What was tragic aboutthissituation was that she was deathly afraid, all of a sudden, that she’d fallen in love with him very much the way a stone falls off the side of a cliff. And worse, that she’d done so that very first night.
Possibly the very first moment she had looked over and been caught so completely, so inescapably, in that grave gaze of his.
And for once, she didn’t shy away from that thought inside of her, the way she’d been doing at the faintest hint of it. She made herself breathe through it instead. She let it settle.
And then something else occurred to her. She remembered—as perhaps she always had, and had always convinced herself to ignore, push away, deny—that she had heard about this village from him.
That she and her mystery man had lain together in a tangle in that hotel bed, and one of the few things he’d told her was about a picture-perfect village in the hills of Tuscany, where the houses were ancient and bristled about on an old hill, there was a castle in the distance, and there were cypress trees on all sides, like guardian angels.
It had been Antonluca all along.
Hannah felthollowed outby this realization.
What a terrible fool she’d been. What a terrible fool she was.
The next day, she made her dutiful call home to Nebraska, a habit she wasn’t sure why she insisted on keeping. And as her parents talked, somehow managing to make it seem as if their very small lives doing the same small things they’d always done were somehow more virtuous and worthy of respect than anything Hannah could possibly be doing—off in Italy with what anyone else would agree was a high-level, exciting sort of job—she found herself getting more and more…notangry.That was too sharp.
Still, something was bubbling away inside of her and getting more insistent until finally, when they paused in the middle of a typical recitation of what was happening in their lives—which was in no way different from any other week, or any other year, because their implication was always that it should have been good enough for Hannah if it was good enough for them—she cracked a little bit.
She wasn’t proud, but she did.
“I have some news, actually,” she found herself saying, before they could recite the menu at the local diner where they liked to go on Tuesdays. She was standing at her window while Dominic and Cinzia were playing in the lane outside, bundled up against the cold, both red-cheeked and laughing.
“Let me guess,” said her mother with sniff. “You had some or other exciting promotion, no doubt.”
And it wasn’t new, but never failed to amaze Hannah how they could take things that ought to have been, if not good or thrilling, at least neutral. Whowouldn’twant a promotion? Why would that be something worthy of the disdain she heard in her mother’s voice?
But she shook that off. “Not a promotion, no,” Hannah said, the overly cheery voice she assumed whenever speaking to her parents, because she’d learned long ago that letting them see that she was upset not only didn’t change anything, it madeherfeel worse. “Dominic’s father and I have reconnected.” There was nothing but silence and she already hated herself for bringing this up, but she forged ahead anyway. “He wants to marry me.”
And surely, at last, she’d hit upon a thing they actually wanted. She waited for some expressions of excitement. Or at least a gesture toward a positive reaction.
Her mother sniffed. That was all.
After a while, her father sighed. “If he really wanted to do the right thing,” he said, as if Hannah was not very bright and he had to talk down to her to get her to understand how very not bright she was, “it wouldn’t have taken him this long, would it?”
And for entirely too long after they hung up, Hannah stayed where she was, staring out the window but not seeing anything. Or maybe it was that she was seeing too much, and all of it clearly, for once. When she could finally bring herself to move, she pulled on her warm coat and stamped into her cozy boots, then went outside to join Cinzia and Dominic in the fresh, bracing afternoon.
Dominic was running around in gleeful circles, shrieking with joy. It was impossible to look at a happy child like him and do anything but smile, so that was what Hannah did.
Her son was pure joy, and she took terrific pride in loving him fiercely, and absolutely.
Because over her dead body wouldheever question whether or not he was loved.
“Another pleasant call home, I gather,” said Cinzia from beside her.
Hannah shook her head and didn’t get into it, because what was there to say? It shamed her, if she was honest. Because surely there had to be something deeply unlovable in her if not a single member of her family could manage to muster up even the littlest bit of common courtesy. There had to be something terrible about her that she just couldn’t see.
And if her friend couldn’t see it, Hannah certainly didn’t want to be the one to tell her.
“I told them some news that they were not particularly interested in,” she said instead of dissecting all the weary sighs and little digs. But she smiled at her friend. “I think you might be, though. Dominic’s father wishes to marry me.”
The old woman eyed her for a moment. “ByDominic’s father, just to be perfectly clear, we are discussing themaestrohimself, are we not? Antonluca Aniello, localcastellodweller and currently the owner of La Paloma.”
“Yes,” Hannah said quietly. “You’ve met.”
They stood there together, watching as Dominic found a stick that delighted him and started up an imaginary sword fight right there in the middle of the lane.
“You do not seem overcome with joy at this news,” Cinzia pointed out, rather diplomatically.
