Love & Gelato(13)

She nodded. “My lips are sealed. Just promise me you’ll talk to him. He’s a great guy, and I’m sure he’ll answer any questions you have.”

“Okay.” I looked away and there were a long few seconds of silence.

“Have a nice day, Lina.”

She went down the stairs and out the front door, but I just stood there staring at my bedroom door. It was practically glowing with urgency. Cue panic.

It’s just one of her journals. You can do this. You can do this. I finally started making my way down the hall, but at the last minute veered toward the stairs, the violets teetering dangerously.

I had some seriously thirsty violets on my hands. Sonia had said so. I’d just take care of that first. I plummeted down the stairs, then looked through the cupboards twice before finding a shallow dish big enough for the flower pot.

“Here you go, buddy.” I filled the dish with an inch of tap water (F) and set the pot inside. My violets didn’t seem particularly interested in having company, but I sat down at the kitchen table and watched them anyway.

I wasn’t stalling. Really.





Chapter 5




JOURNALING WAS KIND OF MY mom’s thing. Well, a lot of things were kind of her thing. She also liked hot yoga and food trucks and really terrible reality TV shows, and once she’d gotten really into the idea of homemade beauty products and we’d basically spent a month with coconut oil and mashed avocado all over our faces.

But journaling . . . that was a constant. A couple of times a year she’d splurge on one of these thick artists’ notebooks from our favorite bookstore in downtown Seattle, and then she’d spend months filling it with her life: photographs, diary entries, grocery lists, ideas for photo shoots, old ketchup packets . . . anything you could think of.

And here was the strange part: She let other people read them. And even stranger? People loved to. Maybe because they were creative and hilarious and after you read one you felt like you’d just taken a trip through Wonderland or something.

I walked into my bedroom and stood at the foot of my bed. Sonia had left the journal right in the center of my pillow, like maybe she was worried I wouldn’t notice it otherwise, and it was weighing down the bed like a pile of bricks.

“Ready?” I said aloud. I was definitely not ready, but I walked over and picked it up anyway. The cover was made of soft leather and had a big gold fleur-de-lis in its center. It didn’t look anything like her journals back home.

I took a deep breath, then cracked open the cover, half expecting confetti to come shooting out at me, but all that happened was a bunch of brochures and ticket stubs fell out onto the floor and I got a whiff of something musty. I picked up all the papers, then started flipping through the pages, ignoring the writing and focusing on the photographs.

There was my mother standing in front of an old church with her camera slung over her shoulder. And there she was grinning over a gigantic bowl of pasta. And then . . . Howard. I practically dropped the book. Okay, of course he was in her journal. It’s not like I’d appeared out of thin air, but still. My mind totally resisted the idea of the two of them together.

I studied the picture. Yep, it was definitely him. Younger, longer-haired (and was that a tattoo on his upper arm?), but definitely Howard. He and my mom were sitting on stone steps and she had short hair and Old Hollywood lipstick and this I’ve been swept off my feet kind of look.

I sat down on my bed with a thud. Why hadn’t she just told me her and Howard’s story herself? Did she think that her journal would do a better job? Was she worried I wasn’t ready to hear their story?

I hesitated for a moment, then shoved the journal in the drawer of my nightstand and shut it with a loud slam. Well, I wasn’t ready.

Not yet.



A car alarm burst into full vibrato somewhere in the cemetery and the sound rained down on my head like a thousand tiny Glorias. This headache brought to you by Jet Lag & Stress. Thanks, Italy.

I rolled over and looked at the clock on the wall. Three p.m. Which left me with so much time to kill, it was ridiculous.

I slowly got out of bed, then went over to my suitcase and made a halfhearted attempt at organizing my things—shirts in the right-hand corner, pants in the left, pajamas over there. . . . I’d done a horrible job packing, and it was all basically a jumble. Finally I settled on putting a couple of pictures of my mom and me into my room’s empty frames, then laced up my shoes and headed for the front porch.

I didn’t have a plan of where to go, so I just sat on the porch swing and rocked for a while. I had a good view of the memorial. It was a long, low building with a stretch of engravings that I would bet money went by the name of Wall of the Missing. Out in front of it was a tall post with a statue of an angel holding an armful of olive branches. Two men stood taking pictures in front of it, and one of them noticed me and waved.

I waved back but jumped up and headed for the back fence. I really didn’t have it in me to handle another Jorgansen situation.

The back gate was easy to find, and as I headed out I realized that Sonia hadn’t been kidding—the hill behind the cemetery was steep. For the second time that day, sweat dripped down my back, but I forced myself to keep running. I will conquer you, hill. Finally I reached the top, my legs and lungs on fire. I was just about to keel over when a thud-thud noise made my neck snap up. I wasn’t alone.