Chapter 5: Seven Hours
The restaurant was closed.
The lights I had seen from my window were the owner cleaning up — a broad-shouldered man in his sixties named Marco, who opened the door when I knocked and looked at me without surprise, as though women showing up after midnight was simply part of the job.
"Mr.
Bennett," I said.
"Is he still here?"
Marco considered me for a moment.
Then he stepped aside.
David was in the courtyard.
Sitting on the low wall where he had sat earlier, the pale blue scarf still folded beside him.
He was not on his phone.
He was not doing anything.
He was simply sitting in the dark, looking at the harbor below.
He heard my footsteps and turned.
Neither of us spoke for a moment.
"I read the letter," I said.
"I assumed."
"You wrote it three days ago."
"The morning after Gozo, yes."
I sat down on the wall across from him.
"Why didn't you give it to me sooner?"
"Because I kept hoping I'd find the courage to just say it instead." He looked at his hands.
"I never did."
"You're saying it now."
"You came back," he said.
"That made it easier."
A boat moved slowly across the harbor below us.
Its light traced a long line across the water and then was gone.
"Tell me about Ruth," I said.
He was quiet for a moment.
Then he did.
He told me about meeting her on almost the same corner in Valletta, two years and four months ago.
About the same week of coffee and boat trips and easy conversation.
About her going home to Bristol and writing to him every week for three months.
About her coming back in October, when the tourists were gone and the island was quiet and golden.
"She was happy here," he said.
"Genuinely happy.
She said Malta felt like a place where the rules were different."
"What rules?"
"The rules that say you're too old to start something new." He looked at me.
"She didn't believe in those rules."
"Neither do I," I said.
"I know." He paused.
"That's part of why this week frightened me."
"Frightened you?"
"The last time I felt this—" He stopped.
Started again.
"The last time I let myself feel this, I watched it end very badly.
And I thought, if I do this again and it ends the same way, I'm not sure I survive it a second time."
The courtyard was very still.
"So you were going to let me fly home tomorrow," I said.
"And say nothing."
"I was going to give you the letter.
I told myself that was enough.
That it put the choice in your hands and kept my hands clean." He shook his head slightly.
"Catherine told me that was cowardice dressed up as consideration."
"She's not wrong."
"No." He almost smiled.
"She rarely is."
I looked at the scarf.
"Ruth would have wanted you to keep going," I said.
"Don't you think?"
He was quiet for a long time.
"Yes," he said finally.
"She would have been furious with me, actually.
She had very strong opinions about wasted time."
"Smart woman."
"Extraordinary woman." He said it simply, without apology.
"As are you."
I looked at him.
Seventy years old, sitting in a dark courtyard in Malta, holding onto grief with one hand and trying to let go with the other.
I recognized that.
I had been doing the same thing for four years.
"I'm not Ruth," I said.
"No.
You're Eleanor.
And that is entirely its own thing."
I picked up the envelope from my coat pocket and held it for a moment.
Then I set it down on the wall beside the scarf.
The two of them together — the letter and the pale blue fabric — looked like the beginning of something, or the end of something, and I couldn't yet tell which.
"My flight is at nine," I said.
"I know."
"But I have seven hours."
He looked at me carefully.
"What would you like to do with them?"
"Talk," I said.
"Properly.
No more careful silences.
No more waiting for the right moment." I met his eyes.
"Tell me everything, David.
And I'll tell you everything.
And then we'll see where we are when the sun comes up."
He nodded slowly.
Then he said: "Where would you like me to start?"
"The beginning," I said.
May you like
"That's usually the best place."
And so he did.
