One Italian Summer(58)

“I didn’t leave,” she says.

I look up at her, but her eyes are down at the marina, the ocean. Somewhere else.

“Not exactly, anyway. I always wanted to come back to Italy, it was my dream for so long, and… I got pregnant so quickly after meeting my husband. Three months, we barely knew each other. I don’t have a career, I’m still an assistant at a gallery—”

My stomach squeezes—she only knew my dad for three months? I thought they were together for over a year. She wants to redesign the hotel—will she stay? Does she want to stay? But I say nothing, I let her talk.

“We got married because we love each other, but sometimes I wonder if we would have if I hadn’t gotten pregnant.”

“But you did get pregnant,” I say. “You have a daughter.”

“And I love her, too. More than anything. But when she came, I felt like I lost… like I didn’t know who I was anymore. It’s like my old life was gone. I was gone. I used to be the woman you knew before you found that photo, and I’m still her, it’s just that no one sees that anymore. Maybe I don’t see it anymore. I just wanted to recapture a little bit of that. A little bit of who I was, or who I thought I’d be.”

“That’s why you came here?”

A long beat passes between us. The wind picks up and lifts the sweaty hair up and off the back of my neck.

“At home,” Carol says slowly, methodically, like she’s placing every word down, arranging them in one of her famous floral bouquets, “I’m defined by this role. I have a feeding schedule and a shopping schedule, and on Saturdays I clean the house. My work…” Her voice trails off. “He doesn’t mean to, but I know he doesn’t think it’s as important as his. And I don’t blame him. I barely make any money at all.”

I think about my mom, in the kitchen three years ago, talking about how she wanted my dad to retire. I think about the way his work became hers, how I never knew it wasn’t what she wanted, how I never even asked. How too often my father and I treated her design work like a hobby. Why?

“Listen,” I say. “I know this won’t make sense to you, and I’m sorry about last night, I really am, but you have to believe me. You need to go home. You’ll work it out, you’ll figure it out, and you’ll get good at it. You’ll be good at it.”

She looks at me. Her eyes are wide. I see the water there, threatening to run. “I’m not a monster,” she says.

And then, for only the third time in my life, I watch Carol cry.

She drops her head down into her hands. Her shoulders shake in small, staccato bursts.

I put an arm around her. I lean my head down on her shoulder. I hold her like she’s held me so many times before.

“You’re going to be a good mom,” I say. “A great one, even. You already are.”

“That’s not true,” she says.

“It is,” I say.

Carol straightens up. She wipes her eyes. “How could you possibly know that?” she asks me.

And then she meets my gaze, and when she does, it’s like she knows. For just a beat, a breath, a millisecond. She sees. I’m certain of it. There our life is, caught between us. All the love and pain and connection. All the impossibility of her loss and what remains. Everything, in the space between us. Then:

“I’m sorry. I’m a mess. And I’m going to be late for the Sirenuse pitch if I don’t get going. They were really clear that they have a tight schedule today, and I’ve been going over it for days. I can’t miss it.”

“That’s today?”

Something twists in my stomach.

“Yes,” she says. “I was just trying to clear my head a little before and then—”

“Who are you meeting with?” I ask her.

She stands up. She brushes some dirt off the skirt of her dress. Her eyes squint into the sun.

“A developer this time,” she says. “I think his name is Adam.”





Chapter Twenty-Seven


I leave Carol and dash down the stairs to the hotel. Nika is at the desk, and I go up to her, gulping air. “Have you seen Adam?” I ask her.

“He just left,” she says. “Is everything all right, Ms. Silver?”

“Nika,” I start. I want to know, but I also don’t. I’m terrified, and yet I need an answer. I need one now. “What year is it?”

“What do you mean?”

“What is the year? Right now?”

She laughs. I feel her casual, befuddled amusement. “Nineteen ninety-two,” she says. “Last time I looked.”

I feel a rush of cold air across my skin. This whole time.

I’m not finding my mother’s world when she finds me; I’ve dropped into hers. Adam, Nika, Marco. They all belong to the past.

I dissolve into a chair by the desk. I sink my head down into my hands.

“Ms. Silver,” Nika says. “What is wrong? What is happening?”

I do not know. I do not know where to begin. My mother died, and she left me with no instructions. Nothing on how to live or who to be in her absence. Now she’s here, and she wants to stay. Oh, and last night I slept with a guy who isn’t my husband, thirty years ago. What isn’t wrong?