“I’ll mention it to Trista. Or Mo, whenever he shows up again.”
“That bloody bastard,” Pippa said from her spot on the other side of the counter, where she was mixing something Aida couldn’t see.
Aida grinned. Pippa’s hatred for Mo wasn’t anything she tried to hide, not even from him. He egged her on every chance he got. Aida and Ilario had to intervene on more than one occasion before Pippa completely lost her cool and threw a knife at him.
“You’re right. He probably wouldn’t be the right one to ask. I can always try Disa and Fran next time I’m in London.”
“MODA won’t do nuffin’ for ya.” Pippa stopped her mixing. “Johannes asked ’em more than once to chuck in a few quid for stuff ’e reckoned was important, and they always said nah.”
Ilario cocked his head at her, his mouth twisted, eyebrow raised. He switched to English. “I don’t recall this, Pippa.”
“My memory is better than yours, ya ol’ goat.”
“No! You can’t remember a single recipe. But I have them all here.” He tapped the side of his head.
Pippa rolled her eyes. “’Cause yer makin’ ’em up every bleedin’ time ya cook.”
Ilario winked at Aida. He lowered his voice. “She might be right about that.”
After breakfast, Aida went to find Trista, who was where she almost always was, bent over her desk in her office.
“Trista, did you see the news about the Goethe museum?”
She lifted her watery eyes from the computer in front of her. “Yes.”
Aida was surprised by her assistant’s response. “Doesn’t it upset you?”
“No, being upset by something like that does no good.”
“We spent so much time there though. It was the first place I researched for MODA. I’d hate to see it close. It’s also crucial for my novel research. Losing access to those collections would be a huge blow.”
Trista clicked her nails against the desk. “What are you asking me?”
Aida’s frustration rose within her, a tight ball that sat at the back of her neck. “Do you think MODA might consider giving them funding? They must have charitable obligations. Or Lady Ozie might.”
For a moment, Aida thought that Trista might laugh.
“No, they wouldn’t consider it. After MODA records a location, they never go back.”
Aida had stopped asking Trista why she was doing this work, because the aide never had an answer for her. But now she couldn’t keep that curiosity in.
“I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t MODA care about the location afterward? They went to all the trouble to understand it in the first place.”
“The project is over. There is no need to go back to it.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Why doesn’t it matter anymore? The very reason we cataloged it is to record how it makes people happy. And now the happiness will be gone.”
Trista returned to staring at her computer. “And your point is?” She didn’t look up.
Aida knew she wasn’t going to get anything else out of her assistant. Angry and disheartened, she left Trista to her work and retreated to her own office. She slipped through the glass double doors to the balcony that overlooked the garden, leaned on the marble railing, and stared down into the squares of cypress below.
Several parakeets flitted between the bushes, their green wings a blur, their song a balm to Aida’s frustration. She had found herself coming to this spot more and more often lately, as she mused on the increasing uneasiness that had started to creep into her work at MODA. During the first three months of the job, when it was just a trial period, she could ignore the weird ways of the company. Now, where there was once just weirdness, there was awrongness, an undercurrent that could sweep her under if she let it. She tried to pinpoint when the unrest had lodged. She suspected it was before she returned to Boston, but she couldn’t fix her feelings about any specific place or incident. When she attempted to recall those moments, her memory was hazy and indistinct. And when she reflected on her duties for MODA, she could only find enjoyment in her work, an extremely lucrative paycheck in her pocket, and full support for her shift toward work in fiction. She especially loved writing novels. So why did she feel so weirdly discontent?
“I’m only thirty-four,” she said to the parakeets. “I can’t be losing my mind yet.”
One of the birds flew up to the railing near her and alighted for the briefest second. It noted Aida, then swooped back down to be with its friends. Aida sighed and went back inside.
She’d barely settled into her chair when her phone buzzed. She almost sent the call to voicemail but paused when Mara’s name flashed on the screen. Her new agent was another strange thing to come out of this bizarre MODA arrangement. It stillbaffled Aida that she had been assigned an agent before she even had a finished book to show for it, let alone the credentials to justify one. The whole process had been surreal, moving at a speed that didn’t quite seem real. Mara had been enthusiastic from the beginning, oddly so, as if she already knewThe Shadows of Tuscanywas destined to sell. And sell fast.
