In Italy for Love

Epilogue

EPILOGUE

‘Berengario! You brought Attila to the airport?’ Alex called incredulously when they emerged through the doors into the arrivals lounge.

‘I couldn’t leave him at home – not at a time like this!’ Berengario replied, juggling Arco’s lead and a plastic travel crate containing a very unimpressed Persian.

Abandoning her suitcase, Jules crouched to wrap her arms around her dog, who wriggled and alternated excited hops on his back legs and swipes of his tongue over whatever skin he could reach. ‘Hey, boy. We missed you so much.’

‘I’m not even sure Attila cares,’ Alex said with a wry smile as he peered into the crate. The cat merely flicked his fluffy tail.

‘Arco cares enough for both of them,’ Jules said.

‘I suppose that’s why we’re a family,’ Alex quipped, sending another shiver of anticipation through Jules. They weren’t quite officially a family yet, but in a week, they would be – no matter what country they lived in.

‘All right, all right. If you’re going to start the honeymoon early, you’ll have to put up with a lot more gloating from your wise elders who knew you were perfect for each other the moment we saw you together,’ Berengario grumbled.

Jules beamed up at her future husband. ‘Berengario’s pretty quick on the uptake. Only a few hours after I knew.’

But it had been Alex who’d rushed into the next step. His work visa had been approved, but the idea had apparently long taken root in his mind and only four months after they met, Jules had found a small blue topaz ring on her left hand – chosen together for the colour of the Natisone river.

Maybe it was reckless – it was definitely very fast – but after her experience with Luca, she at least felt she’d learned to discern real love from an imitation and she couldn’t doubt a commitment that had grown and thrived in the most meagre circumstances last autumn.

In the car on the way back from the small airport near Trieste where their connecting flight had arrived, Berengario piled on the work immediately. ‘We’re thinning the leaves on the vines and you know we always need to prune those wild olive trees. They grow faster than your kids will,’ he said with a wink.

‘Berengario,’ Alex grumbled. They’d talked about the possibility of kids – coming to no conclusion other than that they weren’t ready, but one day, maybe.

When they arrived back at Alex’s building, Jules took a second to inhale the scent of spring in the air and appreciate the neon green of the leaves on the persimmon tree.

‘Thank you, Laura,’ she whispered to herself. She’d long since accepted that there was no right or wrong way to honour Alex’s first love – only authentically. Arriving at the building Laura had inherited and passed on to Alex, Jules wondered whether one day they’d reopen the B&B – perhaps when she’d finished the hospitality management diploma she was thoroughly enjoying.

Since Alex had got back into mountain biking in the hinterland around Brisbane, Jules kept wondering whether they might be able to make a living offering tours and accommodation around Cividale. She would start small, offering the rooms to budget travellers until they’d saved enough to renovate a few of them.

But first, they had more important things to attend to.

On a sunny May afternoon, in Saint Martin’s church by the Ponte del Diavolo – both in honour of the day they met on the square outside and of Jules’s birthday, the day after the festa di San Martino – they pledged their futures to each other, in sickness and in health, for as long as they would live.