By Any Other Name(68)

“Elizabeth, Richard is dead.”

“No,” she gasped. “He can’t be.”

“Richard Willows died on August eighteenth, 1968. I was with him at Camp Faulkner—”

“That’s impossible! He wrote to me only last week. To arrange this meeting. Who are you? Why would you say such a thing?” Elizabeth stood up. She started walking quickly away.

Edward couldn’t let her leave before he told her. “It was a land mine,” he said, following her. “He died in my arms. He asked me to write to you. So I did.”

Something in his tone had reached her, scared her. She turned to him. Each was on the brink of tears. He watched her understand his words. And when she did, her face twisted in horror. She started running.

He chased her like a lunatic. What else could he do? She shouted for him to leave her alone.

“Please,” he begged. It stopped her running and she spun on him. He touched her wrist. A bolt of heat pulsed through him. She looked down as if she felt it, too. But when she met his eyes, hers were daggers.

“How dare you?” she whispered. It broke him in two.

“I know you must hate me. But please know I have loved you for two years. I love you now more than ever. And if you ever change your mind, and want to hear my side of this story, I will be here, right here.” He pointed at the earth beneath his feet.

“You’re going to wait a long time.”

“That’s all right,” he said, and meant it. “I will be here every week. At just this time. In just this place.” He looked down at his watch. “Five-thirty.” He gazed across the park. “At the north side of the Pond, right across from the Gapstow Bridge.” He met her eyes and tried to tell her through them that he loved her.

“However long it takes, Collins. If it means a chance to be with you, I’ll be here every Saturday at sunset for the rest of my life.”

The End





Chapter Eighteen


“I recommend the octopus alla griglia to begin,” says Noa Callaway’s Italian editor when we meet for lunch the next day.

When I emailed Gabriella late last night and asked if we could talk before the launch, she suggested this open-air trattoria on Positano’s sea-facing Via Marina Grande. We’re sitting at a shady corner table with a prime view for people watching.

The scene along Via Marina Grande is the opposite of my hotel terrace vista. Down here, you get the sense of being nestled in the arms of Positano’s craggy coastline, crammed with Technicolor houses stacked into the hills. It’s the kind of cozy beach vibe I’d usually find charming—but today I’m so jittery, it’s making me claustrophobic.

Gabriella studies her menu, unaware of my knees bobbing beneath the table. “And then, the smoked mozzarella tortellini con brodo di parmigiano,” she says. “My six-year-old son calls it ‘cheese soup of the gods.’”

I run my finger along the edge of my fork, dig my sandaled toes into the pebbly sand under our table, and listen to the bees buzzing around terra-cotta pots of sunflowers. Ever since last night, I’ve needed touchstones to confirm that this is not a dream, that what I read in Chapter One was real. Real words Noah Ross really typed onto a page. And really sent to me.

It was a code. A not very secret one. A writ large and gorgeous code, illuminating what our first meeting in Central Park had meant to him. And yet, if anyone else in the world had read it, they would think the scene was purely the start—or in this case, the end—of a grand and fictional love story.

I know it’s more than that. It’s a question: Do you feel the way I do?

“I do,” I say aloud—then catch myself as Gabriella meets my eyes across the table.

“You do what?” she says.

“I do . . . want octopus. And cheese soup.” I can’t imagine eating anything, but I’m trying not to let it show. “I see a career in marketing for your son.” I stop pretending to look at the menu and raise my glass of chilled Ravello bianco to clink with Gabriella’s.

As the waiter sets down a tray of lemony tomato bruschetta, Gabriella stretches her long legs from beneath our table until her square-toed white sling backs nestle in the sand. She is bright and charming, with wavy red hair she constantly tucks behind her ears, a long string of black pearls around her neck, and a flowy midi dress the same turquoise as the sea. Under normal circumstances, we could be friends, but I know as soon as I tell her about Noah’s op-ed, and that it’s probably landing in people’s New York Times notifications . . . right about now—our lunch will go from pleasant culinary lark to Fellini-esque firing squad.

“Now,” she says, holding out the plate to offer me a slice of bruschetta, “you said there was something you wanted to discuss?”

I have to tell her. It’s the decent thing to do.

The waiter sets down two plates of gorgeously charred octopus, giving me an excellent opportunity to stall. I stab an olive with my fork and look out at the beach as I chew. Everyone I see appears to be part of an amorous pair—holding hands, kissing, sharing a scoop of pink gelato, rubbing sunblock into someone else’s bronzed shoulders.

If I’m hungry for anything, it’s what those people out there have.

I called Noah twice last night, and both times his phone went straight to voicemail.