiled. “I suppose that more than made up for missing the last stop of the tour.”

“That wasn’t the last stop.”

“But weren’t Brad and Simon raving about Max’s last story at the Sistine Chapel?”

“They were, and technically it was the last stop—for them at least,” Shelley said.

“Why? What happened after the proposal?” Paolo asked.

“You mean after the scandalous standing ovation Brad and Simon gave us in St. Peter’s Square?”

“Er … yes.”

“We called my mother to share the wonderful news, and afterward, we all went out for an enormous celebratory Roman feast.” Shelley smiled at the memories of her mother’s squeal of delight and the heaping plates
of pasta and bottles of red wine. “And then Max booted Dex, Simon, and Brad out of the van.”

“What? Max stranded them in Rome?”

“Not exactly. Max took them as far as the airport, gave each of them a hug and a first-class airline ticket back to London. After Max and I got married and I started helping him out on the tour, I learned that while the stops in the middle of the Slight Detour would change, the tour always started at Isabelle’s tomb and ended at the Sistine Chapel,” Shelley said. “There was only one time that Max made an exception.”

S
helley sat next to Max as they drove out of Rome and through the back roads of Italy. She couldn’t help but feel a little strange being alone with him. It was, however, a strangeness that she was utterly happy to be befuddled by every day for the rest of her life. She and Max weren’t completely alone, though. They still had Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb for company. By now, she knew all their songs by heart. She smiled and hummed along.

“Why the smile, luv?” Max squeezed her hand.

“I was just thinking of the funny little road we’ve been on.”

“What happens when the road gets less funny?” he asked.

“I think this van can handle a few potholes,” Shelley said. “I don’t know about you, but I’m strapped in for the ride.”

Max put his arm around her. “I’m here until the end.”

She leaned into him. “So how much farther until we get to our hotel?” It was late in the evening and she was looking forward to room service and a large bed.

“Not much, but we have to make a slight detour first.”

“A detour? At this hour?” Shelley asked. She ran her hand over Max’s thigh and smiled naughtily. “Wouldn’t you rather, well, you know,
sleep
?”

“Oh, I am most certainly planning on catching up on a
lot
of sleep tonight.” He grinned.

“So let’s leave the detour for morning and head to our hotel now. I’m sooooo sleepy,” she purred into his ear.

“I’m afraid this can’t wait, luv,” Max said softly.

“Why not?” Shelley leaned back in her seat.

“This is something you need to see before we go anywhere else.”

She looked up at him, puzzled. “What do you need to show me, Max?”

“The beginning.”