Friendship Makes the Heart Grow Fonder (9781455517763)

by Verge Higgins, Lisa

  Becky nestled further into the soft leather. She couldn’t help but compare this large, industrial city to the little medieval town of Landsberg am Lech that they’d all visited an hour ago. They’d opted for a pit stop to stretch their legs and indulge in a late-afternoon snack to hold them over until the feast they’d be digging into tonight, under one of Munich’s Oktoberfest tents. It had been like stumbling through a forest and coming upon a German fairy-tale town. The place was full of charming towers—the Bayentor with its crenellated roof and artful brickwork corners, and the fanciful Mutterturm with its conical green caps—both of which she’d sketched. Ludwig Street boasted colorful four-story stone buildings cheek by jowl, topped with steep-pitched red roofs. She and the girls had lingered longer than they’d intended. They bought a gelato from a riverside vendor and watched the swans swim in the turquoise water like three little Gretels drugged by magic candy.

  Judy stopped humming long enough to glance out the window. “I think those are the Oktoberfest tents back there,” she said, gesturing down a street. “Are we close to the hotel, Monique? It’d be nice to just walk to them.”

  “Once we made the decision to come here,” Monique said, “I made a point of choosing a hotel as close as possible to the Weisn.”

  Judy said, “And you got one at this late date?”

  “Lucky I guess.”

  “Lord, you must have paid a fortune for it.”

  “Not really. It’s nicer than the one I’d reserved before. In the original itinerary we were supposed to be in Munich days ago, and that room was hard to find and expensive. But someone must have cancelled because I found this one on the first try. Becky, keep your eyes open for Parkstrasse.”

  Becky blinked rapidly as the twilight washed the world to gray. “Judy and I should switch places. I can’t help you anymore.”

  “Wait—there’s the street.” Monique hit the signal and glanced over her shoulder to change lanes. “We’re just a few blocks away now. That road we just passed was my marker, to tell me that I’m close.”

  “Monique,” Judy murmured, “are you sure this place isn’t a dump?”

  “We’re arriving in Munich in a Porsche. You think I’m parking this thing on the street in front of some rent-by-the-hour hotel?”

  “But there shouldn’t be a decent bed available in a sixty-mile radius.”

  Monique shrugged. “It got good reviews.”

  “It’s Oktoberfest. Everyone leaves here soused or hungover but happy.”

  “There it is.” Monique headed farther down Gollierstrasse. “The big red building with the sign.”

  Judy’s head popped between the seats, and her eyes widened. “Hotel Ludwig?”

  “Yup.”

  “Well I’ll be damned.”

  Monique pulled the purring vehicle to a stop in front of the building. “We’ve got the four-bedroom apartment too. One bedroom more than we need.”

  Becky snorted, “Not if we can get Judy an Italian.”

  A valet approached the car, and reflected in his eyes Becky saw a feverish appreciation for the jewel-blue confection that they’d just parked. She stepped out of the vehicle feeling like a high roller, when in reality she had a desk full of bills, no income, and a six-year-old minivan approaching one hundred thousand miles waiting at home.

  Monique came around and tossed the keys to the valet with breezy, grinning aplomb. Falling into step behind her—it was starting to go from twilight to dark—Becky followed Monique through the glass doors of the hotel while Judy came up from behind. Judy put her German to good use instructing the valet to unload the trunk. No doubt he’d be baffled when he saw their battered, worn, decidedly non-designer luggage.

  The hotel lobby was a well-lit modern place. A sparse collection of blond wood chairs clustered around a low table by the front window. Monique approached the desk but Judy physically stopped her and walked on ahead, speaking in confident German to the woman at registration.

  Monique turned to Becky with a conspiratorial roll of her eyes. “You know she’s going to be like this when she gets home too.”

  “Bossing everyone around? Swearing at will? Renting little sports cars?”

  “Poor Bob.”

  “I wouldn’t pity him too much.” Becky eyed her friend, now leaning across the registration desk. “She seems so happy these last few days. So much happier than when she was back home, obsessively mowing her lawn.”

  “Oh, lord. My lawn. I forgot to arrange for someone to mow it.” Monique let her eyes flutter shut for a moment. “You know what? I don’t want to think about going home right now.”

  “I hear you.”

  “I don’t know if it’s the Porsche or something else. But I haven’t done anything this crazy in years. I haven’t had this much fun in years.”

  Becky was about to tell her that it felt like they’d stepped through some portal into another world. A world where the sun always shone and troubles fluttered away and, with a wave of a magic wand, bills disappeared, princes never left you, and disease would never touch your children. Judy’s cry of surprise interrupted her.

  Judy gaped at the woman at the registration desk, who rumbled an explanation, her open palms suggesting a state of affairs outside her official ability to remedy. Judy slapped her hands on her head. Then she swiveled on one heel and joined them by the chairs.

  “Well,” Judy said, “you’re not going to believe this.”

  Monique said, “They bobbled our reservation?”

  “Oh, no, we’ve still got the four-person apartment. But now I know how we got it.”

  “My epic skills in navigating online registration forms, of course.”

  Judy shook her head. “It’s October third.”

  Becky said, “Is that some kind of German national holiday or something?”

  “This year, it’s the official closing day for Oktoberfest.”

  Monique leaned into Judy. “You mean opening day.”

  “At noon today,” Judy said, “the riflemen fired their gun salute on the stairs of the Bavarian monument, and that was it.”

  “But it’s not ‘Septemberfest,’” Becky said. “It’s Oktoberfest.”

  “Which apparently begins in September.” Judy waved her arm in the general direction of the city. “All afternoon they’ve been closing down the tents. The whole city is in extended-hangover mode. I think the woman at the registration desk is still drunk.”

  An odd light gleamed in Monique’s eyes. “Well, there it is. I guess I can’t check Oktoberfest off Lenny’s list.”

  Judy’s head shot up. “You absolutely can check this off Lenny’s list. It’s still Oktoberfest until midnight.”

  “Technically.” Her eyes narrowed. “I suppose.”

  “Technically and in spirit,” Becky countered. “Tonight we’ll take a walk to where the tents were and, in Lenny’s honor, we’ll spill some microbrewery Bavarian beer.”

  “No roasted duck,” Judy lamented. “No dumplings. No pastry at the Café Kaiserschmarrn tent. We came here in a Porsche. We came for Oktoberfest. I want to dance with drunken Germans in lederhosen!”

  The words echoed through the room. An elderly woman passing through the lobby stopped in her tracks. The worker at the registration desk shot them a glare. A crowd of college-age men, shuffling through the front door, winced at the noise then tugged their coats closer as they headed toward the elevator.

  Judy slapped a hand over her mouth. “I can’t believe that I just yelled that.”

  “You said it in English,” Becky said.

  “Most Germans speak English!”

  Monique snickered. “Then everyone knows you’re macking for men in lederhosen. And I thought you had a thing for Italians.”

  “I don’t know, Monie,” Becky said, “do you think we can distract her with a few drunken Austrians?”

  “It has worked before.”

  “Stop!”

  Becky struggled to control herself. For Judy’s sake she really did
try to choke down the laughter. She tried so hard that tears squeezed out the corners of her eyes. She glimpsed Monique’s face contorted with the effort. Only when Judy’s laughter spilled out between her fingers did Becky allow the hilarity to overcome her for the second time that day.

  She thought of Brianna’s Tickle Me Elmo that giggled with one press of his hand. With a second press, the doll’s laughter rumbled, just as Becky’s had in the Porsche that afternoon. But a third press set Elmo vibrating in the kind of convulsive glee Becky witnessed in Brianna sometimes, when the girl was exhausted at dinner and Brian started monkeying around and shoving peas in his nostrils. It was a whole-body seizure, a roiling hilarity that set shoulders shaking and made her fling her head back to gasp in air.

  That’s what seized the three of them now, as they bent over in the lobby. Becky gripped Monique’s shoulder as a stitch clutched her ribs. Each time Becky tried to straighten up, she would catch Monique’s laughing brown eyes, or Judy’s arcing gray ones, and the laughter would seize her all over again.

  She knew she would remember this moment. It’d be branded in her mind more than the castles she’d seen in Germany or the food she’d eaten in Paris or the jewel-blue Porsche she’d traveled in. This memory sizzled with the same intensity of the midnight kiss from Marco, of Brianna red-faced with laughter nearly tumbling off her chair.

  Joy had felt for so long like something snatched away, a magic ring stolen, now forbidden and undeserved.

  If she could only find a way to bring it home.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “Judy,” Monique said, gesturing to the ugly, rock-like lump rolling in her friend’s hand. “I hate mushrooms.”

  “It’s a white truffle.” Judy lifted her palm into the Italian sunlight. “Does this look like one of those dirty lumps you buy at the local grocery store?”

  “A truffle is a fungus, and funguses are grown in piles of manure.”

  “These aren’t grown in manure. They’re routed out by specially trained pigs or dogs or something.”

  “Ooh, yum. Fungus and dog spit.”

  “And when they’re fresh, they retail for two thousand bucks a pound.” Judy shaved off a little piece of the thing with the edge of her Swiss Army knife. “They’re harvested between September and December so right now they’re prime and in season. How can you say no?”

  “If I’m going to have a truffle, it’ll be the chocolate kind.”

  “Philistine.”

  Monique folded her arms. “Do you guys know what a virulent fungus does when it attacks the human body?”

  “Stop projecting your fears on this succulent trifola d’Alba.”

  “In any language, it’s still a moldy tumorous growth.”

  “That’s like saying a Porsche is just a car.” Judy nudged one slice aside with the tip of her knife and then cut off another. In the shade of the stone wall Judy offered a piece to Becky. “How ’bout you, Beck. You feeling adventuresome?”

  Becky seized it. “I’m so in.”

  Monique watched as Judy slipped the sliver onto her tongue. To Monique the truffle—and all the mushrooms piled on the little cart nearby—smelled vaguely pungent, like old cheese and musky moss. The scent threatened to turn her stomach, but not Judy’s apparently. Judy’s eyes fluttered closed. As she chewed she lifted the shriveled, ill-formed thing to her nose. Her nostrils flared as she breathed in the scent.

  “Tonight I’m having pasta with truffle butter,” Judy said. “Two servings at least.”

  Becky held out her hand for another bite. “We’re staying here for dinner, yes?”

  Monique shrugged. “We’ll stay the night if you want.” She was sure they served more than just truffle pasta in the little restaurants around the square. “I saw a sign for a pensione down that side street.”

  “Thank goodness we didn’t start this trip in Italy.” Becky popped the thing in her mouth. “You’d need a forklift to pry me away from here.”

  Monique let her gaze pass across the town, a pastry sweet of a medieval village perched on the height of a hill. They’d spent yesterday morning visiting the castle at Neuschwanstein, the afternoon at a late lunch in Innsbruck in Austria, and they’d crashed at night in a pensione outside Verona. Lenny’s list had them attending the wine and truffle festival in Alba, but as they traveled through northern Italy, Monique knew she and the girls wouldn’t make it that far west. Especially when the little town of Neive loomed into sight.

  They’d all glanced at one another. Sure, the truffle festival at Alba had donkey races and locals in medieval costume, truffle-seeking forays and live music…but this little village amid the barbaresco vineyards was nearly free of tourists and full of cheese and wine shops, quiet and seemingly unexplored.

  They hadn’t exchanged a word. They drove into town and found a parking spot near the top of the hill where, between streets and buildings, there lay a breathtaking view of the surrounding vineyards.

  Becky said suddenly, “Is that your phone ringing, Judy?”

  Judy probed her belly pack as the sound repeated. “Nope, not mine.”

  Monique realized that the ringing was coming from her pack. She fumbled it off her shoulder and pulled out her cell phone. “It’s Kiera.” Monique panicked when she saw notifications for six texts, but as she scanned the contents she relaxed. She did a quick calculation of the difference in time zones. “I guess she’s awake now. She must have finally seen the photos from Neuschwanstein I texted her yesterday.”

  “You’ve got time to answer them,” Judy said, flicking her wrist to look at the face of her watch. “The wine tour at La Contea doesn’t start for about an hour.”

  “Can we wander back to that little cheese shop?” Stepping out of the shadow into the sunlight, Becky squinted in the vague direction of one of the narrow streets. “Wasn’t it down there somewhere? I want to buy some of that jam made out of grape must. It smelled so good.”

  “Cugnà,” Judy murmured, wrapping her two remaining truffles back up into the paper.

  Becky raised a brow at Judy. “You speak Italian now?”

  “No, no, I just liked the word. It stuck in my head.” She gave a little shrug. “You know, if you start serving that up with toast for breakfast, Brian and Brianna may never eat Welch’s again.”

  “The Swiss chocolate is for them,” Becky said. “The jam is for me.”

  “Well, this lactose-intolerant woman is going to skip the visit to the cheese shop.” Monique waved the cell phone. “I’m going to find a place to sit and catch up on these. Text me when the wine tour is about to start, and I’ll meet you at the entrance to the cave.”

  Monique waved as they headed down the hill to a building with a bell tower. She swiveled on a heel and headed in the opposite direction, up to the top of the hill to a plaza she’d noticed when she’d parked the Porsche. Around the side of a building, a stone terrace jutted over the edge of the hillside. She took a seat on the bench against the wall. The seat warmed her thighs and the gritty stone tugged the fibers of her yoga pants. Through a gap in two lower buildings there lay a crazed staircase of red roofs, and beyond, a stretch of combed fields.

  She flipped through Kiera’s text messages.

  Mrs. Lorenzini must have loved this castle. It’ll make a great cake.

  LOL, Mom, nice hair in this shot should I make an appointment for you at Bangz when you get home?

  Grand-mère told me to text you hello and that she hopes you’re enjoying yourself. Like it’s not obvious.

  I bought some clothes at the mall so don’t freak if you see the charges on your credit card.

  BTW, we finally won a race against Livingston.

  Mom…when are you coming home?

  Reading the last text, Monique felt a quiver of motherly instinct. Kiera could find out the flight information in a flash. The itinerary was pinned on the bulletin board in the kitchen. Clearly her daughter craved something more than her estimated time of arrival, and Monique didn’t have to thin
k long about what that might be. Kiera needed reassurance that her mother missed her, that she’d come back soon, and that when she did everything would be exactly the same.

  Monique curled both her hands over the cell phone, wishing she could text a full-bodied hug to her daughter. Kiera was such a creature of feeling and sensitivity, still struggling to muddle everything all out like every teenager who’d ever lived. Her daughter probably didn’t even see the irony in her yearning for her mother to return, when it was Kiera herself who was truly planning to leave. For the past four years Monique had made Herculean efforts to reassure her that she would always be around. This vacation was the longest the two of them had ever been apart. And now she held in her hand Kiera’s plea, uncertain and subtly alarmed, a tremor of growing realization.

  Mom might not always be there.

  She set her thumbs to the keypad. Not long now, sweetie. I’m taking the red-eye on Friday. Miss you terribly. Can’t wait to see you.

  She hit send and slid the phone on the bench beside her. She gazed over the stretch of the vineyards, admiring the blush of russet on the fields and a touch of gold here and there. She heard the noise that the text had slipped into the ether. Slipping her sunglasses on top of her head, she raised her face to the sunlight.

  Did I do wrong, Lenny? Loving Kiera as fiercely as I do? Loving you as strongly as I still do, holding on to you even now?

  In the breeze Monique felt a disturbance in the air, a subtle shimmering of light and sound. The feathery ripple interrupted the chatter of the Italian shopkeeper around the corner of the building. The subtle disruption put a tremor in the high steady whine of a small Italian car laboring to climb up the hillside from below.

  She stilled, softly reaching for the wisp of his presence. Lenny had always wanted to come to Italy. He would have loved the slow, bone-seeping warmth of this place. He’d have loved the mossy smell of the streets, the shops with cured meats hanging in the windows, the pungent cheeses in boxes of straw, the bottles of ruby-red wine. He’d have eaten egg tagliatelle, scarfing down the noodles tossed in butter and covered with truffle shavings. He’d have tried the wild boar stew she saw advertised as a specialty of one restaurant, a robust meat in a peppery marinade. This trip to an Italian wine and truffle festival wasn’t one of the mysterious little breadcrumb-clues Becky claimed Lenny had sprinkled in that bucket list, mysterious messages from beyond. Of all the things Lenny had talked her into adding to his list, this trip to northern Italy was one she could say without question that Lenny would have enjoyed wholeheartedly.