If she wanted to see her mother so badly, why didn’t she just call her?
It had been ages since she’d gone back to Nantucket Island. Rachelle still remembered the early days of her time in Rome, how she’d felt like she was constantly at the airport, going back and forth across the ocean. That black space over the Atlantic, those anonymous hours when it was unclear where she was, had become so familiar to her. But those hours had given her plenty of time to question what she was doing and why she was spending so much time and money traveling between the two places. It wasn’t like airfare would get any cheaper. It wasn’t like traveling all that much gave her an answer about where she wanted to live and why.
Now, Rachelle sat with her legs dangling over the edge of a stone railing, watching as, down below, a shopkeeper opened the iron gate over his door and began to sweep the sidewalk. Pigeons cooed in the rafters overhead. She knew that, back at home, Riccardo would be waking up, throwing his arm over to her empty side of the bed. He didn’t like to wake up without her there. But she hadn’t been able to sleep. What else was she supposed to do?
Rachelle twirled the engagement ring on her finger, still flabbergasted at its existence. She was engaged, a fiancée. Maybe years from now, when she and Riccardo were finally working back at a restaurant that was hers and hers alone, she and Riccardo would tell the hilarious story about how they’d gotten engaged, about how funny it was that, the moment he’d asked, the kitchen had gone up in flames. A fiery romance, they’d call it.Grandma Estelle would laugh at that if Rachelle were ever able to tell her.
Ugh, Grandma. Rachelle hated thinking of all the people she loved, all the people she hadn’t spoken to in years.
It was four years ago that Darcy came to Italy to visit Rachelle. They’d partied in Rome, celebrating their youth and their sisterhood and their best friendship, and then they’d gone to Capri, where Rachelle had arranged a beautiful apartment for them. She’d pictured them drinking wine on the beach for days. She’d imagined them rehashing old memories and figuring out who they could be for one another, now that they lived so far apart. But while there, Darcy had learned that her eldest child was very sick, and she’d panicked and fled. Rachelle had tried to talk her down, had tried to keep her here in Italy till she knew more about how serious it was. But Darcy had run away. Just as Rachelle had thought, when Darcy returned home, the baby was all right, and her vacation was ruined. But words had been said, and fights had ensued. Nothing had been the same after that.
The Christmas after the disastrous trip to Capri, Rachelle had returned to Nantucket, just like she always had. By then, Darcy was pregnant with her second child. Because of morning sickness, she hadn’t come to the airport to pick Rachelle up, but her mother, Sam, had come instead, wrapping her in a hug that felt slightly stifling. “She’s back! My lost lamb is back!” Sam had said, laughing.
“How is Darcy?” Rachelle had asked her mother. They were driving. Her suitcase was safely tucked away in the back seat, and snow fell gently on the windshield.
“She’s okay! A little bit sick but very excited.” Her mother adjusted, clicking her nails against the steering wheel. “I wish the trip to Italy could have gone differently.”
Rachelle couldn’t tell if her mother knew about what Darcy had said—that awful thing about Rachelle not caring about theirfamily. That awful thing that suggested that Rachelle was more heartless than the rest of them.
“Yeah. But she had to get back,” Rachelle said simply. “I was sad to see her go, but I got it.” It was a big, fat lie.
“I guess, you know, motherhood is a different beast than what you were both used to before,” Sam said.
Rachelle tried not to roll her eyes, but failed. “Yeah,” she said. What she didn’t say was,what about being my sister? What about our time together? Doesn’t that matter any longer?
She knew it didn’t matter as much. She knew it sounded stupid. But she couldn’t discount her own feelings. She couldn’t be dishonest to herself.
They returned to Nantucket Island and drove directly to the Coleman House, where Grandma Estelle had a massive feast prepared for them. Grandpa Roland was still alive back then, and he wrapped Rachelle in a big bear hug and said, “Ciao, bella!” in an awful Italian accent.
“Hi, Grandpa,” Rachelle said, laughing. She then said something in Italian, something nobody understood, and everyone said she sounded fluent. “I’m not,” she assured them. But she wanted to be.
Her mother wore a strange expression, one that Rachelle couldn’t translate.
Darcy, Steven, and Gavin came over shortly after that. For Rachelle, it was slightly awkward with Darcy from the get-go, although the two sisters hugged, and Rachelle asked Darcy plenty of questions about the new pregnancy. Steven looked sort of unhappy to see Rachelle, as though Rachelle had been a source of sorrow for his wife. But Rachelle congratulated him on fatherhood and pretended not to care.
Rachelle spent a week and a half on Nantucket Island for Christmas. Throughout, she baked with her mother and sister, laughed with her cousins and grandmother, hung out with heraunts and uncles, and pretended to be very, very happy. But on the inside, she felt torn apart. She no longer felt fully like a Coleman. She no longer felt as though she truly belonged.
The emotion was hard to dissect. On the one hand, she loved these people more than life itself. On the other hand, there was so much about her life that they couldn’t understand. She’d thrown herself into a new dream—one of opening her own restaurant in a few years. But when she mentioned it to them, they suggested that she open one on Nantucket instead. “Nantucket is the place where people throw their money around,” they said. This annoyed Rachelle, as she saw herself with a restaurant in Rome, instead. Rome was one of the centers of the culinary world. She wanted to be a part of that. But how could she explain that?
Prior to that visit, Darcy had spent as much time as she could with Rachelle when she returned home. But during this trip home, Rachelle felt Darcy drawing further back. She had plenty of excuses, most of them related to the pregnancy and Gavin and Steven. Darcy could get out of anything at the drop of a hat. Mostly, though, Rachelle felt as though Darcy wanted to translate how unimportant Rachelle was, now that Darcy had all these other people to worry about.
Rachelle had other things to do, other people to see. But Darcy had always been her number one. Without her, she felt empty and strange.
The night before Rachelle’s flight back to Rome, Sam and Darcy arranged to have dinner at one of their favorite restaurants on the island. Rachelle and Sam drove over together and ordered a bottle of wine so they could sip and wait for Darcy to arrive. Usually, she was late.
Sam seemed moody as well, something that made Rachelle feel sad but also eager to leave. Sam sipped her wine and eyed the door, tugging at her turtleneck. And then, out of the blue, sheset down her glass of wine and stammered, “I would never ask you to come home. I would never put that on you. But please, honey. Time is of the essence. We don’t have as much of it as you seem to think we do. We need you here.”
Rachelle couldn’t believe it. Her instinct was to jump up and run out the door. But how could she leave her mother behind? She felt cornered.
“Okay?” she said like a teenager.
Her mother bent her head and shook it gently. “I didn’t mean to say all that. I mean, I did mean it, but I didn’t want to put pressure on you. It’s just that we miss you so much. We don’t really like living without you. Does that make sense?”
Rachelle kept her mouth shut. Her mother’s eyes glinted with tears. She hated seeing her like that, hated the tension over the tabletop.
But then, the door opened, and in came Darcy, bringing with her plenty of stories about her toddler, her growing baby in her belly, and her husband. Sam melted into those stories, grateful to have something else to talk about. Rachelle played her part, praying for the evening to end soon. In time, it did.
The following morning, Sam drove her to the airport, kissed her goodbye, and left. Rachelle sobbed the whole way back to Rome on the airplane. She wondered if she was making a horrible mistake. But as soon as she landed, her girlfriends, Roberta and Malina, picked her up from her apartment and took her dancing. Rachelle felt a richness and a vitality in the city that she couldn’t ignore. It felt like the opposite of all that anger and coldness on Nantucket Island.
