Juliet

The Lincoln was parked discreetly over by the fire pit, and no one saw Umberto placing my old pack in the trunk before opening the back door for me with measured ceremony.
‘I want to sit in front. Please?’
He shook his head in disapproval and opened the passenger door instead. ‘I knew it would all come apart.’
But it had never been Aunt Rose who insisted on the formality. Although Umberto was her employee, she had always treated him like family. The gesture, however, was never returned. Whenever Aunt Rose would invite Umberto to join us at the dinner table, he would merely look at her with bemused forbearance, as if it was an ongoing wonder to him why she kept asking and just somehow didn’t get it. He ate all his meals in the kitchen, always had, always would, and not even the name of sweet Jesus – spoken in rising exasperation – could persuade him to come and sit down with us, even at Thanksgiving.
Aunt Rose used to dismiss Umberto’s peculiarity as a European thing and smoothly segue into a lecture about tyranny, liberty, and independence that would inevitably culminate in her pointing a fork at us and snorting, ‘and that is why we are not going to Europe on vacation. Especially Italy. End of story.’ Personally, I was fairly certain that Umberto preferred to eat alone simply because he considered his own company vastly superior to what we had to offer. There he was, serene in the kitchen, with his

Instead, he reached out and touched my cheek the way he had done that day at Fontebranda, and this time, I knew exactly what he meant. Whether or not we had truly been cursed, and whether or not we had now paid our dues, he was my blessing, and I was his, and that was enough to disarm any missile that fate – or Shakespeare – might still be foolish enough to hurl our way.

Your description of that young man, Romeo, makes me certain he is the true knight you were so patiently waiting for.

That,’ said Alessandro, putting an arm around me, ‘is exactly how I felt when we met the first time.’ And then he kissed me, right on the mouth

how could I possibly have known that I was going to wake up, as from a dream, to a life I never knew existed?

We were not getting married because we felt we had to. This wedding ceremony in the Lorenzo sanctuary was not only for us, it was also a way of proving to everyone else that we were serious when we said we belonged together – something Alessandro and I had known for a long, long time.

When he saw us walking towards him, he shook his head and sent me a smile that was part reproach, part relief. And as soon as I was within reach, he pulled me close to kiss my cheek and whisper into my ear, ‘I think maybe I will have to chain you in the dungeon.’
‘How mediaeval of you,’ I replied, disentangling myself with feigned modesty, seeing that we had an audience.
‘You bring it out in me.’

and all these woes shall serve
For sweet discourses in our times to come

All I remember are the eyes of the man who had refused to lose me again, and who had wrested me from the clutches of the Bard so we could finally write our own happy end.

I just opened my eyes and looked at him