He bent his head and brushed his warm lips over hers. Bella shut her eyes and clutched at his strong shoulders, sliding her fingers up to twine in the silky softness of his dark hair. Gently, he pulled her closer but not too close. Tommaso insisted they both remain chaste for their wedding night, in accordance with the dictates of the church. After a few short moments, Tommaso broke the kiss, stepping back. Bella licked at her lower lip, tasting the cinnamon gum he habitually chewed.
“Bella, I missed you terribly, amore mia.”
When he said it, Bella realized she hadn’t missed him. Not at all. She ducked her head, so he wouldn’t see the panic churning through her reflected in her eyes. She shifted over to sit on a nearby boulder, a prime spot for overlooking the village.
“In Rome, all the talk is of the war that is coming.”
“I know. Babbo and Mamma talk of little else. They are worried.” Bella agreed, still reeling from her realization she had not missed him.
“Perhaps it can yet be avoided. Perhaps we won’t be tested this way. I had many hours to think on our long train ride. And I know this, Bella, war or no war. It is you I want. I love you, Bella.”
Bella’s throat felt closed and tight. She managed a nervous smile before glancing away. She should love him. She did care for him, a pale imitation of what she should feel, like the washed out watercolors he brought her. Still, he knelt in front of her, the grass crinkling under his knee, clasping her cold hands between his own. He smiled up at her and she saw her future. The Queen of Ali d’Angelo.
Her chest tightened as her heart thrummed in her throat like the frantic beat of a hummingbird’s wings. She told herself it was happiness and swallowed. He pulled a ring from his pocket, a small pearl set in the center, and said, “Bella, marry me?”
What else could she say but yes?
Lucy
Applebury, Massachusetts
Present Day
“Oh, hello, Lucia. I’m about to start the back nine,” Susan answered when she phoned the next morning. Translation: I’m busy as usual, so hurry up.
If only she’d known about her grandmother’s final wishes, she could have asked her mother about it at the funeral, face-to-face. Asking over the phone was a poor substitute and, without Juliet at home to guide her, Lucy couldn’t unravel the intricacies of a video call. Lucy couldn’t face a trip to Florida—the land of golf, Disney, and her mother—so a phone call would have to suffice.
“How are you, Mom?” Lucy stalled.
“My schedule is packed. I missed most of my activities last week because I had to come to Boston for your grandmother’s funeral.” Lucy reminded herself that everyone grieved differently, even if her mother didn’t appear to be grieving her own mother at all.
Susan continued, “Senior Prom is this Saturday at the club. I’ve still got to find a dress. I found a turquoise one in a size six but I’m swimming in it. I’ll have to go back and get a four . . .”
Lucy fought the urge to glance down at her definitely-not-size four thighs. She loved food far too much to ever be a size four.
“That’s great, Mom. Send me some photos.”
“I’ll post them online.”
“I’m glad you’re keeping busy,” Lucy stalled again.
“Have you gone to any of those book clubs or social groups?” Her mother sighed, and even with a fifteen hundred mile separation, maternal disapproval fell on Lucy like a heavy cloak. “I emailed the info to you.”
“I’ll take a look at it?”
“Lucia, I hate when you answer with a question like that,” Susan snapped. “I wish you would fix yourself up. You’ll never find someone the way you dress.”
“I always find it odd you want me to find someone when you never could be bothered to marry.”
“Some people are meant to be married. I’m not one of them. You, however, are,” Susan sighed. “Now what did you need? I have a lunch meeting.”
“Who are you having lunch with?”
“Bob Sanders.”
“The Realtor? The guy you tried to fix me up with when I visited?” Lucy shuddered at the memory of an endless dinner date where Bob regaled her with his adventures in real estate sales, described every fish he’d ever caught, and then stuck his hand up her skirt over dessert.
“He’s perfectly nice.”
“Good. You date him then. Here’s a tip: don’t wear a skirt or order dessert.”
“I never order dessert. And it’s not a date. I’m considering getting my license. Bob agreed to chat with me about it.”
“But Mom, you just retired last year.”
“I know that, Lucia. I’m bored. I need a challenge. Selling real estate is flexible. You know, you should consider it. I’ll have him call you.”
Lucy could not imagine a worse mismatch than a real estate career for her. She didn’t possess a gift for sales and she was not at all detail oriented. But, saying that would provoke her mother into a lecture on confidence that she didn’t need.
Lucy sighed. She’d long ago recognized the futility of wishing her mother was a different type of mother. Her mother loved her, Lucy knew and recognized that. And she also realized that her own daughter, Juliet, was far more like Susan than she was like her. Perhaps, if Juliet had a daughter some day in the distant future, Lucy could be to that imagined child what Nonna Belladonna was to her. Maybe their genes skipped generations. And, upon reflection, she didn’t know any woman who ever enjoyed an easy relationship with her own mother.
“Jack Hamilton came by to see me on Tuesday. About Nonna’s will.”
“That must have been a short visit. She didn’t have anything to leave.”
“She left me her locket and her recipe book . . .”
“It’s fine, Lucy. From the moment you were born, you and your grandmother had a much deeper bond than I ever had with my mother. I accepted it long ago,” Susan said cheerfully. Lucy knew she was lying because she, herself, had never overcome the pain of her own mother loving her daughter more. “Anyway, you’re the chef in the family.”
“Mom, do you know anyone named Paolo LaRosa?”
“Well, I think there’s a Paolo living over on Robin’s Egg Way . . .”
“No, in connection to Nonna?”
“What’s this about, Lucy?”
“She left him her Madonna of the Orange Blossoms.”
“That old painting?” Susan laughed. “It’ll fetch about $5 at a yard sale. What was she thinking? Not a practical bone in her body, my father always said . . . .”
“So she never spoke of a Paolo to you?”
“No, not that I recall. Maybe he’s some long lost Italian cousin. I have no idea.”
“Doesn’t it seem odd to you that she’d leave the painting to him?”
“Knowing my mother? Not so much.”
“Nonna wanted me to go to Italy to find him and give him the painting. She left me a letter.” Lucy read the letter aloud to her mother, though she skipped the section about Susan. No need to add insult to injury.
When she finished, Susan said, “What can I say? It’s just like my mother to pull a stunt like this. No sense, my father used to say.”
“Do you want to come with me?”
“To Italy? You’re not thinking of actually going are you?”
“Nonna set all this up with Jack—got herself to his office and everything. It must have been important to her, to go to all this trouble.”
“If it was so important to her, she could have mentioned it before she died instead of sending you off on a wild goose chase,” Susan snapped. “You want my advice? Open the other letter, Lucy. Don’t waste your time.”
After a few seconds of silence, Lucy said, “I think I want to go to Italy.”
“I recognize that stubborn tone. You’re just like your grandmother. Fine. If I can’t stop you, go and have fun. Send me a postcard.” Susan fell silent before she finally said, in a much gentler tone than usual, “I hope you won’t be too terribly disappointed.”<
br />
“If you think of anything . . .”
“Yes, Dave, I’ll be along.” Susan’s muffled voice indicated she’d put her palm over the phone. “Lucia, I must tee off now. Keep me posted.”
Lucy
Applebury, Massachusetts
Present Day
For several days after her meeting with Jack, Lucy considered how to tackle her grandmother’s unusual bequest. For all she knew, Paolo LaRosa was long dead. She’d done some minimal internet research the night before but quickly got stumped. Perhaps she could ask Juliet to help her there.
All through her shift at the craft store, she’d thought of the call to adventure sitting on her kitchen table. As she unpacked a box of jigsaw puzzles emblazoned with scenes of Rome, Venice, and Tuscany, she felt her grandmother nudging her toward Italy. She and Andrew always planned to go. They’d never planned on him dropping dead at forty-one.
If she had the money, she could hire a private investigator but all her spare pennies went to Juliet’s tuition. Andrew hadn’t left her destitute but he also hadn’t planned for forty years of widowhood. She had enough to live on, but not extravagantly. As a young military wife, she’d learned frugality. Those scrimping skills would serve her well now.
After work, she retuned to her bland box of an apartment and decided on a tuna cheese melt for dinner. The canned tuna matched the bland beige apartment walls. She wanted to toss it but her budget wouldn’t stretch to that. She made the sandwich and sat down at her little cafe table. After a few bites of sandwich, she re-read the letter and set it down with a sigh.
“Well, they always say to make a list, right, Frankie?” she said aloud. The cat meowed appreciatively, enjoying his tuna water treat.
She picked up a notepad and drew a decisive line down the center. She put Pro on one side and Con on the other. On the pro side, she wrote: “Nonna asked me to do it.” Then she filled in Italy, vacation, and fun.
On the con side, she wrote quit job. She earned no vacation time at the craft store. She would quit before she left, which wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. While the job was fine for what it was, working at the craft store was not what she wanted to do with her life. Would a trip to Italy help her discover what she did want?
Nonna left her enough to cover her travel expenses. She could cover her rent out of her savings. She already had her passport for that time she and Andrew planned a second honeymoon to the Greek Islands before he ended up having to work. So, while she had never left the country before, she could do it.
At a loose end, she wandered the apartment and found a set of photo boxes in the guest room closet. She pulled them down, thinking she could get them digitized for Juliet. Though she feared discovering pictures of Andrew to plunge her back into the bottomless pit of grief, these photos documented her childhood. She laughed when she found a picture of her and Jack starting middle school. What had they been thinking, wearing plaid polyester? She set it aside to show him and amassed a whole pile to share with him. He was in nearly every major event of her childhood.
She found a faded snapshot of her and Jack standing on her porch, awkwardly grinning at the camera, dressed in their Homecoming finery. She’d loved that blue taffeta gown, sure she was Cinderella finally going to the ball with her prince, her Jack.
Would he really go to Italy with her? And, if he did, could she keep her hands to herself? When they’d been in high school, Jack finally asked her to Homecoming, after he finally noticed she was a girl after all. When he came to the door with a white rose wrist corsage, she’d practically floated into the car, half-expecting it to be a transformed pumpkin coach. He danced with her a few times and each time she’d hoped he would kiss her but instead, he just kept his eyes over her shoulder, holding her awkwardly. They ended up sitting at a set of tables near the back of the gym, sipping overly sweet punch and not speaking. Andrew Parker asked her to dance and she’d looked at Jack, hoping he’d make some claim on her but he just shrugged. His indifference shattered her and, when Andrew asked her to the movies the following weekend, she went. When Jack started dating Andrew’s little sister, Jenny, the following year, Lucy finally figured out why he’d never kissed her at the dance. He just wasn’t interested in her that way and never would be. He thought of her as a sister, a friend, and never as a lover. Her mother always said that things turned out for the best but now, with Andrew gone and Jenny about to re-marry, she wondered about the universe’s definition of best.
Near the bottom of the box, underneath a flap, a wavy edged photograph stuck out. She tugged it free. Scrawled across the back, in bold penmanship:
My darling Belladonna,
Ti amerò per sempre
Paolo
Paolo? Lucy knew only basic Italian, mostly words for food and cooking. But, she thought Ti amerò per sempre meant I will love you forever. And it implied romantic love. Surely not . . .
She flipped the photograph over and stared at it. A dark haired soldier leaned against an army jeep waving an American flag, a wide smile on his face. With shaking fingers, she tugged the locket loose and compared the two pictures. She’d always believed the man in the locket was her Nonno Tony. But there was no question that the locket’s picture and photograph matched. Who was this guy and why was he in her grandmother’s beloved locket?
Who was this Paolo person?
* * *
The Friday after Jack’s visit, Lucy invited Jenny and Barb over for dinner. From the moment they’d met in Ms. Caroline’s Junior English class, right after the Parkers had moved to Applebury, Lucy and Jenny became bosom buddies. Once Lucy married her brother, Andrew, that’d really sealed the deal. Then Jenny married Jack and they’d all been one big happy family. Until two years ago, when Jenny finally came out of the closet. She and Jack divorced and Jenny met Barb at a yoga class. Their wedding would be in mid-October, just over six weeks away.
Jenny and Barb arrived right on time. Like her brother, Jenny was a redhead, with that same willowy Parker grace that Andrew passed to Juliet. In the long, flowing dresses she favored, Jenny looked like a lost fairy sprite. Barb, on the other hand, was all business, preferring buttoned down suits and understated jewelry. She wore her platinum blonde hair short and spiky so she could finish faster at the gym to get to her successful consulting business each morning. She talked fast, in bullet points, as though she was perpetually reading from a slide presentation.
“How’s wedding plans going, ladies?” Lucy asked as she ushered them in and pressed full wine glasses into their hands.
“Didn’t I already do the poufy dress thing once?” Jenny moaned.
“Yes, but I didn’t,” Barb answered with a smile and Jenny smiled back, squeezing her fiancée’s hand.
“Luce, I decided about the bridesmaid’s dresses.” Jenny turned to her.
“I just turned forty. Aren’t I too old for the matron of honor deal?” Lucy pleaded, only half-joking.
“Hey, I turned forty in May. And if I have to wear the poufy white dress, you have to wear the bridesmaid’s dress.” Lucy grimaced. “But, you pick your own dress. Anything you want, just make sure it’s wine colored, okay?”
“You mean you’re not going to pick out one of those chiffon and satin monstrosities—I mean, lovely gowns—for me?” Lucy beamed at her, relieved.
“Hey, you wore that horrifying floral Laura Ashley number once before, when I married Jack. I figure you can pick for yourself this time.” Jenny smiled.
Lucy sighed with relief as they settled around the cozy kitchen table. Her friends gobbled up the simple tomato, mozzarella, and basil appetizers, drizzled with a simple balsamic vinaigrette. There was something so soothingly elemental about making good, simple food and watching her friends enjoy it. Being Italian, Lucy understood that food is love.
“So, Jenny, Jack came by today. He’s looking thin.”
“You invited us to dinner to tell us Jack came by and looked thin?” Barb asked, her brows nearly touching her hairline.
“It turns out he was Nonna’s lawyer.” Lucy briefly described Nonna’s final wishes and the quest before passing the letter around. Lucy let them examine the letters, photograph, and painting while she finished cooking.
“Italy!” Jenny proclaimed for what had to be the eighth time.
“What are you going to do an Eat, Pray, Love thing?” Barb asked. “Go on this trip and write a book?”
“Yes, without the praying or the love or the writing of the book.”
“So just eating then,” Barb said.
“At least the Italians are known for their gorgeous food,” Lucy said as she set homemade Parmesan and garlic breadsticks on the table. She nibbled on a warm, crusty breadstick, thinking how exciting it would be to eat fantastic Italian food in actual Italy, instead of her dreary singles apartment with the bad florescent lighting.
“And a lot of gorgeous men too!” Jenny laughed. “Perfect place to have a fling, Lucy.”
“Nonna’s given me enough to be getting along with!” Lucy shook her head. “It seems extreme, even for Nonna.”
“Well, she was from there, right?” Barb asked.
“She immigrated just after the second World War,” Lucy answered as she set out the baked pasta dish she’d made from one of recipes she’d found in Nonna’s cookbook. She hadn’t had time or the knowledge to make fresh pasta, as the recipe called for, but it looked pretty good. She’d been surprised by the simplicity of the ingredients—basically pasta, cheese, tomatoes and spices.
“Wow, this is phenomenal, Luce!” Jenny said, after she took a bite. “My compliments to the chef.”
“Oh, it was easy,” Lucy shrugged.
“For you, maybe! I can never get food to turn out this great. It doesn’t gel for me,” Barb said.
“Oh, so that’s your excuse for not making dinner,” Jenny teased.
“It’s nothing. Really,” Lucy said. “Nonna left me her cookbook so I wanted to try out a recipe.”
“Can you ask your mom about the mysterious Paolo?” Barb asked.
Lucy shrugged. “I did but no luck.”
The Lost Art of Second Chances Page 4
