“Did you arrive the day I saw you on the train,” he prompted. “Or did you come from another part of Italy and Lucca was only a stop along your journey?”
“I arrived in Pisa the day before. I did have plans to visit other cities, but Lucca was the first stop after Pisa.”
“Did you see the tower?”
“Only from the airplane,” I said sheepishly. “I bailed on the scheduled visit. I was too tired. Don’t tell anyone, okay?”
He chuckled and glanced over at me. “I think you are the first tourist I know who has ever gone to Pisa and not taken a photo of themselves holding up the tower. I knew I liked you the minute I saw you, Ani.”
“Well, you could have fooled me on the train that day,” I teased, beginning to relax.
“Ah. So we are going to talk about me again?” Paulo rested his arm on the basket, his fingers brushing casually along the ridges of the woven handle. He grinned, but didn’t look at me.
“Oh. Well, I didn’t mean… we can talk about me. That’s fine,” I stammered. “What do you want to know?”
“Do you have brothers and sisters?”
“No. Just me. I’m an only child.”
“Something we have in common. And your parents? What are they like? They have a very independent daughter.” Instead of getting to know me by what I was presenting to him today, he was starting with my childhood. I was good with that. It was certainly easier to talk about my home than the reasons for me being here in Italy.
I told Paulo stories about my past, about the neighborhood I grew up in, and about the year Tish and her large, loud family moved in across the street when we were both eight. “We’re complete opposites in almost every way, but we’ve been practically inseparable since the moment we met.”
“She is not here with you,” he pointed out. It wasn’t a question, not really. He simply seemed to be lining up the facts of my life, as though each and every one of them was important to him.
“No.” It was such a tiny word to be packed with so much meaning. I didn’t expound and he didn’t ask for more. A subtle awareness shifted inside of me and I was suddenly quite certain I’d be telling him why I was here before the day was over. My dad would have recognized it immediately. Like a fish on the line, Paulo was bringing me in one rotation of the reel at a time, and then letting me play the spool out again when I grew skittish. He was in no hurry. He had all day to bring me in, that gossamer thread between us drawing tighter and tighter.
He reached out and ran the back of his knuckles down my arm. I felt a sudden sharp pull on my heart. With only the slightest flick of his wrist, he’d just set the hook.
“Do you want to know what I was doing on the train last Tuesday?” And as smoothly as that, he let me have my head again. I spun out wildly, thrashing against what I knew was happening to me, fighting against it with everything in me. I crossed my arms and shifted in my seat so my back was turned toward the door and I was facing him. Almost out of reach of his hand.
“Actually, I am a little curious. You seemed so different that day than you do now. So remote.” I frowned, remembering the way he’d practically glared at me. “Like you were angry with me for being there.”
He shook his head slowly. “No. That is not the case at all, Ani. I was exhausted, and very discouraged, and I could see you were concerned and possibly needed help, but I just didn’t have any more in me to give at that moment.” He lifted his hand to the back of his neck, massaging the muscles there as he continued. “Before I stopped to think how it would make you feel, I got up and went to sit in another car so I wouldn’t have to feel your eyes on me, waiting for me to offer my assistance.”
“You make me sound so needy,” I muttered, embarrassed all over again.
“No, no.” Paulo shook his head, placing both hands firmly on the steering wheel. “It was not like that to me, Ani. I will try to explain, okay?”
“Okay. But first tell me where we’re going.” The road we were on was not the one I’d taken with Isa and Gerardo, and even if we were going a different route into Lucca, we’d been driving long enough now that we should have had the city walls in our sights.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
“I am taking you for a drive first. We are going the long way around,” Paulo assured me, his voice low, soothing. “I want to show you a place that is special to me. To my family. Did I tell you, I live with my aunt and her family here in Lucca?”
“Wow. That worked out well for you.”
“Yes. For all of us. I am able to contribute to the household expenses with my work for the city. I help Sharon and Dominic with their boys. They are five and six years old and I am their favorite baby sitter.” He beamed proudly and I grinned back at his obviously strong feelings for this branch of his family. “I will give my truck to Dominic when I leave and he can choose to sell it or keep it.”
“So this beauty is actually yours?” I patted the sun-crackled dashboard in front of me. The little truck looked like it had seen a lot of years on the farm, but the engine putted along evenly.
“You remember the olive farmer I told you about? I discovered the truck abandoned in his back field. I bought her from him for very little. I had to install a whole new engine, but it has been worth all the time and money I invested.
“Well, I like it.”
“Her,” he corrected, a little self-consciously. “Her name is Sofia. I know she is not a Maserati—”
“Uh-uh. Nope.” I eyed him over the top of my sunglasses. “Don’t go there, Paulo.” I took in the meandering road ahead of us, the trees closing in on either side, and sensed we were climbing in elevation. Where was he taking me? “So this place you and Sofia are taking me. Tell me about it.”
“It is a surprise.” He allowed the subject change, but with a stubborn glint in his eye. He patted my thigh in what I’m sure he intended as a companionable gesture. It was no different than what Fabio had done my first night in Lucca, but Paulo’s touch today made me skittish. “You must trust me, okay? Will you trust me?”
I rolled my eyes, loathing those loaded words. Jacob had said them to me perhaps a thousand times, and I’d fallen for them every time. “You know what, Paulo? That phrase, ‘trust me,’ is like poison to me. I don’t think I can explain it to you just yet, but I would feel so much better if I knew you weren’t ever going to say that to me again.”
He didn’t speak so I continued, wishing he already knew my story so I would never have to tell him about Jacob.
“Suffice it to say that I’ve been burned pretty badly by someone who used those words far too often and for all the wrong reasons. I trusted him because he asked me to, not because he was trustworthy.” This time I reached over and touched him. I lay my hand on his forearm where it rested on the basket, my voice gentle, beseeching. “Besides, I do trust you, just so you know.”
Paulo’s arm moved beneath mine, rotating so he could take my hand in his. He squeezed it reassuringly, then without preamble, began telling me what he’d been doing the day of our first encounter on the train. He didn’t let go of my hand. I didn’t pull away.
Romigi was one of the young men Paulo had been working with for the last several months. Over the summer, Rom had become enamored by a young lady in Siena, and by the end of August, the girl was pregnant. Paulo began noticing a change in Rom, that the once happy-go-lucky kid with an affinity for using his smart mouth a little too freely was becoming morose and sullen. Rom finally admitted the situation to Paulo, explaining that the girl, Bettina, was afraid to tell her parents and was considering an abortion. Rom believed he was in love with Bettina and wanted to keep the child that had been conceived out of their love. He insisted Bettina keep the baby a secret until he found a job and a place for them to live, then he would marry her.
“He asked me to come and speak to her, to vouch for him while they made their plans in secret behind their parents’ backs, but I refused. I believed he should take responsibility for his actions, that he must go
to Bettina’s father and ask forgiveness, then honor whatever the man demanded of him. I told him if he thought he was mature enough to love and provide for a wife and a child, that he should be mature enough to do it the right way, the honorable way.”
Paulo gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were white. “In principle, perhaps it was the right thing to do. But to make a long story short, in Italy, abortion is legal for only the first ninety days. Bettina panicked, and without Rom’s knowledge, her friends took her to an abortion clinic. He went to visit her two weeks ago, but she refused to see him. He would not accept that it was Bettina’s choice to stay away, that is was her father who kept her from him, and he began loitering near her home, hoping to catch her alone.”
He forced his fingers open and closed, open and closed. “One of his friends finally contacted me, asking me to help, so I went down to Siena to bring him home. But it was too late.”
He turned to look at me then, and I was dismayed to see tears shining in his eyes, the same look of despair I’d seen on the train masking his face. “Bettina’s father caught Rom breaking into the house the night before I arrived. Rom claimed he only wanted to talk to the girl, to beg her to run away with him, but he had a gun with him. A gun, Ani. He is now in jail and in a lot more trouble than he ever imagined. I was granted permission to see him briefly last Monday, then I went to speak to Bettina’s father Tuesday morning, hoping to soften his heart even just a little. But the man is insisting he will press any charges he can against Rom, and that could mean he will be in jail for a very long time.”
“And that’s why you looked so beat up on the train.” I ached for him and was more than a little ashamed of my unkind thoughts toward him that day. I squeezed his hand sympathetically. “I’m sorry I made it about me that day. I seem to do that a lot, especially where you’re concerned.”
“It is fine, Ani. It was not your trouble to deal with.” I frowned at his response, feeling somehow shut out of his pain because it wasn’t my problem.
“But why is this your burden to deal with, Paulo? Doesn’t Rom have any family?” I couldn’t fully understand what drove him to take on such a mantle. Yes, his father, a man among men, had left him a legacy of honor and all that, but this seemed above and beyond the call of duty.
“His mother remarried a few years ago. Rom didn’t get along with his stepfather, so when he was eighteen, he moved in with his sister who lives in Lucca, just until he finished school. His mother does not return my phone calls and his sister is overwhelmed by all of this.”
“His father?” I was almost afraid to ask.
“He, too, is in jail. In Rome.”
“Oh. Wow.” What on earth could I say? It was so apparent Paulo was heartbroken over the situation. Before I could come up with any inane words, he swerved off the road onto a gravel shoulder. I straightened a little, looking around, wondering where we were.
Paulo turned off the engine then reached over and took my hand again, looking imploringly at me. “Listen to me, Ani. I am not telling you this to make you feel sorry for me, or even for Rom. This world is full of hurting people, but I am only one man. I cannot help everyone and I know that. All I can do is help the one put in front of me, yes? And even when I do try to help, I will make mistakes, like with Rom.” He brushed his thumb over my knuckles, sending delicate tremors up my spine. “There is little I can do for him now, Ani. I know that. Much of it is because of his own choices, yes, but I wonder how things might have been different had I shown mercy and not judgment.”
I didn’t know what to say, how to ease his suffering. I squeezed his hand encouragingly.
“The only thing I can do now is pray he is put in the path of someone else who will help him.”
“Right.” I thought that was a very sensible way to look at it.
“And I must reach out to the next person in my own path.”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
“Ani, you were put in my path, and even though I turned away at the beginning, I am glad I had a second chance with you.” He angled his head so he could look more directly in my eyes, his shining with sincerity. “I am sorry for the way I treated you on the train. Please forgive me.”
“Paulo, good grief!” I interrupted. “You had a lot on your plate at that moment. I was fine. And you did help me, remember? At the station you stayed and made sure I was safe.” I couldn’t believe he was apologizing to me!
His eyes softened. “I am glad for today. I want to show you that I am not that angry man. Yes, it was a very difficult day, but it was only my reaction to the day’s circumstances, not my normal personality. I am,” he said in an exaggerated American accent, “in fact, a very funny guy.”
“So you say,” I hemmed, cocking my head to the side, relieved to be heading back into clearer air space. “But from what I’ve seen, there isn’t a funny bone in your body.”
He released my hand and sat back, arms folded across his chest, eyeing me with mock reproach. I felt the absence of his touch all the way to my toes. “Then I will have to prove to you just how much fun I can be.” He peered up in the direction of the sun through the oblong window behind us. “The day is still young. I have time.”
I laughed out loud.
“Aha! It is working already!” He started the truck again, threw it into gear, and stepped on the gas, thrusting us back onto the road in a short lull between passing cars. Gravel pinged up against the undercarriage, and looking over my shoulder, I whistled appreciatively at the cloud of dust we left in our wake.
“Okay. Look ahead of us now, Ani. Do you see the water on my side? That is the Fiume Serchio. It is the third longest river in Italy starting in Monte Silano to the north of us and flowing all the way to the sea at Pisa for about 75 or 80 miles, I think.”
I nodded enthusiastically, a bit startled to see the massive waterway. I hadn’t even noticed it while Paulo was talking.
“This is one of my favorite drives around Lucca because this road first follows the course of the Serchio, then in Chifenti, just up ahead, the road branches off to follow the Torrentio Lima, my favorite river here in Italy. Of course, I have not seen many outside of Lucca, but the Lima satisfies me deeply, and I do not have the desire to look for another favorite.”
I glanced at him, curious at his choice of words, at the sentiment behind them. “Are you like that by nature?” I asked. “I mean, are you one of those all or nothing kind of guys?”
He grinned, a little self-conscious, I thought. “Perhaps I can be very focused once I have set my mind to something.”
I thought of the lengths to which he’d gone to convince me to speak with Cristofano. “Hmm. I think some might use the word stubborn instead.”
He laughed out loud, then shrugged. “Perhaps I am stubborn then. When I see a problem, I look for ways to solve it. When I know something is worth fighting for, I will fight for it, even against the odds. I think that is why the situation with Rom has been so difficult for me. I do not want to give up the fight, but at some point, I must let him live with the consequences of his actions. I cannot always rescue him… and yet I want to with everything that is in me.” At first, he was almost self-deprecating, but as he continued, he grew more insistent.
“Wow,” I said, crossing my arms like a shield against the onslaught of his passion. “Yeah. I think I’d put you in the all or nothing category then.”
“And when I believe something is right, Ani, I go after it.” He turned his head and met my gaze, something in his eyes bringing heat to my face. “I am not an impulsive person, but when I know here,” he knocked a fist against his chest. “I can be very determined.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
We drove through small clusters of houses separated by short stretches of wooded hillsides, pulling over at will to take in the vistas before us. The orderly groves and orchards were fewer and farther between and the native flora pressed in on either side of the road. The wet summer had kept things growing and thriving much
longer than usual, and everything was still green and lush, in spite of October being halfway gone already. But when there were breaks in the trees, the world lay spread out at our feet, and we didn’t hesitate to stop and take it all in. The world seemed peaceful and timeless as we made our way along the mountain road. The sun arched up into the sky, stretching toward its zenith, casting an autumnal glow over everything before us. The constant presence of the Lima River ducking in and out of sight made me feel like we were dance partners, pressing together then pulling apart again.
After Romigi’s sad story, we moved to gentler tales from our childhood, and when we’d been on the road for over an hour, Paulo voiced another question I’d been dreading all day.
“So, Ani. Do you have a boyfriend back home in America?”
The question in and of itself was harmless enough. I dreaded it because my answer would only lead to more questions, and I was so thoroughly enjoying myself that I didn’t want to head down that extremely rocky road. I took a fortifying breath and let it out with my answer.
“No.” I didn’t look at him, but the silence in the truck made me want to cover my ears. And then my mouth to hold back the words that were inching their way forward from the back of my throat. I knew what he was trying to do by letting the silence linger. And my instinct was to fill that void with incriminating words. Finally, I simply threw it back at him.
“What about you? Do you have a girlfriend back home in America? Or here?” I still didn’t fully understand the relationship between him and Madalina, but I didn’t think they were officially an item.
“No.”
Great. That worked like a charm. But as luck would have it, just then the river came into view again. I began expostulating on the whimsy and beauty of it, and Paulo, clearly as enthralled by it as he’d claimed to be, smiled broadly at my exuberance.
“I wish there was a way we could go down there,” I sighed.
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