These Tangled Vines(22)

She worked hard to lift his spirits and bolster his confidence. “Not a chance. And I’d be able to tell you for sure if only you’d let me read it. Just a few pages?”

He often talked to her about the plot, and she helped him brainstorm whenever he got stuck, but he had never let her see the words on the pages.

Freddie shook his head. “No. It’s not ready for anyone to look at. It’s a first draft, and it’s rough, but I need to finish it completely before I can start polishing.”

Lillian hugged her knees to her chest and tried to think of a way to help him finish faster.

“What if we went there?” she suggested, on a whim. “To the actual places where your scenes are set.”

He looked at her with surprise. “To Italy?”

“Why not? I could ask my boss for a leave of absence, and we could spend the summer in Tuscany. I could get a seasonal job there. Imagine how amazing that would be.” She thought about it for a moment and began to feel a sudden rush of excitement because she had never been to Europe before. She began to imagine castles and cobblestones . . . red wine with bread and pasta. And wasn’t this the perfect time to travel? Before they settled down with children? “If my boss says no, it wouldn’t matter. I could quit and find something else when we got back. There are lots of hotels around here.”

“I don’t know, Lil . . .”

She squeezed his shoulder and shook him. “Come on! Let’s be adventurous! Wouldn’t it help you to breathe in the atmosphere and walk the streets where your book is set? Imagine how confident you’d be when you sat down to write. You could finish it so much faster. Then we could start the life we’ve always wanted, with kids and a house and a real writing career for you.”

He looked at her with disbelief. “Are you nuts? How would we pay for the flights?”

“My credit card,” she replied. “I’ve kept up with the payments, and they keep increasing my limit. And we’ll be getting the deposit back on our apartment when we finish the lease in May. It’s almost as if the stars are aligning for us—as if this is meant to happen.”

He regarded her with amazement. “You’d actually do that for me? Give up your job and max out your credit card?”

“Of course I would, because I believe in you, and I want you to finish the damn book so we can get pregnant.” She nudged him playfully.

They sat and watched the sun dip below the horizon.

“This is crazy,” Freddie said.

“Maybe it is,” Lillian replied. “But something about this feels right, don’t you think? Can’t you feel it?”

“I don’t know . . .”

“It’s the setting for your book, which means everything to you,” she reminded him. “You need to go there, Freddie.”

“Maybe.” He exhaled. “I’m just worried about how much it’ll cost and how much work it’ll take to organize a trip like that.”

“Don’t worry about any of that,” she said. “I work in the hotel industry. I know a bunch of travel agents who can help us. I’ll take care of all the details.” She gazed out at the water and watched the whitecaps in the distance. “I don’t know why, but I have a really good feeling about this. I think it’s going to speed things up for you.”

She couldn’t deny that she had her own ulterior motive—to help him feel more ready to start a family. To beat down the excuses.

Freddie leaned toward her and kissed her on the cheek. “I’ll make a promise to you right now. If we go to Tuscany and I finish my book, you can go off the pill the minute I type ‘The End.’”

Lillian laughed. “I’m going to need that in writing.”

She tackled him on the blanket and straddled him for a kiss.



Two months later, Lillian was bent over a gigantic map on her lap, trying to make sense of the narrow, twisting Tuscan roads as they found their way from a tiny apartment in Montepulciano to her new job at Maurizio Wines. It was her first day of training as a tour guide and front desk clerk at the inn. She had landed the job as soon as she and Freddie touched down in Rome, jet lagged from an overnight flight. While he was waiting for their bags at the carousel, she had wandered sleepily toward a bulletin board near the exit doors.

There it was—an advertisement for the most perfect job on the planet. Maurizio Wines was looking for an English-speaking American or Canadian for the summer season to cater to the North American tourists. Lillian knew right away that she was the perfect person for the job, having worked the front desk at a resort in Florida for the past four years. She ripped off the phone number, found a pay phone, and called for an interview.

The manager at the winery asked her a few questions and hired her without even checking her references. She ran back to Freddie, who was lifting their bags off the carousel, and shouted, “I got it!”

Three days later, they were on their way to the winery in a secondhand car they had purchased from an old repair shop.

“Take the next left,” Lillian said, looking up from the map and scanning the rolling green countryside. They had just circled around the medieval hilltop town of Montepulciano and were now barreling down another twisty road at a terrifying speed. “And slow down!”

“It’s not my fault,” Freddie replied, glancing repeatedly into the rearview mirror. “It’s that knucklehead behind me. He doesn’t understand the concept of personal space.”