Rachelle hesitated. “But your family would have to think it was your restaurant,” she pointed out.
“Well, yes. But they’re old-fashioned.”
Rachelle turned to gaze out the window. Sunlight made the statues in the nearby piazza glow. She thought about how, in a few days, she was meant to travel to the seaside with Riccardo’s family. She thought about the sailing expeditions, the fish dinners and the wine. She wondered how they were going to afford all that, then remembered Tio Alberto’s deep pocketbooks. She shivered.
Something about this didn’t feel right to her any longer.
“Riccardo,” she breathed, her voice shaking. “Riccardo, my grandmother is going back to Nantucket, and I’m going to go with her.”
Riccardo’s eyes widened. “For how long will you be gone?”
Rachelle shook her head. How could she answer that? Previously, her trips back to Nantucket had been no longer than two weeks. But now, two weeks felt like a sneeze compared to the time she needed with her grandmother, her mother, and her sister.
“My niece is sick,” she said, because it was the first thing that came to her mind.
Riccardo frowned, but he didn’t ask about Remy, maybe because he couldn’t comprehend that Rachelle had a family, that she had people she cared about.
“We’re getting married,” Riccardo reminded her. “And we’re going to open that restaurant together. Maybe we can’t call it Coleman any longer. But what’s in a name?”
Rachelle closed her eyes. She wondered if this was the last time a man would quote Shakespeare to her. She wondered if she cared. Slowly, she slid the ring from her finger and watched herself set it, glinting, in the palm of his hand. Riccardo switched to Italian. His tone was jagged. “You’re making a mistake,” he said.
But as soon as Rachelle felt the lightness on her ring finger, she knew she was not.
“You belong in Rome, Riccardo,” she said, standing up. “I would never ask you to come back to Nantucket. But I can’t live the rest of my life here, in your family, as your wife. I’m sorry.”
It took a little while longer to get out of there. Riccardo spent a half hour pleading with her to stay before switching to anger, accusing her of never loving him, and throwing some of their favorite coffee mugs and plates into the sink until they exploded. Rachelle couldn’t believe how childish he was. She wondered if he’d always been this way. Had she not noticed? Had she been so lonely that she’d ignored it?
Rachelle packed up the belongings she considered essential: clothes, technology, and a few books and mementos. Everything fit into the big suitcase that she’d brought with her when she’d first come to Italy all those years ago, with Diana March. She’d been so young back then—twenty-five and open to the mysticisms of the universe. Now, she was a failed fiancé, a failed restaurant owner. But she wouldn’t be a failure of a daughter and sister, too.
Riccardo managed to pull himself together enough to give her a final hug and help her bring her suitcase downstairs. He looked traumatized. Rachelle guessed that he’d go immediately to his mother and sisters and eat mounds of pasta and cry with them. She was glad he had them, regardless of how sinister they felt to her.
“Don’t be a stranger,” he said, right before she slid into the cab and escaped their life.
“I won’t,” she said, waving. But as the car sped over the cobblestones, taking her back to her grandmother’s hotel, she sensed that she would never speak to Riccardo ever again. A sob escaped her throat. But she forced herself to look up at the big, blue sky; she forced herself to remember that her family back at home as looking at the same sky, that she wasn’t alone in this.
She was making the right choice. Finally.
22
Diana March insisted on driving Estelle and Rachelle to the airport to say goodbye. Just outside their security gate, Diana handed over a densely packed photo album that included all the restaurant reviews and photographs of Rachelle and Diana from their storied career together. Diana mopped up her face and told Rachelle that she’d changed her life. “You were just a kid when you came over here with me,” Diana said. “And now, you’re one of the brightest faces of your generation in the culinary world. I genuinely can’t wait to see what you do next.” Rachelle squeezed her friend tightly and told herself not to sob too hard.
Diana whispered in her ear, “It’s good you’re getting out.”
Rachelle knew that everyone thought she was saving herself from Riccardo’s family. Everyone except for her Italian friends, she guessed, who all thought she was making a heinous and very expensive mistake. She hadn’t bothered explaining herself to them. There were all sorts of reasons people couldn’t hear you when you tried to tell them your truth. She was done trying to give too much of herself to people who couldn’t see her.
Estelle had booked them first-class tickets back to Boston. On the plane, they stretched out their legs and sipped glasses of champagne, grinning at each other from their separate pods.
“This is the only way to fly,” Estelle said.
“You’re a diva, now, Grandma,” Rachelle said. “All this traveling has changed you.”
“Good!” Estelle said, raising her champagne flute. “I was ready for a change.”
Rachelle still burned to know more about her grandmother’s romance with Tio Alberto. She wondered if it was Tio Alberto who’d bought the first-class plane tickets. But before she could ask, Estelle updated her. “My publisher is very pleased with book sales, apparently. It was their idea to upgrade our seats. I can’t believe it! I’m selling better than I did when I was younger.”
Rachelle smiled. “Women need stories. It’s how we tell ourselves what life is about, I think.”
Estelle turned to look at her. “What do you think being seventy-three is like?” It was a genuine question, one about perspective and life.
