Chapter 3: What the Courtyard Knew
I picked up the scarf.
The fabric was soft.
Worn at the edges, the way something gets when it has been handled many times.
I stood there holding it, and the voices in the courtyard had gone completely quiet.
Then David stepped through the doorway.
He saw me.
He saw the scarf in my hands.
Something moved across his face — not guilt, exactly.
Something older than guilt.
Something that looked almost like grief.
"Eleanor." His voice was careful.
"Let me explain."
"How many?" I asked.
He blinked.
"What?"
"She said the others." My voice was steadier than I felt.
"How many women have there been?"
He didn't answer immediately.
That pause told me more than any answer could have.
"It isn't what you think," he said.
"Then tell me what it is."
A woman appeared behind him in the doorway.
She was perhaps sixty, silver-haired, with the kind of face that had once been very beautiful and still was, in a quieter way.
She looked at the scarf in my hands and then at David with an expression I couldn't quite read — part warning, part exhaustion.
"I'm Catherine," she said.
"His sister."
I looked at David.
"You never mentioned a sister."
"I know." He ran a hand across the back of his neck.
"I should have.
I'm sorry."
"Why didn't you?"
Catherine answered before he could.
"Because explaining me means explaining everything else.
And David has never been very good at that."
She said it without cruelty.
It landed like a fact that had been true for a long time.
I set the scarf down on the low stone wall beside me.
"Whose is this?"
Neither of them spoke.
"David."
He looked at the scarf.
Then at me.
"It belonged to a woman named Ruth."
"Who is Ruth?"
"She was here two years ago," Catherine said quietly.
"She met David the same way you did.
Wandering Valletta.
Map upside down." She paused.
"Almost exactly the same way."
The harbor lights reflected off the water below us.
Somewhere inside the restaurant, a glass clinked against a table.
"She fell in love with him," Catherine continued.
"Went home.
Came back three months later.
And then—" She stopped.
"And then what?" I asked.
David sat down on the low wall.
He looked suddenly older than seventy.
"She passed away," he said.
"Six weeks after she came back.
A heart condition no one knew about."
I stood very still.
"She d*ed here?
In Malta?"
"In the hospital in Valletta." His voice was quiet.
"I was with her."
I looked at the scarf.
Pale blue.
Neatly folded.
Left near the entrance to the courtyard where they had just been talking about me.
"Why do you still have it?"
"I keep it here," he said.
"At this restaurant.
Because this was the last place she was truly happy." He looked up at me.
"The owner is an old friend.
He keeps it for me."
I didn't know what to say.
I had come out here expecting betrayal.
A wife somewhere.
A pattern of deception.
Something I could be angry about and walk away from cleanly.
This was not that.
"The waiter," I said slowly.
"He recognized you."
"I come back every year.
On the same date."
Catherine looked at her brother.
"Tell her the rest, David."
He didn't move.
"Tell her," she said again.
Firm.
Not unkind.
He looked at me for a long moment.
"The reason I didn't tell you about Ruth," he said, "isn't because I was hiding her.
It's because of what happened after." He stopped.
Started again.
"After Ruth, I promised myself I was finished.
No more.
I was too old to keep doing this to people."
"Doing what?"
"Making them feel something." His voice dropped.
"And then watching it end."
The courtyard was very quiet.
"But you were still here," I said.
"You were still wandering Valletta."
"Catherine made me come.
She said I couldn't spend the rest of my life in my flat in Gozo talking to no one." He almost smiled.
"She was right, as usual."
I looked at the scarf one more time.
Then I looked at David — really looked at him — and I thought about the ferry to Gozo, and the coffee at sunset, and the way he had said *I'm really glad you said yes* like he meant every syllable.
"What were you going to tell me tonight?" I asked.
"Before all of this."
He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and placed something on the wall beside the scarf.
A small envelope.
My name written on the front in careful handwriting.
"I was going to give you that," he said.
"And then let you decide."
I looked at the envelope.
I did not pick it up.
"What's in it?"
May you like
He met my eyes.
"Everything I should have told you on the second day."
