Unforgotten (5 page)

“Bene, cara.”
She seemed to speak Italian without halting and dragging the words.

“Do you need anything?”

“No,
grazie
.”

Sofie straightened. “So tell me everything. Does Momma know?”

Lance laughed. “Don’t start making plans.”

Sofie turned to her. “He’s dragging his feet?”

That was one thing that could never be said about Lance.

“We’re in business together,” he said.

“Business?”

“Business.” He looked her over. “Are you finished with classes for the summer?”

“No, I’m in for the summer. It never ends.”

“Sofie’s getting her doctorate in behavioral disorders.”

Rese nodded. “Wow. Sounds like work.” And just the sort of brain exercise she’d never pursued herself, until recently, trying to understand her mother’s condition—and possibly her own.

“It’s hard.” A shadow passed over her features as Sofie slipped her loose blouse off and laid it over the back of a chair, then walked in her sleeveless top to the window. She opened the one that looked out over the street. “What’s Momma doing for dinner?”

“Ferragosto.”

“Madonna mia!”
Laughing, Sofie turned to her. “Ferragosto is the Belmont street festival. Opera, folk dancing, clowns, and food, food, food. Momma probably will make something on par with that for you.” Then to Lance, “You’d better get down there and help her.”

“I’m on vacation.”

“Then you can’t complain.”

“Would I do that?”

Sofie huffed. “Only every day of your life.”

Lance jutted his chin toward Rese. “She’s not picky.”

“That’s why she stands you, ay?” Sofie nudged him.

“No doubt.”

She picked up her briefcase with a sigh. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Rese. Now I have to study.” She headed into a room at the back and closed the door.

Rese glanced back to the grandmother, whose gaze was already, or still, trained on her.

Lance said, “Nonna, we need to talk.”

“L … ater.” She raised and dropped her hand.

He took the hand in his. “Nonna …”

“N … ot now.”

He brought her fingers to his lips. “Okay. Anything I can do for you?”

“You al … ready have.”

————

Antonia quivered as the door closed behind them. Why wouldn’t Lance leave it alone? She didn’t want to answer his questions. It was enough to have Nonno Quillan buried. She had done all she could. All she could. She couldn’t change the past. Couldn’t …

I stare at the note, stunned by his audacity.

Dear Miss Shepard,

I fear we have started off on the wrong foot. As your esteemed grandfather, Quillan Shepard, seems somewhat disposed toward me, I hope you will allow me the opportunity to extend my regrets for my imprudent comments. Will you see me this evening?

Sincerely,

Marco Michelli

Muttering under my breath, I stalk to the escritoire and snatch a small sheet of stationery. With the fine fountain pen Nonno gave me just days ago, I write:

Dear Mr. Michelli,

My nonno is the least of your concerns. He is very forward thinking and accepting. It is my papa you will have to convince, and since he is no less discerning than I, your chances remain bleak.

Most sincerely,

Antonia DiGratia Shepard

The young man who brought the first correspondence takes my answer, though Mr. Michelli could have picked up the telephone and received my refusal immediately. Did he think his formal and oldfashioned method would impress me?

But the car returns a short while later, and the youth offers my own note back. I am puzzled, then annoyed to find Marco Michelli’s answer penned on the back.

Bella Antonia,

I am up to the task, I assure you. I will call tonight at eight.

Your ardent admirer,

Marco Michelli

Ardent admirer? He pokes fun at me. I look up to offer a verbal and far less civil reply, but the youth has climbed into the car and is pulling away—no doubt as he’s been instructed. Taking the note upstairs, I fume.

Bella Antonia. Ardent admirer
. I have not overestimated his opinion of himself.
Bene
. I will see him at eight and balance his perspective. Papa will be home by then, and between us, we will teach Mr. Michelli some humility.

But Papa isn’t home by eight o’clock when Marco Michelli arrives in the same olive Studebaker Dictator his messenger drove earlier. I have served Nonno the polenta he loves and seen him to his room since he is less steady as the day wears on and the old injuries in his leg pain him. Now I am alone to face Marco Michelli, and that is better still. No one will make me keep a civil tongue.

But when he gets out of the car with a posy of violets in one hand and his mandolin in the other, I am hard-pressed to remember my ire. He approaches the porch holding out the flowers, which I bring to my nose without thinking.
Sweet violets, sweeter than all the roses …
The tune carries in my head and makes me smile. If he’d brought a big showy bouquet, I would have scorned it.

He says, “The gazebo might be a swell place to sit.”

I raise my nose from the violets. “How do you know about the gazebo?”

“Your papa suggested it. When he gave permission for me to call.” He smiles.

Oh, the nerve of him! But when he holds out his elbow, I take it. “So you transacted your business with Papa?”

“I initiated it.”

“At the bank.” We head around the house.

“In town.”

The tweed of his Norfolk jacket is coarse under my fingers. I should have grabbed a wrap myself. Away from the shelter of the porch the evening is chilly. “Why does it have to be so secret?”

“Not everyone in this country is poor, Miss Shepard. But with so many suffering, some people with a pile of jack prefer to handle it quietly.”

I look up at that. “Is it your money, really?”

He tips back his head and laughs. “I don’t guess you’re a golddigger, but you better look elsewhere if you are.”

“I don’t care about your money.”

“Or lack of.”

The path winds through the herb beds past the garage that was once a carriage house to the gazebo that looks out over the vineyard, now a tenth of the original land. We are blessed to have held on when the uncles and cousins and neighbors have all sold out or turned the land over to the bank and moved to the city. Many work for the cannery; some do jobs for the don who owns it. At least Papa takes no part in that, though he’s been invited more than once.

With his hand on my elbow, Marco assists me up the stairs. There is something to be said for a man with a few more years on him than the careless youths who call. Benches fill three sides of the gazebo, but I stand at the rail, facing west over the fields.

Marco takes the mandolin from his back and sets it on a bench, then removes his jacket and puts it over my shoulders.
“Megglio?”

“Yes, better, thanks.” My heart scampers inside my ribs. Though the darkness of his coloring suggests southern
paesano
heritage, he is tall and well-formed with a Roman bearing. I am three-quarters Italian, and when he uses the language I learned at Nonna Carina’s knee, it has a devastating impact on my decision to disdain him.

And when he picks up the mandolin and sings “Che Gelida Manina” from Puccini’s
La Bohème,
I know the gazebo will never again be wood and nails; it will forever house the notes he sends into the night that bring my heart to his feet, as he knew they would.

————

Lance closed the door of Nonna’s apartment, frustrated. “She gives stubborn a whole new face.”

Rese looked up. “How?”

“She won’t let me tell her what I have, what I found.”

“I thought she wanted you to find it.”

He expelled a short breath. “So did I.” But he was beginning to suspect a purpose-deficit disorder when it came to knowing what was expected of him.

In the dim hall he inserted the key to open his apartment. From upstairs came his nieces’ and nephews’ voices, wild with the start of vacation and making his sisters crazy, no doubt. Below,
Gianni Schicchi
s “O Mio Babbino Caro” rang out from Momma’s stereo. She didn’t always listen to opera, only when performing her Italian mother routine, triggered now by his bringing a girl home.

“Is it always this noisy?” Rese said.

“This is nothing.” It could get noisier, and in his parents’ days, before air-conditioning when all the windows were open, it had been worse still.

He gripped the knob but didn’t turn it. Standing there with Puccini’s opera coming through the floor, he wanted to take Rese in his arms and kiss the breath from her. Come to think of it, why was he holding back, anyway?
“Com
bella,”
Nonna had said, not just stating the obvious, but approving.

He took in her face—brown, thick-lashed eyes with no mascara; milk-smooth cheek that felt as soft as it looked; strong, determined chin that supported a mouth so … He leaned, but a squeal rose from the staircase at the end of the hall, followed seconds later by a rush of pale limbs and rosy spirals. Rese turned to receive Star’s hugs.

Lance hooked fingers and tapped fists with Rico. “Hey, man. Good timing.” He let them all into the apartment.

Rico whistled as Star dragged Rese into her room. “You’ve got more lives than a Hindu cat.”

“Hardly.”

“You’re walking on water,
’mano
.”

Lance glanced toward the bedroom. “If she didn’t need me at the inn, I’d be bottom feeding.”

Rico laid a book on the table, and Lance caught the title.
Beloved Sonnets
?

Rico read his thoughts. “Star likes Shakespeare. I read to her in the park.”

Lance dropped his jaw. “You can read?”

“Funny.”

“Still celibate?”

Rico grinned.

“Impossible.”

He spread his hands. “I’m a new man.”

Lance pictured Star just weeks ago with bruises from the boyfriend who “couldn’t let her go.” Moments later, she and Rico had started a chaste courtship unlike any of his others. There were issues, Star’s especially, but Rico didn’t seem to see them. He had taken the admonition not to mess with her as a holy decree, though Lance was just trying to get Star through a bad spot. He hadn’t expected Rico—who spent his life in two places, the drum set and the bedroom—to manage it indefinitely.

But who was he to judge? Maybe it was just that Tony wasn’t there to do it. Here in the city Tony’s absence gaped. The towers had come down too long ago to still feel it so bad. But Lance would have liked to show his big brother the woman he’d brought home. He’d have liked to tell him,
“This one won’t get me in trouble; she makes me better.”
And that was a feat for anyone, given his propensity to mess up.

His throat tightened as he imagined presenting her to Tony. No other introduction would have meant so much. He imagined Tony’s face, his ability to read a person’s character. He’d have seen it, that special quality in her that reached in and took hold.

“This is it, Tony. I know it.”

“Then don’t screw it up.”

I won’t
. A hard wave of desire hit him, not the kind that tempted, but the kind that put a hunger in his soul. As Rese and Star came out of the bedroom, he had to remind himself she had only agreed to a working relationship plus neck rubs. His family would assume more, that he wouldn’t have brought her unless she mattered. They would see who she was to him.

And Rese would see who he was. So far she seemed shell-shocked. Though she’d grown up on the construction sites of her dad’s renovations and worked her way into partnership with him, they’d been high-class renovations, and Sausalito was not the Bronx.

Star’s diaphanous dress clung and fluttered as she flitted over to the small refrigerator, moving through the place as though she’d been there longer than two and a half weeks. But then, she had made herself right at home in the Sonoma villa as well. She took out a soda. There wasn’t much else in there since they shopped the local markets and bakeries daily.

He hated to think what all Momma had purchased for tonight. He’d been joking about Ferragosto, but Momma would be cooking something—a lot of something. Unfortunately, quantity had never satisfied his need for quality, as Sofie pointed out—one reason he’d preferred Nonna’s kitchen to any other.

Not, as Momma thought, because he’d inherited Nonna’s scorn for anything south of Piemonte, but because cuisine from either region could be ruined, and, in their house, the Southern fare more frequently was. Momma was a beautiful dancer and a gifted instructor, but she attacked her kitchen like a member of a chain gang; heavyhanded on the seasonings, maybe to make up for the overthickened sauces, the gummy pastas, and gnocchi that could serve as cement shoes. She just couldn’t find the light touch in the kitchen that she perfected on the dance floor.

If Nonna were herself, she’d have closed down the restaurant with a sign in the window: Family Only Tonight. Then she’d have filled the space with the finest aromas and welcomed Rese with copious servings of perfectly prepared
coscia di aguello,
leg of lamb brushed with garlic and olive oil using branches of rosemary tied together, and
coniglio in porchetta,
sausage-stuffed rabbit fragrant with wild fennel. Risotto and polenta to complement but never overwhelm. Nonna’s was the only Northern Italian restaurant in the neighborhood, and she had opened it in self-defense.