"I don't understand anything." I held the knitted heart to my chest and closed my eyes. The memories flooded back, how Aurora was lying on the bed. Upon her stomach, with her feet in the air. I had been reading books, sitting in the rocking chair, which had been standing in our bedroom.

Sometimes I eyed her. I would feel the edges of my lips trying to curl. She was humming an Italian song. Her black, silky hair falling over her face, to which she tucked it behind her ear with an Italian curse.

"Au-ro-ra." I sang. "What are you doing?"

Aurora looked up, smiled mischievously. "Showering you with love." She would throw the finished knitted hearts my way, a few hitting my face with some force. "And more.. and more." She would throw loads of hearts, pulled me upon the bed and kissed me deeply.

Rolling on top of each other, kissing some more, sharing laughs. "Amore?"

She was on top by now, I looked into her almond eyes, while the tips of her locks tickled my face softly. Her gaze turned serious, with a soft frown creasing her forehead. "I want to give those hearts to people who just need some support. Comfort, even."

"Like who?" I tucked her hair behind her ear. It fell right back onto my face.

"Anyone we meet." Aurora rested her head onto my chest, drew circles on my arm. "Anyone who is suffering. I've been knitting loads."

"I think that's lovely."

"Me too." She agreed, blowing my disheveled hair from my forehead. "When I was young, you know, fourteen.." I clenched my jaws, feeling the deep pain of her traumatic experience. "In church, not a lot of people knew what to say to me, but at one point, a younger girl came over to me and handed me a drawing. Do you know what it said?"

"Tell me, Amore."

"It was a drawing of a heart, with the words 'God loves Aurora' written in the middle." Aurora's eyes teared up. "Oh Sole, you have no idea how much that meant to me around that time. I stared at the drawing every single day, it gave me so much hope. It had lifted my heart."

I smiled sadly, kissed her gently.

"I want to be like that little girl. And not for my glory, but for His glory. Just spreading some love. That's all."

"You selfless woman." I whispered, remembering the pain of her trauma, Eden and more.

"Ugh." She rolled her eyes, cursed at me in Italian, then pushed me off the bed. "Get back to reading, I have things to knit."

"Okay, okay." I lifted my hands in surrender, but couldn't keep my eyes off her when I was back in that chair.

"I don't understand anything." I repeated, brushing my thumb over the wool Aurora had once touched. "I don't understand.."

"That's alright." Salomé assured me, watching how my hands slowly fiddled with the little heart. "Me neither. But God.." She smiled softly, shook her head.

I swallowed, looked sideways to Salomé. "Salomé? Can you tell me more?"

Salomé pulled up her knees, pulled her dress down, over them. I could tell it pained her to think about her past, but she tried. For me. "I got infections. A lot of them. We were among the poorest in Nigeria, they didn't have much medical knowledge, not even the doctors. Which was more than understandable- those people hadn't been given equal chances to have education, seeing they were poor."

"My dad decided to travel back to England, so I could get the treatment I needed." Nervously, Salomé played with a strand of hair. I wondered if she re-experienced everything in her mind. "During the long travel, the infections got worse. I had high fevers. So high, that I was very drowsy and sometimes unresponsive to my surroundings."

"As soon as the plane had landed, my father had called an ambulance, and I was on my way to the hospital, where I got rather heavy treatments in order to get the infections down as soon as possible. Seeing I was rather young, and they wanted to prevent further damage." Salomé played with her bracelet. It was golden. Charms in form of little daises attached to it.

"In the hospital, when things seemed to go somewhat better, a woman came to talk to me sometimes. She would ask me how I was feeling, and if something was up my mind." Salomé chuckled sadly and shook her head as her eyes lingered on something in the far distance. "I didn't want to talk. I was exhausted. Still trying to figure out what had happened in just a few days time."

"Later I found out she was a child psychologist." A deep sigh. I wanted to comfort her, but didn't really know how. "It didn't really work out. Another woman came by and the first thing she asked was if I wanted to bake some cookies with her. That tugged at my interests, I had loved baking as a child."

"As we started baking, she would ask me to put my feelings in form of the dough. Like a sad face, or a happy face." Salomé briefly glanced at me. "I remember making a question mark. Feeling confused."

"I didn't realise she was there for play therapy, but it had truly helped me. For the time being."

I remembered the day where Salomé and I had baked cookies for the refuge house. When she had given me dough to eat because I had been feeling low. I smiled painfully at the memory. She'd been there for me since the beginning, but I didn't know if I had returned the feeling.

"Zev, you must know slowly growing into a teenager requires a lot from a child. It can go any way, literally. The good way, the better way, but sometimes the worse ways. It was like that for me." She swallowed, her eyes roamed slowly from the left side, to the right side over the floor. "Biology class in school. I think I was thirteen. Anatomy of the teenage kids. Reproduction.."

With her hands in her hair, she continued her story. "I think then, was when I realised what had actually happened to me. How wrong it had been. How awful and painful it had been, and not only physically."

My heart wrenched at the thought of Salomé sitting in class, hearing all that. The nonchalantness in the voice of the teacher, trying to reduce the laughter coming from pupils. But the pain it must have been giving Salomé.

"I felt gross. Ashamed. Anxious. I fell into a quite deep well. I locked myself out, most of the time. Didn't let people come close. Only trusted God and my father." Salomé smiled a little. "It felt liberating when we went back to another country. New people. A new start. I tried to involve myself more, but for some reasons, I still couldn't."

"The infections never fully went away. They came and went. Sometimes twice a month, sometimes five times a year. However, when I became twenty two, I had gotten a bad one. So bad, that I had started to get high fevers again. We were in Zimbabwe. Their healthcare a little more improved compared to Nigeria when I was nine. Though, they had quickly decided what to do."

Salomé remained silent. For a very long time. I waited, but when I noticed tears softly rolling down, I wrapped my arm around her shoulder. "What had they decided to do?" I asked carefully, watching her expression closely.

A soft cry left her slightly parted lips, she looked at me briefly. "It hurts to tell you."

"You don't have to tell me." I assured her.

Salomé shook her head slowly. Her breathing became a little erratic, but she tried her best to breathe in through her nose, and out through her mouth. Eventually, she looked at me. "I will never be a mother, Zev."

I didn't know what to say. The immense pain floated through the empty church, filling it up completely, and bringing me to embrace her gently. I thought of Aurora, before Eden and Benjamin. How we had endlessly tried to become parents, but it didn't work. Her deep pain, but then our prayers were heard. And Salomé still lived with that pain. Salomé wrapped her arms around my neck, cried upon my shoulder quietly.

So many things were taken from her, before she even had to chance to grow into a woman.

"I'm so sorry." I whispered, gently holding her face in my hands. We made eye contact, with my fingers slowly brushing away her tears. "That must be so incredibly painful."

"They had to remove my uterus in order to save my life, but honestly, Zev?" She said after a brief moment of silence. "At that point, I just wished they hadn't. I wished they would have just let me go. So I could be with God and feel no more pain at all."

"My mindset has changed from that, truly. There are so many beautiful things in life that I wouldn't have wanted to miss. But around that time.." She let out a deep, shaky breath. "Zev, I've never really talked to someone about this. Just one person, I had met in a big, Catholic cathedral somewhere else."

"Do you feel safe enough?"

She looked into my eyes. Smiled a little. "I feel safe enough around you." Salomé stood up, straightened her dress and stretched out her hand to me. I took her hand, stood up, too. Our hands did not let go. She slowly sauntered through the church, with me following her close behind.

"I was at my deepest low. I traveled, hoped to find the good things in life, but my eyes were closed. Far gone, with all of the sorrows. I wouldn't look around me. I prayed several times a day if God could take away my life on earth, in any way. I strongly hoped for it, but I guess He had different plans for me."

I saw how her eyes brightened as they roamed over the stained glass windows. A smile softly playing on her lips. "I asked God for one reason to let me stay here, on earth. You know what happened?"

"What did?"

Salomé laughed softly. Held my hand tightly. She took me up to the front, the altar, where the parish priest would preach during services. Her knees bended, she looked up at the ceiling. "I was in this exact same position. Weeping. Quietly praying. Eyes closed. One more reason, God. One reason."

She moved my hand to her shoulder, rested both of her own hands on top of mine. "A hand upon my shoulder." She stood up, turned around to face me. "A young woman. Black hair. Eyes representing the greenest fields and the bluest of skies. A smile, pure and in some ways childlike. And then she asked; can I pray for you?"

"I could only nod. She hadn't heard my story, but prayed a prayer that made so much sense to what I'd been through." Salomé took me to the first row of chairs, sat down. "We sat down, she wrapped an arm around me, stuffed something in my hands." She pointed at the knitted heart.

"Just to lift your heart a little bit, Amore, the woman said." Salomé stared at the floor, whereas a deep melancholic and hurtful aura had been present before, it had now been traded with a calm, peaceful one. "If you need to empty your heart, I'm here."

"So I told her my story. I didn't know her. I hadn't caught her name because I was too busy overthinking, but I felt so safe. Safer than I had ever felt before. I don't know if that was because of God's presence right there, or something else, but it encouraged me to finally speak out my story, which I had never done to anybody else before."

"I told her I wanted life to give up on me, but then she reminded me of how beautiful life can be. No matter the hardships in life, no matter the battles we sometimes have to fight, no matter the sorrow, no matter the pain. She reminded me of the things my eyes had not seen, because they were far too gone in my own misery.. she reminded me how to see the morning again."

Salomé swallowed, faced me, held my hands. "Zev.. she was your wife."

I wanted to back away, wanted to let go of her hands- it gave me deep anxious feelings, but at the same time I craved to hear of Aurora. I wanted Salomé to know her, I needed her to know her, so I could speak about her whenever I needed to. I sat still.

"I don't understand." I repeated, maybe for the hundredth time in my own mind. "How do you know.." I trailed off, trying to find the right ropes, knotting them together to find some logic sense into this unknown story.

"I was in Verona, Italy. She said it was her birthplace. She said she was ill, cancerous ill. Her head showed slight bald spots. Some hair fell out during our conversations. She told me about a beautiful boy back at home, Benjamin. She told me about the strength of her husband. She told me about her battles, her fights, but her will to live and get everything out this life now she still had time. She told me again her name was Aurora.."

"Zev, I didn't know from the beginning. I really didn't. I did not know Benjamin was your son, for I had not seen him back in Italy, for he had said his name was Campione. I did not know Aurora was your wife, because you had not told me she had passed away, her name wasn't ever mentioned. Besides that, Aurora was a name often heard when I was in Italy. It could have only been coincidence, wouldn't it have been.."

"Then how did you find out?"

"I couldn't stop thinking of Aurora when we found out, at the night of the sleepover, that your son was called Benjamin. You called him an Italian boy. I started to make up things in my mind, trying to make logical links.."

"Do you remember when we visited the refugee home where Gloria stayed, back when Davu was in prison?"

I hummed.

"When you had left, to Italy nota bene, I kept on visiting Gloria. Sometimes I roamed around, my eyes would land upon the photos on the wall. And at all sudden, I saw a photo of Aurora." Salomé played with my fingers. I let her. She was in deep thoughts. "The way it scared me, Zev. I couldn't understand a thing. I asked Sade about Aurora. She told me she was your wife."

"You didn't tell me.."

"I didn't want to scare you, Zev. For it scared me too." Salomé shook her head slowly, lingered her hand on top of mine. "I'd had sleepless nights ever since. I wondered where you were. If you were alright. If Benjamin was alright. I tried so hard to make up reasons for it all to be just pure coincidence. But I know it is not. I had asked God for one reason to stay upon this earth, and He had sent Aurora my way. To open my eyes. To inspire me. To give me a new will to live."

She let go of my hands, folded them in her lap. "Zev, I'm not trying to be prophetic or anything. Please- it's far from that. All I'm saying is.."

"God brought us together." I whispered out, my voice hoarse.

"I truly do think so. I truly do think that God brought me here, in this little town in England so I could meet with you, with your son. Goodness, you have no idea how much Benjamin fulfilled my motherly instincts, knowing I could never let them out on a child of my own. I needed to take care of him, I needed him to be alright."

My mind was overflown with everything, but for some reasons, I felt at peace. "He gave you the coca cola gummies."

"He did." Salomé smiled sadly. "He never spoke a bad word about you, Zev. I want you to know that."

A painful smile tugged at my lips.

"Never."

"What kind of things did he say to you?"

"That my arms were soft like his mother's, but my breasts felt different against his back when he sat on my lap." Salomé laughed a little, with a pink glaze covering her cheeks. It made me laugh too. I looked down at my hands. At my ring. "That he misses her decent, Italian cursing, her loudness, her presence."

"She was loud. Whenever Aurora was present, she was present. It's deafening silent in the house now." Tears formed in my eyes. I blinked them off. "Deafening. The silence hurt my ears so much sometimes, that I just start doing nonsense things in order to shoo away the quietness, start to annoy the cat to make him hiss, anything, for the silence to be gone."

"I can imagine that." Salomé's voice sounded empathic, it was empathic.

"Thank you for looking after him."

"Please, Zev." Salomé held my hands tightly. "Thank you for looking after me. I know this all is going to take a while to find a place in our hearts, we're both not ready to fully put ourselves into something new, but Zev, do you remember when I told you about the no seat meat lifestyle? The moving, the searching, the not feeling home?"

"I do." I looked at her, craved to hear more of her soft voice. It was soothing the sharp edges around my heart, slowly, but surely.

Salomé's cheeks glazed a light shade of pink, but in her eyes I could see her genuineness. "I found home in you."

All seeped off me. The anger, the guilt, the hurt. We embraced each other. Tight. I stared at the knitted heart in my hands, my cheek pressed to her shoulder. "You won't leave any time soon?"

"As long as you're here, I'm not going anywhere."

After a while we let go of each other. I smiled a little, somewhat timid. Looked around me. Breathed out deeply. "It's crazy."

"What is?"

"All of this."

"I agree. But in my defense, the kind of good crazy."

"Agreed, too." I chuckled a little. Astonished.

Salomé grinned a little. "But tell me next time that your pseudonym is Von Trapp. I knew it was you who gave that pretty intense donation to the refuge house."

"Hey." I furrowed my eyebrows, disapprovingly shaking my head. "Matthew 6 verse 2."

Salomé laughed softly. It sounded sweet. Soothed my ears.

Will you give her a chance?

Aurora's voice echoed through my mind. I looked at Salomé. Opened her hands, and handed her my heart.

My eyes wandered through the church for a lost moment, falling onto a certain painting. A painting portraying the coming home of the long lost son, with a father embracing him, even after all the dirt he had been through. All the dirt he had done.

And I felt home.

•

Zev and Salomé, two broken hearts, mending into one bigger one.. do you agree with their decision to wait a little before fully getting involved in a new relationship?

What about Salomé's story? Never becoming a mother, even if that was her biggest wish? The pain she must feel?

But Benjamin.. may fill it in?

Do you think Benji would accept her as a mother?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments, for the next chapter will be the last one.. :(