One Italian Summer(60)

Carol drops her hand, and then she’s looking from me to Adam and back again. The question still hovers: What are you doing here?

I’m saving you. I’m making sure you don’t make a mistake. I’m making sure that everything will turn out exactly as it has. I’m doing what you always did to me: protecting me from a different life.

And then something hits. Recognition. Like a lightning bolt. I look at Carol now, a crisp white linen dress on, her sandals tied, ready to have the meeting of her dreams—and I don’t see my mother. I see a woman. A woman fresh into a new decade who wants a life of her own. Who has interests and desires and passions beyond my father and me. Who is very real, exactly as she is right here and now.

Who am I to rob her of them? Who am I to tell her who she is and isn’t? I do not have the answers. I do not have the answers for her life any more than she has the answers now for mine.

My eyes well with tears. I swallow them back down.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I had to tell Adam something, and I forgot we had lunch plans and…”

“You two know each other?”

“We’re staying at the same hotel,” Adam says.

Recognition dawns on Carol’s face. She does a terrible job of hiding it; maybe she doesn’t want to. She looks at me with a small smirk. This guy?

“I’ll see you at lunch, okay?” Adam asks. “We really do need to get this underway—now.”

I nod. “Yeah,” I say. “Okay.”

Adam squeezes my forearm, and then he turns and opens the door. He holds it for Carol, and then the two go inside. I stand in the hallway for another thirty seconds. And then I head back up the stairs. In the lobby a harpist plays something light and melodic. I wander out onto the terrace. There are sweeping views of Positano. It’s beautiful up here, magical. I understand why she’d want to have a hand in it. I understand why she’d want to stay. Why they both do. There is no denying that Positano is something incredibly special.

I sit down on the terrace. A waiter comes over. “Buongiorno, signora.”

“Buongiorno.”

“Would you like a drink?”

He sets down a glass of water.

“No thank you,” I say.

I drink the water. It’s cool, refreshing.

Right now, downstairs, my mother is having a meeting to determine her future, and therefore mine. If she gets it, she may very well stay. She will design this hotel and I won’t know her, not like I did, not like I do. What will that mean for my life? What will that mean for who I turn out to be? It’s all too mind-bending to think about. I let the thought pass out to sea. Posa posa. Stop here.

I sit on the terrace for another twenty minutes. And then I walk back up to the Hotel Poseidon. I go upstairs; I lie down. And then I go to the safe in the closet. I turn the dial and wait for it to unlock. There inside on a black wooden panel are my wedding and engagement rings, just as I’ve left them. And tucked beneath them is my cell phone. I take it out. I dial Eric.

The phone rings—once, twice, three times, four times. It continues on until there is a staccato sound, like a nail on concrete, and then the phone disconnects. He is not there; that is not his number.

I hold my engagement ring between my fingers. I remember that day in my parents’ kitchen. The memory comes back strong, almost like I can smell it. How Eric got down on one knee right there, right by the sink. He had bought me my favorite cupcakes—ones from this tiny Pasadena bakery that used to make my birthday cakes as a child—and they were sitting on the counter. “Check the frosting,” he said.

He had to lick the ring before he put it on my finger.

I check my watch: 1:30.

I put the rings and phone back, and I tuck the letter Nika had given me from Carol with them. I lock the safe and take one last look in the mirror. Once again, I’m met with a woman I do not entirely recognize but who feels more familiar to me than any version I’ve previously known.

This is who I am, I think. This healthy and strong and alive. And for just a moment, I understand. I understand what she saw when she looked at herself here, too.





Chapter Twenty-Eight


Adam is seated at a front table at Chez Black when I get there, feet in the sand. I see him before he sees me—his broad shoulders and hair that looks blond in the midday sun. He’s dazzling. He’s staring ahead at the horizon. He seems distracted, though. He adjusts his shirt, pulling at the collar.

“Hi,” I say.

He stands to greet me, placing a kiss on either cheek. “Hi,” he says. “Are you all right?”

I think about my earlier outburst. “Yes,” I say. “I’m sorry about that. I should not have just shown up there. How did the meeting go?”

We sit down, and Adam fills my water glass. “Well,” he said. “She’s talented. She has some really innovative ideas. I think she’d be a great pick.”

Inside, my stomach tightens. “Did they hire her?”

“I don’t think they know yet. There’s a lot that has to be sorted out.” He peers at me as he hands me the glass. “Why?”

“I know Carol,” I say. “We met here. The friend I was telling you about, the one who took me to dinner. She’s important to me.”

Adam nods. “I liked her vision. She would bring the hotel right into the current moment.”