“I’m assuming you are not interested?” I ask.
Marco laughs. “This hotel has been in our family for many years! Never. Poseidon is like my child.”
“You should tell him to back off, then,” I say. I think about Adam’s smile at breakfast. His easy confidence. His charm. They annoy me now.
Marco shrugs. “He knows; he does not care. It is no matter, though. There is very little we must do that will not be done in time.”
I nod, although that is a blatant lie. If we had caught my mother’s cancer earlier, if we haddone somethingabout it, shewouldn’t be dead. She’d be here right now, with me, listening to Marco with a compassionate ear. She’d have the best advice for him, too.
I push back my chair.
“I have not upset you, Ms. Silver?”
“No, of course not,” I say. And then in a moment, a flash, a millisecond, I find myself crying. I cried up until my mother’s death, daily, hourly, even. Everything set me off. Touching the coffee maker before the sun came up, the elaborate one I had wanted but wouldn’t buy for myself, so she’d given it to us for our wedding. The gardenia soap in the shower we bought on a trip to Santa Barbara years ago, and which I now keep a steady supply of. The drawer of plastic forks from delivery and take-out meals, because she could never bear to throw away plastic. Everything was a reminder of what I was losing, of what was slipping away.
But after her death it was like something in me shut off. I was numb. Frozen. I couldn’t cry. Not when the hospice nurse declared her gone, not at her funeral, not when I heard my father, a stoic man, wailing in the kitchen below us. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I was worried, maybe, that she had taken my heart with her.
Marco does not look surprised or uncomfortable. Instead, he puts a large, warm hand on my shoulder.
“It is hard,” he says.
I wipe my eyes. “What?”
“You have lost the one you were meant to come with, no?”
I think about my mother, radiant and alive, in a visor, white pants, and a loose open linen shirt, straw bag over her shoulder, laughing. I haven’t thought about her this way, so vibrant, in so long. The image nearly startles me.
I nod.
Marco smiles small. He tilts his head to the side. “Positano is a good place to let life return to you.”
I swallow. “I don’t know,” I say.
Marco’s face brightens. “In time,” he says. “In time, you will discover. And in the meantime, enjoy.”
He releases me and looks out over the balcony. The sun is now fully up. Things are light and clear.
“Have a lovely day, Ms. Silver. I suggest a walk to town. Take in the beach and have a lovely lunch at Chez Black.”
I’m startled by his suggestion. It’s the one place I’ve known by name for years.
“The caprese is excellent, and you can watch all the people go by,” he continues.
“Do I need a reservation?”
“For lunch? No. Just walk in and say you’re a guest of Hotel Poseidon. They will take care of you.”
“Thank you, Marco.”
“Pleasure. You need anything else, you ask. No hesitating.”
He leaves, and I head downstairs. I spot a young woman at the front desk. She’s stunning: dark hair, olive skin, probably in her mid-twenties. She has a beautiful turquoise pendant around her neck, held together by a leather chain.
She is helping a couple in their sixties plan a day trip.
“Is a small boat better for seasickness or a ferry?” the man asks.
The woman at the desk gives me a small wave, and I wave back.
