One Italian Summer(57)

“And what about Poseidon?” I say. “They’re in trouble here, Nika told me. Is that over?”

“Marco is stubborn; what am I supposed to do? Steal it from him?”

“Talk to him.”

“I have. Look, I need to go home with a win. I want to. I need an excuse to keep coming back.” He winks at me. It feels hollow, though. Like a gimmick. Like he’s done it many times before.

“What about knowing the hotel and loving it and all of those things you said about this place feeling like home?”

Adam sighs. He sits back down. “All of that is true, all of it. I love it here. And also, money is real; his will is real. If they don’t want to sell, they don’t want to sell.”

He finds his other shoe, slides it on. “I have to run, but can we please have lunch later? I’ll meet you at Chez Black in the marina. We can talk about everything.” He gestures to the bed. To what has transpired here.

I nod. “Okay.”

Adam leans over me. He touches his lips down to mine and then plants a kiss on my cheek. “I’ll see you soon.”

“What time?”

“Let’s say two?”

“Yeah, sure.” He gives me another kiss on the cheek, and then leaves.

When the door shuts behind him, I feel a strange calm. There is no cacophony of thoughts. I do not think about Eric, although I should. I do not even think about my mother. What I think about is Carol. I think about the thirty-year-old lady standing in her flat in Italy, a world away from her baby.

I need to find her. There is one thing I know for certain, the only true thing I can place right now, the only thing that’s real: Carol needs to go home.

I toss on jean shorts and a T-shirt and my pink Birkenstocks. I grab a bottle of water from the lobby and wave goodbye to Carlos. And then I take what is now the familiar path upward, toward the stairs.

I know where she lives now. I was just there, just last night, before the entire world changed. I’ve never been able to find her—the whole time we’ve been here it’s just been her finding me—but I have to now. Now it’s different.

I get to the landing, where the stairs split off, and I see the turquoise door. It looks faded, more worn blue, in the daylight. For a moment the practicality of our realities gives way in my abdomen. The questions mount. Is this possible? What reality is she in? Am I finding her here now? Or is she back lost to her time? Is she even inside?

I knock. Once, twice. There is no answer. I try the doorknob, but it is locked. I sit outside. I try again. Nothing.

I think about my options: stay and wait or head back to the hotel. And then a third dawns on me. And it’s the right one, the true one. I know where she is. I know where I can find her.

I start climbing. My sandals slip, and I grip on with my toes. I should have worn sneakers, but it doesn’t matter now. Up, up, up.

As I walk, I feel her. Each step I take I know she has taken before, I’m certain of it. Thirty years or fifteen minutes she has just been here. She has just cleared the way. Somewhere in time she is walking, and somewhere in time I am walking, too, and we will find each other on this path. We will be here together.

And sure enough, just as I am cresting the final staircase, right in view of the Path of the Gods, I see her.

She’s wearing a sundress and sneakers, with a sun hat on, a linen shirt tied at her waist. I spot her first, the back of her head, the curve of her waist. Her long hair looped in a knot down her neck. She flings an arm up and rests it on top of her head, surveying the ocean below. What is she staring at? What is she thinking about? Is she looking for me, too?

And then once I’ve asked it, as if in answer, she turns downward and sees me. Neither of us says anything; we let the recognition pass between us like bathwater—it moves, changes direction. It flows both ways now. It always has.

“Hi,” she says. She’s cautious but not angry, not exactly.

“I thought I’d find you here,” I say.

We are both sweaty and sun-beaten. I feel the exertion of the stairs now that I’m no longer in motion. I drop my hands to my knees and exhale.

“Are you all right?” she asks me. “You look a little white.”

“Just out of breath,” I say.

She nods. She folds her arms across her chest. “We can sit.” It’s not a question, and we do.

Carol plops herself down on a step. I sit on the one below her. Here, high up, there is no one around. We’re totally and completely alone. It occurs to me that, with the exception of Adam, I’ve never seen another soul on this hike the entire time I’ve been here.

We sit in silence for a moment. I take a long drink from my bottle of water. Finally, when my breathing slows, I start.

“I’m angry,” I tell her. I try and keep my voice level.

“I know.”

“No,” I say. “I don’t think you do. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “I wanted to. But we’d just met, and all you knew was this fun summer girl. I wanted to be that fun summer girl. I thought you’d judge me, but maybe not as much as you did. I just didn’t know how to bring it up.”

“That you have a baby?” I look down at my feet. They’re covered in dirt. “I don’t think you know what you’re doing to her. I don’t think you have any idea what this means.”