“You want Emilio to run Amorina into the ground?” Dario asks, chest hiccuping, voice rising.
Her hand presses more firmly while she lets out a gentleshh. “I want my boys to be in harmony and be happy. You used to look after him like a proper big brother. You two used to kick the ball around in the yard, go on long bike rides and swim races against one another until you were prunes and blue in the lips. Then your father died. Some deaths bond people more deeply together. His tore you and Emilio apart right before your teenage years. I thought Cosimo Sr. passing might bring you back together. I wish you two would talk it out finally.”
“There is no talking with him. There are texts and snarky voice notes and now camera crews, but there’s no real talking,” he says, eyes snapping open.
His mother laughs, a light chuff. “I used to be like that, too. I lived for the show and the dramatics. I was acting everywhere that I went. Acting like I deserved the best roles. Acting like I deserved your father’s affections. Acting like nothing and no one could touch me. I thought it was a gift—this ability to turn my personality on in a split second—but it was a curse. A curse your father broke.”
“What do you mean?” Dario asks, sitting up. It has been years since they’ve talked deeply and openly about his father. Losing him was like having their mouths sewn shut. If they kept his name from infiltrating their home, maybe they could all tiptoe around and pretend he was still going to walk through the door at any moment with a booming, jovial greeting and a Vespa helmet under his arm.
“Before he told your grandparents we were to be engaged, he took me out on the boat and we drifted on Lake Trasimenobeneath that parfait sky and he said to me, ‘April, I love you. I love youfor you.’” She paused for a moment with a fond look in her eyes. “He said, ‘When you’re on stage, you shine, but you don’t need to shine all the time, around everyone. Save your brightness so you don’t burn out. Let my parents see you for the you that I know. April Cotogna is not a role.’ Just by him saying that aloud to me, the idea lost its usefulness and its power.”
“That’s all it took?” Dario asks. Positivity springs up into his throat like a flower poking through a crack in the cement. On her nod, he blurts out words he has been meaning to say for far too long, “I am agoraphobic.”
He waits for this impressive weight to be lifted off him, but he only feels marginally lighter from having admitted this.
Confusion crisscrosses her brows. “Say again?”
“I have agoraphobia. My therapist diagnosed me earlier this year. The reason I’ve not gone beyond the villa, the lake or the factory in over a year is because I have this deep anxiety that if I go anywhere too unknown or too crowded, something bad will happen. I get these panic attacks that feel like someone is choking the life out of me.”
“Oh, Dario,” she says. “Is that what happened outside Nonno’s funeral?”
Dario nods, unable to say more on that topic for fear the memory will immobilize him.
“I assume that’s what was happening when I found you at the chocolate festival as well. After Preston…” She cuts off that sentence. “I’m sorry you’re struggling with that. Why didn’t you say something sooner?” she asks, oozing concern.
“Nonno got sicker, you got the role of a lifetime, and Emilio was being Emilio. I did not think I could afford to be heartbroken or unstable when everyone else needed me to be strong,” he says, feeling anything but. “Especially without Dad here. I had to hold down the fort.”
“Wants and needs? Dario, what about yours? I’m your mother. Your wants and needs are my wants and needs.” She takes his hands in hers, rubbing her thumbs back and forth across his shaking knuckles. “I would’ve never taken the touring role if I had known you were suffering.”
He snatches his hands back, heart caught up in his throat. “That’s exactly what I didn’t want you to do.”
“If I had known, I could’ve at least offered support in other ways.” She scoots closer, undeterred by his posture.
His feet are turned away, ready to run from the discomfort of this conversation, but then he stares into her eyes, though his own are watery. “I want to get better. For myself, for Amorina, for—” Charlie’s handsome face flashes through his mind.
He was fooling himself entertaining Michelle today. She is beautiful and talented and right for the Cotogna name, but not rightfor him.
“For?” his mother prompts.
“For the fifth suitor. For Charlie Moore,” he says. His heart sings. Charlie Moore rearranges itself into Charlie Cotogna in his mind. What a lovely name that would look perfect on a marriage license.
It is not love he feels for Charlie. Not yet. But he, like the Olmec people in Mesoamerica who first thought to domesticate the cacao tree, knows a good thing when he tastes it. Oddio, did Charlie Moore taste sweet.
His mother smiles for the first time all conversation. “Where is Charlie?” she asks.
Dario realizes Charlie missed dinner and he has not called since he left for the train earlier this morning. Worry sprouts in his stomach. “That’s a very good question.”
Together, they go into the house and inquire after him. Paola, who is cleaning up, hasn’t seen him. Michelle and Emilio, who are sitting a little too closely on one of the couches, haven’theard anyone come in—as if they could over the blaring TV. Out front smoking a cigarette and scrolling on his phone, Craig says nobody has come up the drive since he’s been standing there.
Panicked, he calls Charlie’s phone, and it immediately goes to voice mail.
Up in Charlie’s room, he searches for evidence that Charlie has been there since this morning, but this feels more like snooping than anything. At least Charlie’s clothes and toiletries are still spread around. He hasn’t snuck off for good.
“No sign of him?” his mom asks. He shakes his head. “Where did you say he went today?”
“Perugia. By himself.”
“Does he speak Italian?”
