The Lost Art of Second Chances (15 page)

“Okay, first thing, what would you like to call your blog? Like a title?”

“Cooking with Nonna,” Lucy blurted out. She hadn’t known it consciously until that moment but she instinctively knew it was perfect for the blog. Jack nodded and tapped some more.

“Here you go. I chose the basic blogging platform and one of the automatically generated backgrounds and all. You can customize all that later.” He spent about twenty minutes teaching her how to blog and promised to show her how to upload photos.

“Thank you, Jack. I can’t believe we did this.” She slid her arms around his neck and kissed him deeply. He secured the computer on the floor before diving back into her arms.

Tuscany, Italy
Present Day

The following evening, they joined the LaRosa family at the Festival of the Chestnuts. In the stone courtyard in front of the villa, colorful lanterns danced in the trees, the long tables groaning with all the food Maria, Lucy, and the other women prepared. Lucy snapped dozens of photos on her smartphone, excited to detail the Festival of the Chestnuts on her new blog. At sunset, the dining music cranked up full of mournful violins, guitars, and accordions. The dancing would begin later. Jack strolled over to her, a bottle of wine and two glasses in hand. They took seats near the edge of the celebration, their hips pressed together. Jack wrapped his arm around her and she leaned into him, comfortable now with their physical intimacy. A sense of timelessness washed over Lucy. Donatella approached with two bowls and handed one to each of them.

“What is it?” Lucy asked her.

“Take fresh boiled pasta, crack an egg, and add the broth.” Donatella shrugged and Jack looked to Lucy for an explanation.

“It’s like spaghetti carbonara but I think they’ve added some bean broth.” She sampled it, dipping the crusty bread crouton into the rich broth. “Mmm . . . delicious. I need to take notes on how to make it. Juliet would love it. Here, hold the bowl while I take a snapshot to remind me.”

Lucy focused through the viewfinder. Jack cradled the rustic, earthenware bowl in his strong hands—the same hands that made her feel so treasured this morning as they made love in the sunrise. She snapped the photo and raised her head to find Jack watching her, his emerald eyes shot through with gold in the ebbing light. Their gazes met and held for a heartbeat. This fragile relationship they’d forged here in Italy could go on for an eternity, if she only possessed the courage to let it. Somehow, despite all the boundaries she’d tried to put on their time together, it was bigger than both of them. Her heart pounded and she swallowed the acid taste of fear in her throat. She and Jack didn’t get eternity. They were only supposed to get a week, to help each other overcome the pain of their past. There was no room for their relationship in their future.

Jack drew in a sharp breath, as though steeling himself to speak but the sharp crack of a bursting firework stopped him. They both looked up, dazzled by the glittering lights above the courtyard.

“Now the dancing begins!” Mario appeared, dragging Lucy to her feet. “You do not mind if I dance with my cousin, do you?” he said to Jack and whirled her away, into the dancers in the square.

After another breathless, twirling dance under the stars, around the bonfire, Jack and Lucy collapsed together under a tree at the far corner of the yard. From their vantage point, they could see the family together, hear the beautiful music, and enjoy the lights and the stars as though they watched their own private cinema. Lucy laughed as Donatella coyly ignored the boy she secretly wanted. Jack brought them back heaping plates from the buffet.

“I’m stuffed but I can’t stop eating, you know?” Jack said, as he ate another slice of the zucchini
carpaccio
.

“Save some room for the
castagnaccio
. It’s a chestnut cake,” Lucy advised and explained what she’d learned while cooking it. “The food in Italy—I know there are whole guidebooks devoted to this—but it’s a revelation. Every time I’m in the kitchen with Maria, it’s something new. Just this tiny little change or tweak to make the food amazing. I’m just so inspired being here, you know?”

Lucy took another bite of the zucchini, savoring it. When she opened her eyes, Jack stared at her, a bemused smile on his face.

“What? Do I have something on my face?” Lucy asked, swiping at her face with a large, poppy-emblazoned napkin. Jack shook his head, still smiling at her. “What then?”

“I love you,” Jack answered, his eyes widening, as though he didn’t mean to blurt such a thing out, and with so little notice. Lucy blinked and lowered the plate to her lap, staring at the zucchini blankly.

“You’re so much more yourself here. You’re so happy and enthusiastic. Much more like the Lucy I remember, the one always getting us into crazy scrapes and coming up with nutty schemes. It’s good to see you so happy, Luce.”

“I am happy here,” she whispered. She did not say that she was happy here
with Jack
. Her heart pounded in her chest. She loved Jack too. She’d loved him since they were children but could she take the risk of telling him so. She’d wanted a lover, but not a love.

“I’ve been in love with you for all my life,” Jack said. His quiet words had the ring of truth.

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it? We were best friends in grade school and by high school I was heartsick with puppy love for you. But once the Parkers arrived in town—and Andrew led our football team to the state championship, it was curtains for me. You’d never have looked at scrawny Jack Hamilton twice again. Once you saw Andrew, you never looked back at me.”

The world swung and tilted as the weight of their shared history shifted around her shoulders, swaying and righting her. Once again, she felt like a sailboat, tossed in a rough sea.

“That’s not . . .” true she’d started to say, though she could see he believed it. His green eyes blazed with certainty that he spoke the truth.

At least from his perspective.

“It’s not? Yes, it is. Andrew was larger than life, a sports star, the king of our school. I was just your scrawny best friend. You never thought of me that way.”

“Wait a minute. It’s you who never thought of me like that! I used to write our names in hearts together. I used to sign my name Mrs. Lucy Hamilton and dream of living in that big house with your family. You’re the one who always told me what a good pal I was, just one of the guys, even the dreaded ‘you’re like a sister to me.’”

“Yeah, after I realized you’d be my sister-in-law.”

Lucy ignored him. “When we were dancing at the Homecoming, I wanted you to kiss me so badly. I actually ached for it. And you didn’t.”

“I was still a kid. I didn’t know how to kiss you. I wanted to—desperately.”

“What about Jenny?”

“I loved her but I was really crazy about the Parker family, the family I always wanted rather than the pack of cold fish that I got.”

“So what are you saying?” Lucy whispered. “That our whole lives have been a lie. A sham? That our kids . . .” Her voice cracked and she swallowed hard against the lump in her throat, blinking against the unshed tears burning behind her eyes. Jack sighed and leaned against the low-slung stone retaining wall. He stared out into the darkness, biting his lip before speaking.

“Of course, I don’t regret my boys. I adore them. And I love Juliet. I know you love the boys too. Don’t you see? The Parkers came between us like . . . a tree. We got tangled in it and now, now we’re both free again to do what we want and to follow our hearts.”

“No one is free like that.”

“Why do you think Nonna sent you here?”

“I don’t know. Tony died in 1988. She had over twenty-five years to come here and she didn’t.”

“Because she didn’t want to disrupt his life with Maria. But, if Maria was gone, if she’d had the opportunity we do now . . .”

“Don’t say that. It sounds like you’re wishing Maria dead—that you wished Andrew dead.”

“No, never. Andrew was my best friend. But Andrew is gone. Jenny left me. I think Belladonna and Paolo would have killed for the chance we have right now. We lost out on twenty years together. But, we’re only forty years old. We shouldn’t lose out on all the time we have left. I’m damned if I’m going to miss my chance again. I love you, Lucy Castillo Parker, and I want to marry you.”

“Can you honestly stand there and tell me you think this will all work out when we get home? We’re here in a fantasyland, Jack. Our real lives, our real responsibilities, our real selves don’t exist here. What will it do to our children?”

“I’m not saying there aren’t obstacles to overcome but I think we owe it to ourselves to try. I love you. Can you honestly stand there and tell me you don’t love me?”

“I can’t marry you,” Lucy said, terrible finality in her voice.

“I’m glad you found your grandfather and that we fulfilled Nonna’s wishes. But, now that it’s done, I’m going home. I never figured you for such a coward, Lucy Castillo. Nonna Belladonna would be ashamed of you,” Jack said before he stormed away.

Lucy groped for the locket at her neck, too stunned to think. After the feast, she made her excuses and rushed back to the hotel. Jack’s suitcase and knapsack were gone. Only the sheets, rumpled from their earlier lovemaking, remained to remind her of him.

Revere Beach, Massachusetts
Summer 1955

On the last day of summer 1955, Belladonna Castillo sat on the sand at crowded Revere Beach surrounded by her sisters-in-law, her mother-in-law, and an enormous gaggle of kids, mostly her nieces and nephews. Her only child, Susan, bossed her younger cousins into constructing a sandcastle to her exacting specifications.

Belladonna didn’t remember giving birth to Susan Ava Castillo on the day of the German surrender. Everything from that dark time seemed a blur. Now, ten years on, her life before becoming an American matron seemed like a movie, something that happened to someone else in another life.

Nonna Lucia handed out the picnic supplies, serving her only son, Tony, first. Susan accepted her peanut butter sandwich and reached for a Coke. Belladonna picked at the antipasti they’d packed. The enticing scent of frying clams wafted on the breeze from the fish shack as a group of rowdy boys settled next to her. One bore the shiny skin of burn scars over his shoulders. Though he looked young, Bella wondered if he’d been injured in the war. He bit into an enormous roast beef sandwich. Bella glanced away, her mouth watering, before she could ask him for a bite.

Her pregnant again sister-in-law, Peggy, smoked a cigarette. The smoke made Belladonna queasy. She hadn’t had this weak of a stomach since her pregnancy with Susan. Would God finally grant her the son Tony longed for? After ten long years, it seemed unlikely. Bella stood and stretched, pulling her beach cover-up on.

She smiled at Susan. “Do you want to go with me on the carousel?”

Susan rolled her gray-blue eyes. “Carousels are for babies.”

“Tell you what, Susie-cakes, if you eat all your sandwich, I’ll take you on the Cyclone.” Tony stole a potato chip from Susan’s plate and winked at her. “That okay, Donna?”

“After eating?” Bella answered but knew she’d lost the battle already when Susan beamed at Tony and bit into her sandwich eagerly.

Bella shrugged and headed up to the Boulevard to walk. She stopped at a small round display of postcards, wondering if Susan would want a picture of the Cyclone or the beach to tack up in her room among the posters of crooners and movie stars that papered her walls. A washed out postcard of Monet’s Water Lilies snagged on the wall as she turned the display. Tommaso flashed through Bella’s mind, pressing a packet of postcards bound with a ribbon into her hands. She drifted away from the display and walked on, lost in memories of Ali d’Angelo.

Though she and Tony were happy together, raising a wonderful child, she missed Ali d’Angelo and Italy, her family and friends. Susan and Tony passed her, holding hands. Susan tugged Tony toward the coaster, her fearless, American daughter. Her husband laughed as he indulged her. Bella stopped near the fence to watch them ride as the most popular tune of the summer,
Rock Around the Clock
, poured out of a nearby dance hall. Enviously, she watched the couples dancing inside. Tony didn’t have the flexibility to dance due to his war injuries. She tapped her foot, enjoying the music.

Unbidden, she remembered dancing in the caves with Paolo as he hummed the tune, their cheeks pressed together. As if to echo her melancholy mood, Glenn Miller’s
String of Pearls
poured out of the dance hall. She pushed away from the fence, not wanting to think of Paolo and all she’d lost. She stumbled back into someone and turned to apologize. She recognized the man from the beach, with the burned shoulders.

“
Scusi
,” Bella said, Italian still instinctive after all this time. “So sorry.”

“Bella Rossi?”

She jerked. Everyone here called her Donna and she hadn’t used her maiden name in over a decade. She peered closer. The man was familiar but . . .

“It’s Vittorio Innocenti.”

“Vittorio?” Bella parroted. “But how?”

“I could ask you the same! How are you, Bella?”

“How are you alive?” Bella blurted before she could stop herself. “You were in the square that day, in the church?”

“Somehow, the grace of God, the shots missed me. After the soldiers left, I made it to the basement of the church and crawled to the tunnels into the caves before I passed out from the smoke.” Here he shrugged and waved at his back. “I woke up in the caves days later.”

“How did you get here?” Bella waved to the picturesque beach, nestled on Massachusetts Bay, with a clean sweep of sand and a sparkling sea. They seemed far away from their tiny Italian village in the clouds. They sat together as Vittorio told her of his flight to America. “Have you seen anyone from Ali d’Angelo? From our town?”

“Tommaso never came home from the war. My sister still lives in Florence with her husband and children. But, no, no one else I know of survived the burning of Ali d’Angelo.”

They exchanged contact information. As he walked away, the only question in her mind was,
could Paolo be alive? And how would she ever find out?