‘I mean – you are having summer fun right now. When you leave next week, it is over. Italy is gone. But I will still be here. You think you are the only one who wants to know what tomorrow brings for us? I do also. But first, I want you to know your heart. Then, I will show you what is in mine.’
‘I think I already know what’s in mine,’ she admitted softly.
‘Then we have no problem,’ he replied with a smile, kissing her on the nose.
Colette rested her head on his shoulder.
She just hoped that what they both wanted was the same thing.
Chapter 39
Then
Kim was about to climb a mountain, literally and figuratively.
As she and Colette began their trek along the grey volcanic gravel trail upwards to the crater of Mount Vesuvius, her thoughts were going a mile a minute.
Since she’d met Emilia and Antonio that day in Amalfi, she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the French woman’s suggestion and the notion that with The Sweet Life, she just might have something good on her hands, something tangible.
Something she could use as a first step to the rest of her life.
Weeks ago, back in New York in Natasha’s bedroom, while she and her friend planned this getaway to Italy, the thought of a different life had really only been a fantasy. But now, purely by chance, a source of change had fallen into her lap.
One that someone actually believed she could accomplish and succeed with.
Kim knew it was all a bit nebulous and crazy, but the idea was intoxicating all the same. Freedom and a future?
It was everything she’d ever wanted.
The thoughts were crazy but they wouldn’t leave her. Natasha had said she needed to do something different.
How different to her old life was this: becoming a mindfulness guru stroke wellness influencer?
There were worse career paths, and the photography side was definitely something she could get excited about. She could also perhaps finally put in practice a lot of what she’d learned in her business degree. On her own terms.
Maybe her parents had been right in forcing her to do that much.
Kim knew she had to think this through properly, though. Given the origin of some of the captions and inspirational quotes she’d already used to further her growing social media audience, she figured she needed to see if she could source the journal’s origins.
Since Valentina apparently worked for a local property maintenance company and didn’t know anything about Villa Dolce Vita’s owner, Kim had in the meantime called the agent through which she’d made her original booking.
In fits and starts, given the language barrier, she learned that the house once belonged to an English couple who had passed away many years before. The wife lived in the house alone after her husband died, and according to reports she’d been reclusive, keeping to herself and rarely venturing out.
The story was that she and her husband hadn’t been the best of parents and had become estranged from their children back in their home country. When they died, there was some issue with the title deeds, which made the house difficult to sell, so the couple’s only remaining relative – a grandchild – had taken over the villa and begun renting it out from afar in order to make some money.
The story was a sad one. Kim couldn’t imagine what it would be like being old and alone in a foreign country. She wondered whether that perhaps was the reason the widow had started writing? It made sense given the dual language element of the content.
Had Villa Dolce Vita’s former owner written down the things she’d wished she’d been able to change in her life? Were those words of wisdom her catharsis for the mistakes she’d made and the dreams she’d lost? Was the journal that had lately inspired Kim so much been borne from regret? The thought was possibly even more affecting than the book’s contents.
However, there seemed little point in her trying to dig any deeper. If the journal happened to have been left there by a guest at some unidentifiable point in the past, then there was no way in hell Kim would be able to track him or her down. And if it had ultimately belonged to Villa Dolce Vita’s owner, then that person was long dead and their family didn’t care.
They’d probably never read the journal or even knew it existed.
That day in Amalfi, Kim had exchanged numbers with Emilia and the older woman had urged her to contact her for advice and direction in how best to move forward if she chose to do so.
She really seemed to think Kim had something special.
‘Be sure to use the number. Don’t take it and forget about it,’ she’d encouraged.
