“I’m good,” I say. “How was Rome?”
“Wonderful,” she tells me. “Always too hot, too crowded, but somehow just right. I like to leave and I like to return.”
“Not a bad way to live,” I say.
She smiles. “I see you’ve had someone join you?”
She gestures to Eric, who in the thirty seconds since I’ve been gone has struck up a conversation with a man and woman at a neighboring table. But it does not make me annoyed today. It makes me feel affection, warmth—it makes me feel touched by the soft hand of grace. He laughs at something one of them says. I see his easy joy, his easy smile. The way in which he is comfortable in the company of anyone. All at once, he reminds me of her.
Eric notices Monica and me looking at him. He waves at us,and we wave back. He smiles his goofy grin at me, readjusts his glasses on his face.
“My husband,” I say. Yes. My husband.
Monica raises her eyebrows at me. “He came here?”
“He did.”
“That’s a long way,” Monica says.
I look to her. She’s smiling a knowing smile at me. A familiar one. And then I notice her necklace. An iron chain hangs around her neck, supporting a turquoise pendant. All at once, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I have goose bumps everywhere.
“Nika?” I ask her.
Monica startles. “No one has called me that in a long time,” she says. She squints further. “How did you know?”
My heart beats wildly. I can barely believe it. “Do you remember a man named Adam Westbrooke?” I ask her.
She laughs. “Of course,” she says. “He was always a friend to the Poseidon. He used to come every year, first alone, and then many years later with his wife.”
“What happened to him?”
“They live in Chicago, I believe. He never had children; he didn’t meet Samantha until he was well into his fifties, lovely woman. He still emails sometimes. Life gets busy.”
“So he never bought the hotel?”
“Oh my goodness,” she says. “Do you know him? That was a long time ago. No. He never did. We got by on a few lucky investments and never needed a partner.”
Monica eyes me. “Why are you asking me this?”
“Do you remember a woman named Carol Silver?”
Monica gives me a soft smile. “Your mother?”
My pulse stops. I nod.
“Yes,” she says. “I knew her. We met in the summer of1992. She used to come here to mail packages back to…” Monica looks to me. “To you,” she says. “To her daughter.”
I see Carol in the lobby that first morning.
“She used to send photos, for a while, after she went back home. When you two decided to take your trip this summer, she got back in touch with me. I knew she was sick; I just didn’t know how ill.”
Monica touches my arm. I think about Nika’s sweetness, the powerful woman before me she’s grown to be. How was it just yesterday that she was twenty-five years old?
“I’m very sorry for your loss,” she says.
“Thank you.”
“You know,” Monica says, “when I first saw you, I knew there was something so familiar about you. It was almost like I’d known you before.” She pauses. She touches my cheek. “You really must take after her.”
