Already walking toward you
“Shit!” she yelled, running into the bathroom. She pulled toothpaste out of the drawer and grabbed her toothbrush. She did a double take after glancing up at the mirror when she saw the black bra still tied around her forehead. “Shit, shit, shit,” she said again through a mouthful of minty foam. The bra cups had left marks around her eyes from when she’d turned over and ended up mashing her face into the pillow. She tried to rub the skin, but that only made it red. Then she tried to fix her bangs in some way to camouflage the area, but unless she planned on greeting him looking like a sheepdog, that was not going to work.
Lora heard a knock at the door and yelled, “I’ll be right there,” though she was pretty sure there was no way he would hear her, so she lifted up her arm to do a pit check, slapped on a little extra Dove Max Protection, and ran down the stairs.
“Hi, sorry,” she said, opening the door. If she wasn’t already out of breath, she would be now. Andrea stood wearing jeans and a perfectly rumpled blue button-down that gave enough of a view of his forearms and neck notch to make her say a silentgrazieto four centuries of Italian tailoring. The dampness at the tips of his hair, plus his soapy clean smell, said that he was fresh out of the shower. On the stone stoop beside him, an ancient-looking cardboard box slumped around its contents.
“Were you sleeping?” he asked, his eyes darting around her face.
“No,” she said, her hand flying up to her cheek. Damn those memory foam cups. But why was she denying it? Who was going to judge her for resting, and why should she care if they did, right? She had to get over it. “I mean—I was kind of lying down for a minute and I guess I passed out.”
“Brava,” he said. “I’m glad for you.” He looked down at the box, then back up at her.
“Come in, come in!” She waved him into the kitchen, where he placed the box on the table. “Can I offer you something?”
“No, I only want to tell you about this and you probably won’t want me to stay once I do. So, I’ll just get it out.”
Her stomach tightened, but she only nodded.
“I went out to Ivo’s place today with Nico and I had no idea what to expect. It’s kind of a mess, of course, but we started walking around and all of a sudden there was this old guy there. He said he used to work for your da—Ivo,” he clarified. “And look, it doesn’t matter how the conversation went, but it sort of came out that Ivo’s daughter was here in town. So this man—Signore Tancredi, his name was—said he had this box of Ivo’s stuff and he thought maybe you should have it.” He ran his hand across the top of it.
“Me?” she asked, wondering how it could be that there was no one else who would have been a better recipient of whatever had been languishing in that box all this time.
“And I know you probably don’t want it, but I can’t say I don’t have it. So, I brought it here. But you can tell me if you want me to take it to the dump because I have to go by there tomorrow anyway.”
“No,” said Lora, shaking her head at the box.
“No, you don’t want it, or no, you don’t want me to take it to the dump.”
“I don’t want you to take it to the dump,” she said, looking up at him. “You know what? Iwassleeping. And I don’t know exactly for how long because I was completely out when you texted me. I am exhausted. I am so tired that I don’t even realize how tired I am. And the more I think about it, maybe whatever is in that box has something to do with it. You were right that I’ve been trying so hard to ignore anything that might throw off this perfect story I’ve told myself about an imperfect thing. I am ruining myself and certainly not being kind to the people around me, as you’ve pointed out.”
“I wasn’t trying to accuse you of being unkind—”
“No, I know,” she broke in. “I know you weren’t doing anything but telling me the truth, which is usually something I like. But the problem is that I’ve been telling myself a truth my whole life and hanging on to it because it made sense. Now it looks like hanging on to it is not making sense. What do I do, bury my head in the sand? That’s not going to help me, or anyone else. You asked me a question about changing my hypothesis with new evidence, right?”
“You said you didn’t need to—that the money he sent you was an outlier.”
“Yeah, but now what if that outlier is becoming a trend?”
“There’s only one way to find out.” He tapped the top of the box.
“Maybe.”
“Well then, I guess I will leave this here. I’ve got to go to a meeting. We have our annual party coming up in a coupleof weeks. It’s called theSagra del Vino della Collina, and it’s the biggest event of the year, which celebrates all of the small wine producers in the area. If I don’t show up, they’ll fight each other over booth placement because no one wants to be stuck downwind of theporchetta.”
“Oh yeah? And why is that?”
“Porchettais smoked pig, you know?”
“And?”
“Try to imagine what you would smell like if you’d been standing downwind of hot bacon vapors for a sixteen-hour day.”
“Oh. Yes, you’d better go,” she said, walking with him toward the door. But she didn’t want to let him go. There was something else. Why couldn’t she say it? “Wait. I was wondering if I can ask you something. And you can say no, honestly.”
“Ask,” he said, turning to her.
“I know I can look at what is in that box on my own, but I don’t think I want to. More than that, I don’t think I should. Would you consider sitting with me to go through it? It would really mean a lot to me.”
