Page 198 - The Midnight Library

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‘ ere is a woodiness to the bouquet with this one’ or ‘You’ll note the

vegetal aromas here – the bright robust blackberries and fragrant nectarine,
perfectly balanced with the echoes of charcoal’.
Each life she had experienced had a different feeling, like different
movements in a symphony, and this one felt quite bold and upliing.

Eduardo was incredibly sweet-natured, and their marriage seemed to be a
successful one. Maybe even one to rival the life of the couple on the wine
label of the bottle of ropey wine she’d drank with Dylan, while being licked
by his astronomically large dog. She even remembered their names. Janine

and Terence ornton. She felt like she too was now living in a label on a
bottle. She also looked like it. Perfect Californian hair and expensive-looking
teeth, tanned and healthy despite the presumably quite substantial
consumption of Syrah. She had the kind of flat, hard stomach that suggested

hours of Pilates ever y week.
However, it wasn’t just easy to fake wine knowledge in this life. It was easy
to fake ever ything, which could have been a sign that the key to her
apparently successful union with Eduardo was that he wasn’t really paying

attention.
Aer the last of the tourists le, Eduardo and Nora sat out under the stars
with a glass of their own wine in their hands.
‘ e fires have died out in LA now,’ he told her.

Nora wondered who lived in the Los Angeles home she had in her pop
star life. ‘ at’s a relief.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ she asked him, staring up at that clear sky full of

constellations.
‘What?’
‘ e galaxy.’
‘Yes.’

He was on his phone and didn’t say ver y much. And then he put his
phone down and still didn’t say much.
She had known three types of silence in relationships. ere was passive-
aggressive silence, obviously, there was the we-no-longer-have-anything-to-

say silence, and then there was the silence that Eduardo and she seemed to
have cultivated. e silence of not needing to talk. Of just being together, of
together-being. e way you could be happily silent with yourself.