Bliss and the Art of Forever (A Hope Springs Novel) (7 page)

He’d been an academic, he and her mother both, which made Brooklyn’s choice of profession somewhat fated. Theirs had been a house of learning: documentaries and discussion, books and brainstorming. Very little of what she’d read or watched had been for fun. Fun, her father said, was in thinking through puzzles, in solving problems strategically, in knowing things few others did. Even so, it wasn’t about being smarter. Their family, he’d told her, simply used their minds more judiciously.

Artie had made her see fun differently. No. Artie had introduced her to fun. It hadn’t made her think less of her father; it had made her appreciate Artie’s love of life more. He’d had street smarts, and a four-year degree, and the sort of empathy her father didn’t understand because her father read pages, not people.

And though she laughed at her susceptibility to the pull of the superficial, she couldn’t deny the attraction of Artie’s tattoos.

He’d had the most amazing series of firefighting tats on both arms and shoulders, and across his upper back. Helmets and hoses. Ladders and axes. Flags and eagles, and dates he never wanted to forget. Sadly, he’d lost a comrade during their eighth year of marriage; she’d gone with him when he’d added that one framed in a helmet shield.

Jean was right when she’d said Artie’s need to take care of people had made him good at his job. That same compassion had been a big part of the reason she’d fallen in love with him. They’d met at a Labor Day barbecue thrown by his station’s firefighters and their wives. Artie had been single, and Brooklyn the guest of a girlfriend whose brother worked Artie’s same shift.

The brother had decided to play matchmaker. His matchmaking had worked. Brooklyn had been dazzled, swept off her feet. Artie had made sure she had enough to eat, that she was never without something to drink, that she met all of his friends and their families. That she learned everything about him time allowed. That he learned everything about her she was willing to share. That he had her number and her permission to call. He wanted to get together.

Oh, the memories, she mused, opening the hope chest at the foot of her bed and sitting on the floor in front of it. Thinking back to those early days never failed to bring on the tears. Sad tears, yes, but joyful ones, too. He’d been amazing. One of a kind. At least to her, coming from the world of academics, and she’d fallen hard.

The life of the party, her Artie. The jester. Always with a comeback, but never insulting or at another’s expense. He’d been a big, bright light, and he’d shone down on her days, which were filled with term papers and textbooks, her nights, too. Her whole life, really. She could’ve majored in dull and boring. Until Artie had come along and saved her from herself. And from cats.

What he’d seen in her . . . it had taken her a long time to make sense of it. How he’d needed her quiet nature. They shouldn’t have fit together; their personalities couldn’t have been more dissimilar, their interests more diverse. Yet each brought to the relationship what the other was lacking, whether due to nurture or nature or something else. As much as she’d wanted to get to the bottom of their attraction, she’d finally managed to stop analyzing and simply enjoyed.

Later, she’d realized his clowning was a crutch. He’d used it to get through the dark side of his work, to take his mind off the destruction, the devastation, the loss; how could she blame him? She would never have been able to cope with the things he carried with him. Laughter, she supposed, was a better way to shore up his courage than drinking or drugs. That didn’t make it any less addictive, or keep her from worrying when she found him in tears.

Shaking off the memories, she peered into the hope chest, trying to decide if she was up for more sorting and culling and packing tonight. She thought of Jean, living in the same place as long as she had. Brooklyn would’ve been only a year younger than Adrianne Drake when the Dials bought the house next door.

Of course, thinking of Adrianne had her thinking of Callum. On a regular Friday, Bliss would be closed by now, but with tomorrow being Valentine’s Day, Adrianne would be with her grandparents while he worked late.

She wondered how many of his temp staff stayed late. Wondered, too, if Lena did. Then she reached into the hope chest for a stack of folders—she used the chest as a file cabinet for paperwork, storing tax records instead of her dreams—because what Lena and Callum did was not her business. And why she was even thinking there might be something between them, when neither had given off anything but an employer-employee vibe . . .

Enough.
She had an entire house to organize and no time to moon over Callum Drake. Deciding to go through the files at the kitchen table, she grabbed the chest’s lid to lower it, frowning as she caught sight of a sheet of paper stuck between the interior and its recessed tray. She tugged on the tray’s hinges, then just sat there, staring.

How in the world had she forgotten tucking away the folder with all of her Cinque Terre notes? The ones she’d made after talking to Bianca, Artie’s cousin who lived in Vernazza? Especially when the contents had played a vital role in her tendering her resignation after teaching for twelve years. She thought back to last summer . . .

She’d run out of shelf space on her living room’s bookcases, and the books in her bedroom had become a hazard. Stacks leaned like the tower in Pisa against the side of her dresser, against the wall beside her dresser, and had spread across the top of her dresser like weeds. Then there were those taking over her vanity table, the ones she’d started shoving under the bed, and others filling the drawers of the bureau that had been Artie’s.

The new case she bought, the first of what she feared would be many to line the house’s long hall, meant rearranging her whole library—a collection of hardcovers and paperbacks and oversized art books in so many shapes it had taken her an entire weekend to sort them and shelve them, some staying in the living room, some remaining in the bedroom, some moving to their new home in the hall.

It was while transferring the books from the bureau that she’d unearthed the Bible bequeathed to Artie by his maternal grandmother. The family heirloom had been in the bottom drawer of the makeshift storage space for years; she remembered leaving it there with several of Artie’s political thrillers when packing away some of his clothes.

Finding it the way she had, sitting on the floor in front of the bureau as she’d done so often when folding her husband’s T-shirts and briefs . . . she’d been struck with myriad feelings, the most overwhelming being a sense of guilt. How had she been so remiss about keeping in touch with the members of his family since his death?

Artie had visited Italy several times before they’d married. His maternal grandparents had lived in Vernazza; his mother had grown up there, moving to the States at nineteen, where she’d married his father, and where Artie was born.

Artie had shared with Brooklyn his grandfather’s stories: of fishing and swimming and sailing, of the sun and the lush olive groves and vineyards, of the gardens and the blue-green water he and his friends had taken for granted growing up. He’d told her how his grandfather couldn’t wait until Artie, his namesake, his Arturo, was old enough to travel alone, to see it with his own eyes. To drink and breathe and relish the beauty of his Italy.

After she and Artie married, they’d made the trip four times, giving her the chance to meet and grow to love Pops and Zola before they’d passed on. Artie had wanted to visit more often. Instead, he’d put off his wishes while fulfilling hers, taking her to see One Tree Hill in Auckland, New Zealand, and the Royal Palace in Madrid. The Emerald Buddha in Bangkok, Thailand, and Norway’s Urnes Stave Church in Ornes.

The memories made her feel so selfish. She loved Artie’s family, his grandmother, his grandfather, his many cousins and their spouses and children. Time with them would’ve been the greatest gift she could’ve given Artie, but having grown up in such a sheltered environment, she’d wanted to see the world, and Artie had happily given it to her.

After running across the Bible, she’d e-mailed Bianca, Artie’s cousin she’d grown closest to. Their correspondence had become a daily thing. When she’d learned about the floods that had struck Vernazza and Monterosso three years before, Brooklyn had been horrified by her failure to check in with the family sooner. And when she learned about the local church losing nearly everything, she mentioned the Bible to Bianca.

From there, the decision was made for her to bring the Bible with her when she visited in June. The village residents would be overjoyed to have it back in their midst. Talk had then turned to Brooklyn extending her visit, and staying to help Bianca with a new teaching initiative. Thinking now about those early days of planning her trip, the notes she’d jotted while researching housing and transportation . . .

Leaving the files in the hope chest, she headed to the kitchen, where she’d left the bottle of wine she’d opened earlier. Picking up her phone, she glanced at the clock, calculated the time difference, then scrolled through her contact list and hit Talk.

“Pronto?”
came the answer less than thirty seconds later.

“Bianca? It’s Brooklyn,” she said, sitting as she reached for her wine. “Did I wake you?”

“Brooklyn! I’m just getting ready to turn in.
Come stai?
”

“
Sto Bene!
And you?”

“
Bene! Bene!
And looking very much forward to seeing you in June. It seems so far away, yet your visit is getting closer all the time. It is hard to believe your trip has been a year in the planning.”

“I’ve been packing some of my belongings to store in my absence. I know several of the vases and figurines I have belonged to Grandmother Zola. Are there any you would like to have returned?”

“Oh, Brooklyn, yes.
Grazie.
I was just thinking about this the other day. Do you still have the majolica vase? The one with Adam and Eve and the goats and the cherubs?”

“And the creepy faces on the sides beneath the snake handles?” Brooklyn asked, and Bianca laughed.

“They are serpents. Not snakes. It’s Adam and Eve!”

“Yes, I still have it.” It was sitting in the corner of the living room, between two of her bookcases. The thing was gaudy and hideous and nearly three feet tall, but she’d kept it anyway. Because it had belonged to Zola.

“I would love to have that. Actually, Daniela is the one who would love to have it. I think it might be rather valuable and, well, you know Daniela.”

“She’s welcome to it.” And all its dust, Brooklyn mused, cringing. “I’ll go ahead and ship it to you. I’ll be traveling light, so sending it ahead will be more expedient. And please let me know if you think of anything else.”

They talked for another ten minutes, then rang off, their conversation leaving Brooklyn cheered, though still anxious; she had so much left to do, though in actuality, her anxiety was rooted elsewhere—in the two-year anniversary of Artie’s death, when she would visit the family’s vineyard and olive grove in Vernazza, and once there, scatter her late husband’s ashes.

Italy. Not the Golden Gate Bridge or the Great Lakes or the Grand Canyon. But Italy. Brooklyn was going to Italy with no definite plans to come back. Callum got that her husband’s family was there, and she wanted to see them, but she couldn’t make a quick trip of it? Tour the States if she needed a change of scenery? Teach someplace close if she was tired of Hope Springs?

He wanted to get to know her, but how smart was the investment of time and emotion when she was going to take off in a few months?

And, yeah. He couldn’t believe this was where his mind had gone at the end of what had been a heinously busy Valentine’s Day. Even without checking the receipts he knew he’d had a record one. But rather than celebrate the income and the exposure, he was stuck on Brooklyn Harvey leaving town.

What was wrong with him that he was making her life, her plans, her choices all about him?
That one’s simple. She’s everything good you could’ve had in your life all these years if you hadn’t screwed up so completely.

Sick of working with heart-shaped molds, he thought about tossing them instead of washing them. But replacing them next year would cost him, and he was done being stupid. Moving the polycarbonate trays from the marble work surface to the stainless-steel sink, he turned on the hot water and let it run, the room that he kept at a crisp sixty-five degrees growing damp from the steam.

Since day one of opening Bliss, end-of-day cleanup was on him. No candy mold unscrubbed. No floor tile unmopped. No bottle of colored cocoa butter unshelved. His daughter and his livelihood. He saw to every detail of both. At least the ones he knew about, and he
would
be having a talk with his mother—again—about backing off. As far as Bliss was concerned . . . maybe one day he’d let a crew handle things, but until then, iron fist, baby.

Shutting off the water, he headed out of the kitchen and into the store where his Roomba had been vacuuming for the last hour. This was his time to unwind, to put his world in order, to think. To process the day and assure himself it was exhaustion that had him imagining he’d heard the rumble of Harleys outside at the same time his father had stopped by this afternoon with Addy. He hadn’t heard them. He couldn’t have.

Addy was his. Officially. Legally. He’d spent every penny he could get his hands on to make sure he had sole custody. The money may have come from questionable sources. The evidence against the woman who’d carried his daughter nine months may have been enough to cost her her life. He didn’t know. He didn’t want to know. She was dangerous. She would’ve ruined Addy the way she’d very nearly ruined him.

A knock on the glass of the shop’s front door brought his head around, loose strands of his hair flying into his face with the movement, his panicked heart slamming against the cage of his ribs.
Cool it, hotshot. It’s not her. She’s not here. Addy’s safe.
He knew he was right, yet he couldn’t rid himself of the fear that bubbled up in a hard, choking boil.