Dolci di Love (21 page)

They sat in companionable silence for a minute or two, then Lily got to her feet.

‘I need to go,' she said. The sun was setting, the greens of the hills rolling away from Alessandro's villa now morphing into smoky pinks and purples.

‘You could stay,' Alessandro said. ‘You could stay and I could take care of you.'

It was tempting, in a floating-through-the-blue-Tuscan-sky sort of way.

She stepped forward to kiss him a chaste goodbye and he held her for a moment, long enough for her to catch a comforting whiff of passion fruit and sweat and coffee. She caught a glimpse then of what it would be like to stay in his arms, to melt into the bits of him she could see were strong and safe and loving.

But although he had told her he was happy, there was a weight still resting on his shoulders that all the sweet talk and lying naked in her arms would never shift.

This was a man who could build a useless boat in memory of a wife he could not let go yet pushed away a daughter who was right there and surely needed him.

Alessandro was a mistake. A very nice mistake. But still a mistake.

‘I feel good,' Signora Benedicti announced, sweeping back into the room. ‘But now I will go home and I will take this lady friend with me.'

This lady friend agreed and meekly followed the housekeeper out of the villa and into her rusty Renault.

‘A
ll praise to Santa Ana di Chisa,' the widow Benedicti breathed, dialling the widow Ciacci's number into her cell phone after she'd dropped Lily off at the parking lot by the tourist office.

‘She's on her way back up the Corso now,' she reported.

‘Was disaster averted?' the widow Ciacci wanted to know.

‘It's hard to say,' the widow Benedicti reported. ‘Partially, perhaps.'

‘Is partially enough?' the widow Ciacci asked doubtfully. ‘I can't remember how it works.'

‘Don't ask me, it's nearly thirty years. And even then we only did it at night in the dark on a Thursday.'

‘Oh, I miss it though, Benedicti, don't you?'

‘Thursdays have never quite been the same,' her friend admitted. ‘Although I often make a
crostata di more
on a Thursday now, so that gives me something to look forward to.'

‘So what shall I tell Violetta?'

‘Tell her that the new
calzino
and old
calzino
were found in a state of partial undress in the living room, not the bedroom, and that upon being surprised by myself, became fully dressed, talked for quite a while—about what I'm not sure—and then parted.'

‘Was the parting romantic?' the widow Ciacci wanted to know.

‘She was in his arms but there didn't seem to be anything too spicy going on. It was more…companionable, I suppose you could say.'

‘No harm in being companionable,' the widow Ciacci said. ‘We'll see you back at HQ? There's a lot to be organised.'

A
s she climbed the hill from the parking lot to the
pasticceria
, Lily further considered what Alessandro had said about not feeling the love because so many other things were in the way. The truth, if she was honest with herself, was that these obstacles to how she felt about Daniel were not recent additions. They'd been around a while and they weren't pebbles, either, they were boulders. They'd grown moss and sheltered smaller rocks now. She didn't know if they could ever be moved.

And even if they could, this new Daniel, the one who said he loved her but had a family here, the one who had carved out a different life for himself across the world from her, might no longer want her. Whether she loved him or not could well be immaterial.

The gap between them was so wide that she didn't know how a little bit of forgiveness could close it. It could just as likely plummet to the bottom of the crevasse and make no difference at all.

And anyway, did she really need to know if Daniel didn't want her anymore? Would it not be better to assume that he did and leave him before he got the chance to leave her first? Any more than he already had?

She couldn't imagine the humiliation of forgiving Daniel only to have him thank her politely and marry Eugenia.

In fact, she couldn't imagine the humiliation of forgiving him, period. The actual act of forgiveness she could almost come to grips with, but it was a private agreement with herself, not a face-to-face arrangement with him. The very thought of talking to him about it, dissecting his betrayal and her suffering, made her want to throw up.

Until that point she had never understood why some people got divorced so quickly. She could think of at least three couples who'd seemed perfectly happy one day and perfectly separated the next.

Now she knew why: who wanted in on the postmortem? If it was dead, it was dead. Why drag the entrails out into the open and poke at them with a stick? That would surely only cause more pain, especially to the injured party.

No, she had come to Tuscany, she'd basked in its beauty, she'd found out exactly what was going on with her husband, she'd revived her relationship with her sister, she'd learned to make
cantucci
, and she had spent an afternoon making love to a handsome Italian man—something she planned to never tell anyone else about as long as she lived. She would write the whole trip off in her mind as a sort of secret adventure. And she would stay true to her promise to make sure that Daniel did the right thing by Francesca; she meant that, even if it hurt her bank account. But she would do it from her apartment on West Seventy-second Street.

It was time, truly, to go home.

‘Continue straight ahead,' as Dermott would say. Continue straight ahead. It was a relief, she told herself, to decide that her marriage was over, because once again she was a woman with a plan. This
i
was about to be dotted.

It was dark by the time she opened the door to the
pasticceria
as slowly as possible so the bell gave only the tiniest tinkle. She stopped for a moment just to take in the strange little place one
more time. How did it manage to always smell of roses even when there weren't any? The faint glow of the street lantern outside filtered through the window, illuminating the green glass bowl in which Lily and Francesca had arranged their
cantucci
earlier in the day. Then it had looked like a bouquet of biscotti hearts. Now there was nothing in it but a few lonely crumbs.

How peculiar
, Lily thought. Maybe Violetta had come home and thrown the cookies out.

Creeping as quietly as she could, she pushed open the swinging door into the kitchen and slipped through it, only to find Violetta sitting patiently at the table waiting for her. Luciana was propped up in the bed looking as fit as a fiddle, hands clasped neatly on top of her quilts and blankets.

‘Oh, goodness,' Lily said politely. She had been planning on slipping away quietly, perhaps leaving a note, but maybe it was better to be upfront. ‘Actually, no, this is great,' she said. ‘I'm glad you're here. The thing is that I am leaving, Violetta. Tonight. I'm just going to pack my bags and head back to Rome. Stay near the airport, get the first flight home to New York.'

Violetta looked shiftily from side to side.

‘Mmm, no,' she said. She had quite a loud voice for a very small, old person. ‘No, I don't think so. No, no, no.'

Lily was taken aback, but not for long. ‘Well, yes,' she replied, firmly. ‘
Sí. Sí, sí, sí
.'

‘But you agree to stay for one month,' Violetta said. ‘This is a verbal contract.'

‘Verbal contract? What the—? And about this whole speaking English thing. When exactly were you going to tell me about that?'

‘When exactly were you going to ask?'

‘
Buonosera
,' Luciana called out from the bed with a chirpy wave.

‘Oh, Luciana, welcome home. How are you feeling?'

‘
Sí. Grazie
,' she said.

‘She doesn't speak
inglese
,' Violetta said. ‘Just me. Lily, is time for us to have a talk.'

‘All those things I told you,' Lily said, remembering the rants she had gone on while the sisters bungled their baking. ‘All those things! You understood and you never said a word.'

‘I did not understand,' Violetta said. ‘Why you put your cashmere in the oven? Does not make sense.'

‘I thought I was talking to a stone! Why would you do that?'

‘We want to know more about you,' Violetta said with an unconcerned shrug.

‘But why? Why did you want to know more about me? And why do it in such an underhand way? Why not just ask?'

Luciana interjected in Italian, which seemed to make Violetta mad, and they argued like baby birds over a single worm until Luciana blew a raspberry and they both fell silent.

‘Sorry, what is your question?' Violetta asked.

‘You know what the question was! Why did you trick me?'

‘Because we want to know how long you would be here so we can get you to pay the rent on our store,' Violetta answered.

Lily threw up her hands.

‘If you think I'm going to believe that, you are a fool,' she said. ‘And you don't strike me as being foolish. Quite the opposite. What's this all about, Violetta?'

Luciana burbled a short, sharp something to her sister.

‘She says to tell you is because we are two stupid old women with nothing better to do than poke our noses in where they are not wanted and meddle,' Violetta said.

‘That I do believe,' said Lily.

‘But is true about the rent,' insisted Violetta. ‘Without you we could not stay open another minute.'

‘Stay open? Your shop? It isn't open now.'

‘We have trouble,' Violetta admitted. ‘Since the arthritis, the
cantucci
is not turning out so good and those Borsolini
bastardi
down the hill make a fortune selling ugly cookies to fat tourists who won't do the climb up here to our store.'

‘OK, you know what? Thank you for being honest but that's not my problem, and you know what else, it doesn't matter. I don't care. I'm leaving anyway. You can keep the money I gave you to pay this month's rent for your shop but I'm going home. Now.'

The sisters looked at each other.

‘We are definitely getting too old for this
merda
,' Violetta told her sister in Italian.

‘The problem is the money you give us is for last month's rent,' she told Lily. ‘We have no money for this month's rent.'

‘I gave you five hundred euros!'

‘We are behind.'

‘Well, I'm very sorry about that, but the reality is that you need to get someone else to make your
cantucci
so you have a viable prospect to actually sell, or better still, you need to beat the Borsolini
bastardi
at their own game. I don't know—make what everyone is buying from them, only better, and then maybe you can afford to meet your financial responsibilities. Or talk to the owner of the building and try to come to some arrangement over the rent. Who owns the building anyway?' Lily asked. ‘To whom do you owe this money?'

A heated debate broke out between the sisters.

‘We own it,' Violetta eventually confessed. ‘We owe the money to us.'

All Lily could do was laugh.

‘You want to trick me into renting a store that has nothing in it so you can “stay” open when you seem not to have been open for quite a long time selling nonexistent
cantucci
to customers who don't exist?'

Violetta explained this all the Luciana, then they both turned to her and nodded.

‘Yes.'

‘Is this some kind of joke? No? OK, that's it. I'm going upstairs to pack.'

‘Mention the little girl,' Luciana ordered her sister.

‘What about the little girl?' Violetta demanded accordingly. ‘Francesca?'

Lily stopped in her tracks.

‘What about Francesca?' she asked. ‘What has Francesca got to do with it?'

‘Francesca has everything to do with it,' Violetta answered.

A difficult silence descended on the room. The two sisters' four dark eyes bored into her.

‘You know about Daniel?'

‘We know about a little girl in need of
amore.
And we know about a darning group that really likes heart-shaped
cantucci
.'

‘Your darning group ate all our
cantucci
?'

‘
Sí
. And they're a hard crowd to please. But all they need to do is spread the word and our heart-shaped
cantucci
—we call it
amorucci
now—could be a very viable prospect. If only we had someone to help us make it. And then there's Francesca. Tut, tut. Poor little broken-winged Francesca.'

‘This is extortion!'

Violetta cackled like an old hen, then translated for Luciana, who cackled even harder.

‘She says welcome to Italy!' Violetta reported, pushing her chair back with an almighty scraping as she struggled to her feet. ‘But this isn't real extortion's poor cousin twice removed. Anyway, you might want to think about this overnight.'

Lily was astounded.

‘There is nothing to think about. I have a life back in New York, you know: a home, a job, responsibilities of my own. I can't just drop everything and run a
cantucci
store in Tuscany. That's ludicrous.'

But she wasn't thinking of her home, her job, her responsibilities, or even of her broken heart or the man who broke it. She was thinking of the smile on Francesca's face as she saw the shape the cookie cutter had made in the
cantucci.

Lily looked up and caught Violetta's eye. There was a lot of wrinkled skin on that ancient face, but a wink is still a wink.