Love & Gelato (34 page)

I know. Depressing.

I only half watched it because I couldn't stop looking at Howard. He had this big, booming laugh and he kept leaning over to tell me the names of places Audrey and her love interest were visiting. He even bought me a giant bag of candy, and even though I ate all of it I barely tasted it. It might have been the longest two hours of my life.

On the way back Sonia insisted I sit in the front. “So what did you think of the movie?”

“It was cute. Sad, though.”

Howard glanced back at Sonia. “You still meeting up with Alberto tonight?”

“Argh. Yes.”

“Why argh?”

“You know why. I swore off blind dates years ago.”

“Don't think of it as a blind date. Think of it as going out for drinks with someone I really admire.”

“Anyone but you and I'd say no.” She sighed. “But then again, what's the worst that could happen? I've always said that a terrible date in Florence is better than a good date anywhere else.”

Suddenly I realized I knew absolutely nothing about her. “Sonia, how did you end up in Florence?

“Came here on vacation the summer after grad school and fell in love. It didn't last, but it got me to plant some roots here.”

I groaned inwardly. Maybe that was just part of the Italian experience. Come to Italy. Fall in love. Watch everything blow up in your face. You could probably read about it on travel websites.

Sonia met my eyes in the mirror. “You know, people come to Italy for all sorts of reasons, but when they stay, it's for the same two things.”

“What?”

“Love and gelato.”

“Amen,” Howard said.

I looked out my window and put all my attention on keeping the tears from seeping out from under my eyelids. Just gelato wasn't going to cut it. I wanted the love part too.

When we got back to the cemetery Howard dropped Sonia off at her house, then circled back to ours. The headlights swept eerily across the headstones, and the combination of candy and nerves was making me absolutely sick to my stomach.

We were finally alone. It was time to tell him. I took a deep breath. I'd start talking in three . . . two . . . two . . . two . . .

Howard broke the silence. “I wanted to tell you again how much it means to me to have you here. I know this hasn't been easy, but I really appreciate you giving it a try. Even if it's just for the summer. And I think you're great. I really do. I'm proud of you for jumping in and exploring Florence. You're an adventurer, just like your mom.” Then he smiled at me, like I was the daughter he'd always hoped to have, and my remaining courage melted like an ice cube in the heat.

I couldn't tell him. Not tonight.

Maybe not ever.

When we got inside I made some lame excuse about another headache, then trudged up to my room and threw myself on my bed. I did a lot of throwing myself on the bed these days. But what was I going to do? I couldn't tell Howard, but I also couldn't
not
tell him.

Would it be so awful if I just stayed the rest of the summer and then went home without telling him? But then what about when Father's Day rolled around and he expected a card from me? Or what about when I got married and he thought he was the guy who was supposed to walk me down the aisle? What then?

My phone starting ringing and I jumped off my bed and crossed the room in two flying leaps.
Please be Ren. Please be Ren, please be—

Thomas.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Lina. This is Thomas.”

“Hey.” I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I looked like a puffer fish. Who'd suffered some kind of emotional breakdown.

“Did you get my text?”

“Yes. Sorry I didn't answer. Today's been kind of . . . crazy.”

“No problem. What do you think about the party? Do you want to come with me?”

His voice was so uncomplicatedly British. And he was talking about a
party.
Like it mattered. I ran my hand through my hair. “What is it exactly?”

“Eighteenth birthday party for one of the girls who just graduated. She lives in the coolest place—almost as big as Elena's. Everyone will be there.”

“Everyone” as in Ren and Mimi?
I shut my eyes. “Thanks for asking me, but I don't think I'll be able to make it.”

“Oh, come on. You
have
to celebrate with me. I passed my driver's test yesterday, and my dad said I could pick you up in his BMW. And you really don't want to miss this party. Her parents hired an indie band I've been listening to for more than a year.”

I tucked the phone between my ear and shoulder and rubbed my eyes. After everything that had happened today, a party seemed laughably normal. Also, it seemed weird to go out with someone when I'd clearly fallen for someone else. But what do you do when your “someone else” wants nothing to do with you? At least Thomas was still
talking
to me.

“Let me think about it.”

Thomas exhaled. “All right. You think about it. I'd pick you up at nine. And it's formal, so you'd need to dress up. I promise you'll have a good time.”

“Formal. Got it. I'll call you tomorrow.”

We hung up and I tossed my phone on the bed, then walked over to the window and looked out. It was a clear night and the moon winked at me like a giant eye. Like it had been watching this whole complicated story play out, and now it was having the last laugh.

Stupid moon. I put both hands on the window sash and practically threw myself on top of it, but the window wouldn't budge.

Fine.

THE NEXT MORNING I WOKE
just before dawn. I'd passed out on my bed fully dressed, and there was a dish of spaghetti perched on the edge of my dresser, the tomato sauce pooled in oily clumps. Guess Howard had tried to bring me dinner.

Gray hazy light was filtering through my window, and I got up and walked quietly over to my suitcase, rummaging around for some clean running clothes. Then I picked up the journal and crept silently through the house, leaving through the back door.

I made my way toward the back gate. Not even the birds were up yet and dew covered everything like a big, gauzy spiderweb. My mom was right. The cemetery looked completely different at different times of day. Predawn cemetery was sort of muted-looking, like gray had been swirled in with the rest of the colors.

I went through the back gate then broke into a run, passing where I'd met Ren for the first time.
Don't. Think. About. Ren.
It was my new mantra. Maybe I'd have it printed on a bumper sticker.

I shook the thought out of my head, then took in a deep breath, settling on a medium pace. The air was crisp and clean-smelling, like what laundry detergents are probably going for with their “mountain air” scents, and I was crazy relieved to be running. At least now it wasn't just my mind that was in overdrive.

One mile. Then two. I was following a narrow little footpath worn into the grass by someone who had made this route a habit, but I had no idea if their destination was the same as mine. For all I knew, I was headed in the complete wrong direction. Maybe it didn't even exist anymore, and then—BAM. The tower. Jutting out of the hill like a wild mushroom. I stopped running and stared at it for a minute. It was like stumbling across something magical, like a pot of gold, or a gingerbread house in the middle of Tuscany.

Don't think about gingerbread houses.

I started running again, feeling my heart quicken even more as I neared the tower's dark silhouette. It was a perfect cylinder, gray and ancient-looking and only about thirty feet tall. It looked like the kind of place where people had been falling in love for years.

I ran right up to the base, then put my hand on the wall, trailing it behind me as I circled around to the opening. The wooden door Howard had moved for my mom was long gone, leaving a bare arched doorway that was so short I had to duck to walk under it. Inside it was empty except for a couple of shaggy spiderwebs and a pile of leaves that had probably outlasted the tree they'd come from. A crumbly spiral staircase rose through the tower's center, letting a pale circle of light into the room.

I took a deep breath, then headed for the staircase. Hopefully all my answers were at the top.

I had to walk carefully—half the steps looked like they were just waiting for an excuse to collapse—and I had to do this acrobatic hurtle over the space where the final step had once been, but finally I stepped outside. The top of the tower was basically an open platform, its circumference lined by a three-foot ledge, and I made my way over to the edge. It was still pretty dark and gray out, but the view was stunning. Like postcard stunning. To my left was a vineyard with rows of grapevines stretching out in thin silvery ropes, and everywhere else was rich Tuscan countryside, the occasional house marooned like a ship in the middle of an ocean of hills.

I sighed. No wonder this had been the place my mom had finally noticed Howard. Even if she hadn't already fallen for his sense of humor and awesome taste in gelato, she probably would have taken one look at the view and gone completely out of her mind with love. It was the sort of place that could make a stampede of buffalos seem romantic.

I set the journal down on the ground, then slowly made my way around the platform, scanning every inch of it. I
really
wanted to find some sign of my mom, a stone scratched with
H+H
or maybe some lost journal pages she'd tucked under a rock or something, but all I found were two spiders that looked at me with about as much interest as a pair of British Royal Guards.

I gave up on my little scavenger hunt and walked back to the center of the platform, wrapping my arms around myself. I needed a question answered, and I got the feeling this was the best place to ask.

“Mom, why did you send me to Italy?” My voice threw off the quiet peacefulness of everything around me, but I shut my eyes tight to listen.

Nothing.

I tried again. “Why did you send me to be with Howard?”

Still nothing. Then the wind picked up and made a whipping noise through the grass and trees, and suddenly all the loneliness and emptiness I carried around with me swelled up so big it swallowed me whole. I pressed my palms to my eyes, pain ricocheting through my body. What if my mom and my grandma and the counselor were wrong? What if I hurt this badly for the rest of my life? What if every second of every day would be less about what I had than what I'd lost?

I sank to the floor, pain washing over me in big, jagged waves. She'd told me over and over how wonderful my life was going to be. How proud she was of me. How much she wished she could be there, not just for the big moments, but for the little ones. And then she'd said she'd find a way to stay close to me. But so far, she'd just been gone. Then gone some more. And all that gone stretched out in front of me like a horizon, endless and daunting and empty. I'd been running around Italy trying to solve the mystery of the journal, trying to understand why she'd done what she'd done, but really I'd just been looking for her. And I wasn't going to find her. Ever.

“I can't do this,” I said aloud, pressing my face into my hands. “I can't be here without you.”

And that's when I got slapped. Well, maybe not slapped—it was more like a nudging—but suddenly I was getting to my feet because a word was pushing itself into my brain.

Look.

I shaded my eyes. The sun was rising over the hills, heating up the undersides of the clouds and setting them on fire in crazy shades of pink and gold. Everything around me was bright and beautiful and suddenly very clear.

I didn't get to stop missing her. Ever. It was the thing that my life had handed me, and no matter how heavy it was, I was never going to be able to set it down. But that didn't mean I wasn't going to be okay. Or even happy. I couldn't imagine it yet exactly, but maybe a day would come when the hole inside me wouldn't ache quite so badly and I could think about her, and remember, and it would be all right. That day felt light-years away, but right at this moment I was standing on a tower in the middle of Tuscany and the sunrise was so beautiful that it hurt.