The golf cart went faster than any I’d ever been on. I figured Luca had it tweaked to fit his needs. He threw back his head and bellowed with laughter after I said as much. “Woah, this is fast!” I’d shouted over the roaring of the wind.
It shouldn’t have surprised me, though. He’d been a successful racing driver once upon a time.
A man waited for us as Luca parked and made his way to my side of the cart to give me his hand and help me out. I entwined my arm with his as we started for the maze, with its towering shrubberies made into a complex matrix.
When I’d looked down at it from the third floor of Luca’scastello, all the twists and turns had made me nervous. It had benches at some intervals, gardens inside of gardens, even extravagant water fountains, but no clear sense of an ending destination.
Brando had mentioned memorizing the patterns, the way out, but I wasn’t so sure. How could anyone memorize something they had only seen from afar? Unlike some men, though, he was good with directions. He had a sixth sense about where he was headed, and rarely did he get lost—and lost to him always seemed to bring us to a better place.
One could only hope Luca had the same sense of direction.
Were there any markers? It didn’t seem like it as we began our journey deep into the heart of the labyrinth.
My heels hardly touched the stone as we strolled, taking our time.
Luca had graciously accepted my jacket from Brando, and it hung on his opposite arm, at the ready in case the weather took a turn for the colder.
As it stood, the weather was neither cold nor hot. Temperate, unless the wind swept up, and then it seemed to seep through the cashmere, barely kissing my skin, but enough that I felt the oncoming winter—we were at the end of October, so it was coming soon.
“Are you cold, daughter?” Luca asked in Italian, but it seemed like only a formality. He would have already made a move if he thought I was.
“No.” I shook my head. “I’m all right. There’s plenty of sunshine here.”
He nodded. “Bene.”
“It’s beautiful here,” I said, admiring a bunch of flirting birds as they flittered here and there, chirping to one another.
We’d gone in deep enough to find one of the hidden treasures: a beautiful garden filled with colorful flowers, still drunk off the summer sun. A mosaic bench stood in front, one where a visitor could sit and relax, listening to the birds and watching as vibrant colors burst from the earth. Luca seemed determined to walk further and further in, though.
As we approached a water fountain surrounded by fragrant roses, he cleared his throat and then spoke in Italian.
“Tell me, daughter, what is wrong with my wife.”
Even though Maggie Beautiful and I had discussed it, being alone with him made me uncomfortable. In the heat of the moment, the wordfineseemed feeble, unbelievable. Especially since the emotion in his voice overcame his usual cool demeanor.
“Emotionally or physically?”
He stared at me for a minute or two while I stared at the roses. It was easier leading him into this conversation with an opening that had taken him off guard.
“You can die from emotional sickness,” he said. “You should know this. You would die without my son, as he would die without you.”
“True,” I said, as thoughtful as possible. “But Maggie Beautiful is not dying from either emotional or physical sickness. She had a momentary case of womanhood to contend with. That’s all.”
“Tell me what this womanhood is.”
“Well.” I sighed, deciding to speak in Italian as much as I could. “Sometimes, as women, we hold emotions in for long periods of time—life hardens us up, even though deep down there are soft spots that need to be…acknowledged to function as we should. We love our husbands, our children, with our entire hearts and souls, and there are times we need to cry. Weep for the beauty of life, for the sadness of it, and we cannot. We have too much to do, too much to contend with to give over to the…feelings of it all.
“She gave over to it in Positano. You were right to feel she wasn’t herself, but she will be with you. This is not a sickness that will take her from you. In fact, it was never a sickness. It was a, ah, purging of feelings.”
Maggie Beautiful had been right about one thing. He studied me like he was studying a foreign planet. As much as he knew about women, there were still blind spots, but he trusted that I would give him direction to maneuver safely through the unknown land. Which, instead of frustrating him, made him more curious.
“I believe this,” he said.
My heart slowed. My blood shushed in my veins, leaving me with a momentary sense of peace. I could breathe easier.
His son shared this same passion, and I suddenly pitied anyone who somehow found themselves amid his intensity when he demanded to know something aboutme.
Luca held the same intensity for his wife, and in all honesty, it was unnerving being on the other side of it. Since he’d settled some, I felt like I’d escaped some mean storm meant to destroy if a cool front hadn’t come in and forced its fury down.
