“Oh, we couldn’t,” the husband said, his voice gravelly, his smile gentle. “We’ll pay for it, if you think we should have it that much.”

“I insist.” Take the book. “Maybe you should plan that trip to Italy.” I smiled. Encouragingly. Hopefully.

The wife smiled. “Herman. Maybe we should.”

Herman’s eyes lit up. “Maybe you’re right, honey.”

“We’ve always wanted to go. We’ve talked about it for fifty years. The kids even say we should go.”

“We like pasta,” Herman said. “And we like wine and bread, Rubina.”

“It’s our time, honey,” Rubina said softly. “Our time. Six kids. Decades of work. We should go.”

They smiled at each other. Herman raised his eyebrows at her. She nodded her head back. They walked out with a mystery for Herman, a biography on Abe Lincoln for her, and my free Italian book.

They came back in the store three days later and bought two travel books on Italy. They were so excited. “We’re going,” the wife gushed. “We called a travel agent and we’re leaving in one week.”

The husband rocked back on his heels. “We’re old, but we’re not too old.”

“We’re young enough to have an Italian romance, right, Herman?”

He laughed.

“Thank you,” they both said to me.

“You pushed us to jump on the dream,” Herman said.

“And now we’re going to Italy!” Rubina raised her fists in victory. “For one month!”

I bagged their purchases as we chatted. They looked at each other with such love. How many people get that?

Herman would be dead soon. I saw his body in my premonition, wracked with disease in the hospital. He would die during the Christmas holidays. I saw a tree in the background, the stockings, and how he had collapsed.

Rubina would have the memory of their Italian trip forever. That meant something.

* * *

That night I had dinner with my mother and aunts. We sat on their back patio, pink, white, and red roses soon to be in full bloom like a wave of glory on the trellis above. I could not bear to bring up the dreaded, ridiculous subject. I was confounded that I had to bring it up at all. It had been a long day at the bookstore, then I’d come home and taken Shakespeare and Jane Austen on a ride. I was not up to it. I sighed.

Aunt Iris told me, “When we were younger I took off my bra and swung it around my head and launched my belief in feminism. Equal rights, that’s all feminism means. Equal rights for women.”

“That was a wild time,” my mother said. “Protests. Marches. Demonstrations.”

“What?” I put down my fork.

“We danced and took off our shirts and drank too much and sat and talked with other people and learned from them,” Aunt Camellia said, flipping her white curls back. “We launched our feminine enlightenment. We grasped our own freedom, our power, our voices.”

“You never told her about all this?” Aunt Iris said.