Before Ever After by Samantha Sotto

Author:Samantha Sotto [Sotto, Samantha]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780307719874
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2011-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Scribbling a soup recipe at the back of a prayer book sounds like something Nonno would do, all right,” Paolo said. “He always did have an odd sense of humor.”

“I guess you’d have to be if you were immortal.”

There, she’d said it. Fast, flippantly, and coated in a gel capsule of glib. It was the only way she could swallow the truth without choking. Max was immortal, and she was an immortal’s widow. It was a paradox too cruel to understand.

“So do you really think that’s what he is?” Paolo asked.

“Julien, Antoine, the Basilisk, and Brother Aidan, Abbot Thomas’s guardian. All of them … they were all just one man,” she said. “What else could Max be?”

“I don’t see any bite marks on your neck, so I guess that rules out the other possibility.”

“Very funny. You’re just like him, you know,” Shelley said. “He never took things seriously—not even his own death, it would seem.”

“I’m sorry, but I have to find some humor in this whole experience. The more I learn about who Nonno was, the more I find myself wondering about who I am. You married an immortal, but I am his grandson. What does that make me, Shelley?”

She could hear the strain in Paolo’s voice. Guilt dropped in her gut like a heavy pasta dinner. “I … I’m sorry. I’ve been so focused on myself, I haven’t stopped to think how you must be feeling. I promise that I’m not as idiotic in real life.”

The tension in Paolo’s brow smoothed over. A hint of the smirk hovered at one corner of his mouth.

Shelley inhaled sharply. She had caught another glimpse of Max in the dimple that deepened in Paolo’s olive cheek.

“Real life,” Paolo said. “That sounds kind of funny now, don’t you think? As bizarre as things are, do you realize that this moment is actually the closest either of us has actually come to the truth? Life has never been more real, Shelley, and as profoundly unnerving as it is, I’m actually … glad.”

She rolled her eyes and turned toward the seat in front of her. What kind of person could be pleased in a moment like this? And what kind of person would choose to upholster a plane in scratchy, unattractive plaid?

“After thirty-two years,” Paolo continued, “I’ll be able to look into the mirror and truly know who it is I’m looking at. The pieces of Nonno’s puzzle are mine, too. All of his lives … all the people in them are part of whoever—or whatever—I turn out to be.”

The air roared out of the cabin. Shelley gasped and grabbed for an oxygen mask. She clutched at the empty space above her head. She wondered why no one else was panicking. She drew her arm back from the ceiling and slid down in her seat. It dawned on her that she had been the only one who had gotten the wind knocked out of her lungs.

Paolo had spelled out the terrible and enviable difference between them.

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