Dolci di Love (26 page)

U
pstairs in the trattoria, Violetta, Luciana, and Fiorella fell away from the window where they had been spying on what was happening on the terrace below.

‘Now that,' whispered Luciana, ‘was the moment we've all been waiting for.'

‘Are you sure?' said Violetta. ‘He had a funny expression on his face if you ask me.'

‘Have you forgotten what a man in love looks like?' hissed Fiorella.

‘In the name of the Santa Ana di Chisa, it was the moment, Violetta,' Luciana said. ‘It was definitely the moment.'

‘You need to get your eyes fixed,' Fiorella agreed. ‘Trust us, your plan was successful.'

Violetta looked at Fiorella, then at her sister. She did trust them.

‘Well, it wasn't unsuccessful,' she conceded.

T
he first Sunday of the following July, Lily woke up and pulled back the curtain in her apartment. It was another beautiful day in Montevedova—all the better for being the inaugural feast day of Santa Ana di Chisa.

The huge
festa
had been months in the planning and there was much to do, as it was an
amorucci
-focussed affair and there was a lot of
amorucci
still to be made.

First, though, Lily did what she'd done every single morning for the past four months. She tiptoed over to the crib in the corner of the room and peeked in to see if her son was awake. This ritual, which seemed as ingrained in her now as blinking or breathing, never failed to fill her with the simple bliss of being content, of being lucky, of being exactly where she wanted to be. It was a perfect way to start the day.

Matteo—named for the Italian neighbour of Daniel's childhood—was awake, lying happily on his back, his big brown eyes scrunching up with delight at the sight of his mother, his fat arms reaching for her, fingers wriggling.

She picked him up, kissed the chubby bracelets of his wrists, his dimpled knees, his soft brown cheeks then held him in the air and blew a raspberry into the warm sponge of his fat little belly. He
squealed with delight, his bare legs jiggling for joy. It was a sound Lily could not get enough of.

‘Will you turn that thing down,' Daniel grumbled from the bed, sitting up to see his wife and child silhouetted against the window, early morning Tuscany shaking itself gracefully awake behind them.

The baby turned to him and held his fat arms out in his direction, wriggling his fingers and squealing some more. Lily then delivered him to Daniel's arms for his morning cuddle.

‘I'll feed him,' she said. ‘Then I'm due at the
pasticceria
so could you watch him till the next feeding time and then bring him over?'

‘What do you say, Matteo?' Daniel asked the baby. ‘Shall we do man stuff while the old lady's in the kitchen?' Matteo waved everything he had, which they both took to mean yes.

Lily watched her husband and son nestle down together among the pillows. He was such a natural, loving, hands-on father it took her breath away every day. He took her breath away.

Not that it had been easy—she suspected that forgiveness never was—but they had managed over the past year to put so much behind them that it was once more what lay in front of them that mattered.

She had gone back to New York only once, in her first trimester, to see Rose, have a checkup with her gynaecologist, resign from Heigelmann's, and collect a few things from the apartment.

But after that, she had let go of her old life as easily as a helium balloon and not even stayed to watch it float away.

Tuscany was her lucky charm, Montevedova now her home. Her job was being a mother, making
amorucci
, and helping Daniel establish his new business exporting table wines back to the States.

She could not imagine being happier, being more loved or in love. It brought gooseflesh to her skin, tears to her eyes, and a contentment to her heart that she had thought was lost forever.

‘I don't need to say it, do I?' she said as she kissed her husband and son, her eyes glistening.

‘No, you don't.' Daniel smiled. ‘Now go to work. Matty and I have got a lot of talking about NASCAR and strip joints to get through.'

As Lily walked from their new apartment to the
pasticceria
, the Santa Ana di Chisa banners flying from windows above her snapped gently in the warm summer breeze.

The
festa
had been her idea, way back when Matteo was just an egg in her nest.

‘So who exactly is Santa Ana di Chisa?' she had asked Violetta one day when she was rolling out a batch of candied orange and pine nut
amorucci
. ‘I keep hearing her name.'

‘Yes, I am asking the same thing,' said Fiorella, another elderly but sprightly villager who had moved into Lily's old upstairs room by then, and who spoke excellent English.

‘This could be tricky,' the widow Ciacci said in Italian to Luciana. She had become a regular fixture at the open window, the
amorucci
being far more agreeable to her taste now that it was less likely to be on fire.

‘You don't know?' Lily asked Fiorella. ‘I got the feeling she was someone special around here.'

‘I try Googling her,' said Fiorella, ‘but nothing is there. I Google myself better.'

‘She is patron saint of widowed darners,' Violetta insisted.

‘She is?' asked Fiorella.

‘Let's see her dig her way out of this one,' Luciana said to the widow Ciacci.

‘I wouldn't have thought there were enough widowed darners to get their own patron saint,' said Lily.

‘We have a league of them here in Montevedova,' Violetta said
carefully. ‘And there are perhaps other leagues in other towns. We meet and we fix things and we talk.'

‘That's what you do downstairs?'

‘What stairs?' Violetta asked, fixing her with an intimidating glare.

‘So where is Santa Ana di Chisa coming from?' asked Fiorella by way of a distraction. ‘And when is the feast day?'

‘Oh, yes, there must be a party,' Lily said. ‘Or a holiday.'

‘She does not have feast day,' Violetta said. ‘She is new.'

‘How do you even get a new patron saint?' Lily asked.

‘There isn't one when we first start to look,' answered Violetta. ‘There is Santa Anne for sewing but no one for darning. Santa Catherina di Genoa look good for some time, but we lose her when we find out Genoa claim to invent pesto and everybody know pesto starts here in 1927, but nobody like it so they don't make a fuss.'

‘Is pesto the one with all the
basilico
?' asked the widow Ciacci. ‘Waste of
parmiggiano
if you ask me.'

‘What did she say?' asked Lily.

‘Tell her about Santa Rita di Cascia,' suggested Luciana.

‘There is one widow in our league,' Violetta obliged, ‘now passed away, who think Santa Rita di Cascia is good, but then we find out only reason is because Santa Rita di Cascia has stigmata, a wound on her head that smells very bad, so she become a recluse until near her death, when it smells of cinnamon rolls.'

Fiorella looked at her. ‘And?'

‘And this one widow, now passed away, she like cinnamon rolls.'

Even Fiorella looked slightly dumbfounded at this.

‘So how did you stumble on Santa Ana di Chisa?' Lily wanted to know.

‘Was not so much of a stumble,' Violetta said.

‘What does that mean?'

‘It means if we have
festa
or holiday it must be when Father Dominico is visiting Vatican because there could be some problem.'

‘Some problem?' hooted Fiorella. ‘Ooooh, I get it. I get it and I love it!' She jumped around the kitchen like the little frog she was.

‘Get what?' Lily said, reaching out to stop her bouncing.

‘Santa Ana for Anne of sewing,' Fiorella said in Italian, between laughs. ‘And Chisa for “
chi sa.
”'

‘
Chi sa
? What are you talking about?'

‘Who knows!' roared Fiorella, refusing to speak English. ‘
Chi sa
for who knows. Violetta, you are the cat's pyjamas. You made up the League's patron saint!'

‘Well, no one else found one for us,' Violetta answered in Italian.

‘What are you saying?' Lily wanted to know. She was learning the language but this was beyond her. ‘I can't understand you.'

‘Santa Ana di Chisa, she's blonde, like you,' Violetta told her. ‘But not so tall.'

And so it was decided that the feast day of Santa Ana di Chisa would be celebrated on the first Sunday in July and that as it was the Ferrettis' idea,
amorucci
would be the patron
dolci
.

Half an hour after kissing her baby goodbye on the day of the inaugural
festa
, Lily was kissing her sister hello outside the
pasticceria
.

‘I just can't get used to everything being so goddamned beautiful,' Rose said. ‘Even Al is looking pretty good these days. Who knew? I thought we were beyond that.'

‘Where is he?' asked Lily.

‘He's working on the gondola with Alessandro,' Rose answered. ‘I have a horrible feeling we may end up with one of those things in the yard back in Connecticut.'

‘Well, at least you're nearer to water,' Lily said, giving her sister a hug. ‘Thank you so much for being here, Rose. All of you.'

‘Are you kidding me? A summer vacation in Tuscany? I admit, at first I didn't want to bring the family with me, but with every passing day, I swear, those kids are more adorable and Al a little less past his sell-by date. There must be something in the air.'

They both lifted their noses and sniffed.

‘Rosewater and almond,' Lily said. ‘Are the kids already in the kitchen?'

‘You betcha. Those little old ladies came out and snatched them right out from under me.'

The door tinkled as Lily opened it to go in. ‘Are you coming?' she asked her sister.

‘Oh, no, I bow to your undisputed superiority in the kitchen,' Rose said, with a smile. ‘I'm going to take a walk in the Italian sunshine with only a large pastry for company if you don't mind.'

‘See you in the piazza?'

‘See you in the piazza.'

Lily's happy heart swelled even more when she walked into the kitchen and saw the production line of children gathered around the old refectory table.

Jack and Harry were arguing with each other, as usual, but also competing for the attention of Francesca, who was instead in the thrall of Emily and Charlotte, who in turn were besotted by the extremely beautiful Ernesto.

Violetta, Luciana, and Fiorella sat in the corner of the room, gossiping in Italian, something that, with Lily at the helm of the
pasticceria
, they now had a lot more time for.

The Ferretti sisters were in extremely good humour. They'd started a fund, so Violetta told her, with the increasingly healthy profits from the
pasticceria
and so were both taking expensive medication for their arthritis, which made them far more limber. Violetta in particular had a new spring in her step thanks to the added advantage of a stent in her heart, which had, unbeknownst to
her, been giving her chest trouble for quite some years. They both had new dentures.

There were many meetings down the secret stairs Lily wasn't supposed to know about to plan where else this health fund should be spent, and she had noticed that a lot of the old women she often found huddling around the fluted bowls in the
pasticceria
now bore new white teeth and more than a couple had hearing aids.

The sisters, Fiorella, and a handful of other old darners were now in such good health, so Lily had been told, that they were planning a trip to Cremona to broaden their horizons. It was the birthplace of Stradivari, and now that they could hear better, they particularly liked violin music.

In fact, they had it playing in the kitchen, although it was hard to hear it over the sound of the children making
amorucci
.

Jack, at eleven, had been skeptical about the whole business of baking to begin with but actually liked the scientific part of getting the right combination of ingredients and producing the right result, and he was good at organising the other children to do things for him.

Harry had a thing for knives and so liked chopping, although he had to be watched, and the twins would do pretty much what Jack told them to, unless they were busy fussing over Ernesto, who had no interest in what was going on at all but just loved being fussed over.

Francesca made it clear that she was in charge of the cookie cutter, but as the production line rolled out, she allowed her ‘cousins' all to have a turn.

For the next couple of hours, Lily wrangled the gang of children as they mixed, baked, cooled, sliced, baked, cut, and tasted so that when Daniel arrived with Matteo, the last of the
amorucci
was ready to be packed up and carried to the piazza for the
festa
.

She and her husband then tottered up the hill, laden with boxes
and surrounded by the excitable children, arriving in the square to find it transformed into a humming marketplace built around a heart-shaped table already bearing dozens of fluted bowls, each one piled high with
amorucci
. The table had been Carlotta's idea, and she was there decorating it. She had quite an artistic eye, as it turned out, and had left the Borsolini brothers for good to nanny Francesca and Ernesto and help out in the
pasticceria
.

Alberto had one of four wine stalls on the square. There were two pecorino stands, four salamis, two cashmeres, three souvenirs, three linens, one air freshener, Mario's gelati, five fresh pasta, six fruit and vegetable, a tourist office stand, and a temporary Poliziano. The Borsolini brothers had strangely not received any of the information about the
festa
nor been invited to the planning meetings, and also missing was the parish priest, Father Dominico, who had been called away to Rome for a meeting with the Pope, which for curious reasons never eventuated.

For a couple more hours, Lily worked the stall as locals and tourists helped themselves to the free
amorucci
piled up in the bowls, then bought packet after packet after packet to take home. Violetta and Luciana would be able to afford bionic limbs on the proceeds of the inaugural Santa Ana di Chisa
festa
.

Finally, the crowds started drifting off, and looking up across the piazza, Lily forgot her weary legs as she saw her sister and Al standing at Mario's gelati stand. He too had done a roaring trade: his
amorucci
-flavoured gelato proving more popular even than the triple chocolate. It had been Francesca's idea to put the outside bits of the
cantucci
hearts into an ice cream, and commercially speaking, it was an extremely viable prospect.