Seeking Sara Summers by Susan Gabriel Page A

baptizing myself in fountains?”
    “No, I mean you seem more relaxed. You have a vitality I haven’t seen before.”
    My oncologist would be happy to hear that, Sara thought, but didn’t speak it. For the first time since she had been in Italy she actually wanted to tell Julia the truth. But she didn’t want to ruin the moment.
    Water trickled a steady stream out of the stone wall. “Life just keeps going, doesn’t it? With or without us,” Sara said. “These statues will still be standing long after we’re gone.”
    “Well that’s philosophical of you,” Julia said.
    “I’ve been thinking lately about my mother,” Sara said. “I know it’s silly, but I still miss her and it’s been decades.”
    “You always were very sensitive, Sara. It’s one of the things I love about you.”
    “There’s more than one?” Sara laughed. “To be honest, I always wondered why you were my friend.”
    Julia leaned back on the bench, a slight look of surprise on her face. “Oh, Sara,” she sighed. “You haven’t really changed much at all, have you? You don’t get who you really are.”
    “Who am I?” Sara asked, as if she had been waiting her whole life to hear.
    Julia leaned closer. “You are a beautiful, sensitive, caring, self-effacing, funny soul,” Julia said.
    “Truthfully?”
    Julia nodded. “And I don’t know what I would have done without you when we were growing up,” Julia continued. “I was so lonely, you know? I was an only child with two intellectual parents. You were like a sister to me or a soul mate. We could talk about anything. We laughed constantly. Not to mention that you put up with me, for God’s sake. I must have been the bossiest little girl on the planet.”
    Julia paused as a bird took a bath on the edge of the fountain. Sara and Julia smiled at each other as they watched.
    “Thanks for saying all that,” Sara said. “It means a lot to me.” Actually, it meant more than Julia would probably ever know, Sara thought.
    “I can’t believe you never knew how I felt about you,” Julia said. “So much goes on underneath that calm exterior of yours. What else are you not telling me?”
    “Can we take a walk?” Sara asked. She stood.
    “Now I know there’s something you’re not telling me.”
    “Not now,” Sara said softly.
    “Okay, I’ll drop it,” Julia said. “But I’m here whenever you get ready.”
    Sara nodded.
    They walked through the courtyard gate and up a dirt path toward a hill. This place was as different from New England as Sara could imagine. But ‘different’ had been exactly what she needed.
    “It feels good to move,” Sara said. “If we’d stayed at the fountain any longer I may have become stone myself.” Sara felt closer to Julia since their talk. Was she really all those things that Julia said? She hoped so.
    Julia led them through an acre of olive trees, followed by a large field planted with sunflowers, their green stalks just beginning to break through the ground. In a matter of weeks their blossoms would be like praying hands reaching toward the sun. The beauty of the Italian countryside elicited a lightness in Sara’s chest. She briefly touched her scar and turned her face toward the sun, soaking in its rays like the new shoots of the flowers.
    At the top of the hill they looked out over a large slice of Tuscany. A man on a tractor plowed a field on a square of earth in the distant valley below. Another figure rode a motor bike, releasing a ribbon of dust down the long driveway beyond the field. Green, yellow, and brown squares formed a patchwork quilt of earth in front of them.
    “What do you think?” Julia asked.
    “Heavenly,” Sara said.
    Julia spontaneously hugged her. The genuineness of Julia’s gesture caught Sara off guard. She hesitated before returning the embrace. And then didn’t want to admit how much she had wanted it.
    “I didn’t realize how much I missed you,” Julia whispered in her ear.
    At that moment the