“Roger is so happy you came, Olive,” she says. “He was very sad about your father’s death and couldn’t face the funeral at such short notice.”
“Oh,” I say, feeling my cheeks redden. “I probably would have missed him anyway. It was all a bit of a blur. I was a mess that day.”
“Of course you were. He was your father. Such a shock,” she says quickly, her eyes flickering back to Roger in a way that unsettles me.
We turn down an alley at the end of the pier, and instead of having lunch in one of these fancy waterside places, we climb a set of stairs until Sofia ushers me into a barely signposted eatery with a wave of her hand.
The restaurant is low-key, dark, with a pretty little roof terrace that peers out over the peaks of rooftops and then onto the main square, which runs straight into the sea ahead. Truly a spectacular view of Portofino, the opposite of all the photos that look from the water into the colorful bay. From this angle, we’re looking out toward the sea. Our vantage is that of a resident,nota visitor.
The host leads us up some spiral stairs and we are surrounded by Italian voices, not a single English word spoken, except by Roger.
“Here, here,” he says. “Your father’s favorite place, my favorite place, Sofia’s favorite place, and nowyours.” He beams at me.
“Wow,” I say, glancing down at the bay teeming with little boats bobbing like corks in the gentle swell. “This is... special.”
“We practically live here,” says Roger, dropping his hat on the back of the chair and pulling out his seat. “Sit, sit,” he says excitedly.
“A place so good you don’t need the foot traffic,” I say, grinning at the bustling promenade that wraps around the cliffs and out of view.
I glance over at Leo as we move into place at the table, and he subtly tips his head toward the seat next to him. I move decisively and slide into the chair. It’s a surprisingly rickety old chair in a place with a million-dollar view. You get the feeling that these kinds of eateries are on the endangered list, if not extinct, in the best spots on the planet.
“Allow me please to do the ordering, as if you were eating with us at home,” Roger says. “You willnotbe disappointed, I promise.”
“I can’t imagine,” I say, as the smells of garlic and prawns and chili waft around us.
“Sweetheart, I have thought about you every day since the news,” Roger says, leaning toward me.
I don’t know what to say that I haven’t said a hundred times already on this trip, but Leo takes the reins right away.
“It all happened very fast,” he says. “But he was happy.”
“You’ve been such a rock for him these last years, Leo,” Roger says, before catching himself and quickly turning to me to explain. “Nicky saw Leo rather like a son, I think. I mean, he would, wouldn’t he? Spending all those hours together in the kitchen.”
I shift in my seat uncomfortably, and Roger, realizing what he’s said, adds, “But nothing could be as precious as you were. Little Olive. The apple of his eye.”
Not teenage Olive, I think.Not adult Olive. Only the little Olive who still loved him. I feel glum suddenly, realizing that Roger is going to be by far the toughest test for me.
“And you’re both here to finish his wonderful book!” says Sofia, moving the conversation along as she spots my slumping mood.
“You know, without wishing to get all macabre about it, this was supposed to be him, sitting here at this table,” Roger says, hands up in the air as the waiter arrives and he politely waves away the offer of a menu. “He sent me this email when he booked the trip. Let me find it.”
I get a shiver of impending doom as Roger slides his phone out and starts searching through it. “You know it was always his dream, Olive, to do a cookbook. Here it is!
“‘Rog. Coming though in July to finish the book. Want to do something with beans. Nobody thinks about beans enough, don’t you agree?Nicolò.’”
Leo coughs into this hand, and I glare in his direction.
“That was the last message from Dad,” I say, mouth dropping open. Leo can no longer contain his laughter. “Nobody thinks about beans enough?” I repeat. It makes me giggle too. I can imagine him in the flesh saying it. Gesticulating, almost glassy-eyed over it. It would have come across as so profound, sotrue. You would leave the conversation musing over it for days, feeling vaguely depressed even, that beans have been all but forgotten. But read out by Roger, stripped of the passion of my dad’s voice, it sounds absurd.
“Beans it is,” I say, looking to Leo, laughing. “I concede defeat.”
“I don’t want to say I was right,” he replies. “But I was definitely right.”
“You were going to come here and not do beans?” Roger says, frowning. “My god, just as well I have the evidence.”
“Doubly good, because we’re having Liguria’s famous beans and pesto for lunch,” says Sofia. “And Roger has some other bean dishes he wants to share with you this week. And the place on the hill—Roger, we have to take them there for that green minestrone. The one with the cannellini that we ate.”
“We’re going to do it all!” he says, beaming with delight. It is impossible not to be caught up in his enthusiasm and love forliving. Like Rocco’s, his personality is big. Like Dad’s too. But Roger has a warmth and softness to him also. And it’s obvious he dotes on Sofia, who clearly adores him too.
