Page 105 of The English Bookstore in Bologna

Bianca did the same, feeling the chill press her full into the present moment. “This is exactly what life’s about.”

They swam for a while, watching boats pass and more people jumping from rocks. Then they took a table for a quick bite, sharing calamari fritti and a plate of pasta con le vongole, spaghetti with clams.

“I noticed you didn’t ask for cheese. You don’t want to give it a shot?”

“I’ve learned my lesson, Muffin.”

They returned to their loungers, and both snoozed for a while.

An hour later, they were back in the water, floating and chatting. Bianca could have done it all day, all month, all summer.

“I was wondering something,” George said, wiping seawater from his face. “You mentioned the idea of sitting in your own mess, getting comfortable with it. I’d love to talk more about that.”

Bianca lit up. Was her father directly asking for advice? She might not be the poster girl for perfect right now, but she had a few answers. They’d invented the phrase “Do as I say, not as I do” just for her.

“If we haven’t built up our emotional stamina, then we often can’t handle confronting how we feel. Which is why we reach for our phones or legal pads or a glass of wine. Anything to grab a dopamine hit and avoid sitting with what’s going on inside.”

She drew in a breath and let the sun warm her face. “It’s like an itch. An annoying one. You can distract yourself from it, but have you ever felt into it? Completely given all your attention to it?”

He shook his head.

“With practice you can get to a place where you can tolerate the itch or pain, where you can handle the present, even when it’s uncomfortable or even agonizing. Let’s give it a whirl.” She lifted up a handful of water and let it fall from her fingers. “Let your thoughts pass through. Feel your body, your head to your toes. Accept that your brain isn’t you and let it take some time off. Use your senses. Simply be.”

He instinctually turned toward the horizon. Bianca did the same, again admitting to herself that, even here in Italy, she was still guilty of so much megawatting, attempting to force a new book and a new career decision, racing to figure out what went wrong all in a day. Only during this trip had she been able to break away.

She let thoughts fade and sank into the water.

A long time passed.

As she felt again this complete immersion into the present moment, a thought swam by.

I’ll never be here again.

I’ll never be here again, so soak it up. Stop living in the past or the future. The only thing that matters is here. And you’ll never be here again in this moment. It’s all one long goodbye.

It was so easy to see what was wrong with others, and even with herself. But why was it so hard to do anything about it?

She looked over at George, who was about ten feet away, still lost in the horizon. She couldn’t know what he was thinking—if at all—but she was pretty sure he was feeling it, too, the miracle of totally letting go.

In the morning, they enjoyed a delightful breakfast in the dining room at a table overlooking the Med. The crumbs of homemade pastries and the broken shells of hard-boiled eggs littered their plates. They were both on their second cup of coffee, neither of them wanting to let go of this view, of this moment.

George had surprised himself, the way he’d finally found a groove here in this foreign land. He was watching a fishing boat on the horizon when Bianca threw a question at him.

“Why don’t you ever talk about your past, Dad? You always gloss over it. Is it that you’re ashamed?”

He stuck his finger in the handle of his mug and slowly guided it toward him. “Yeah, I guess I am ashamed, Muffin. It was a hard life.” He chewed on her question. “But I wasn’t in a bad place back then. All these low, down feelings are new. Not for a second in my whole life was I depressed. Sure, I’ve been sad, but I’ve never fallen into a hole like I did this year, not even after the divorce from your mom. Not until a few days after Intel let me go. It was like waking up as someone else.”

She leaned in. “You always had a purpose till then. You were a big sports guy growing up. Football, baseball. That was your life. And taking care of your little sister. Taking care of your mom, even.”

George nodded. He didn’t have to be reminded. He often thought of those days.

“And then it was college, where you got straight A’s. Who had time to be depressed? Then Motorola snatched you up, and you were off to the races. I don’t know, maybe there was always a sadness inside of you that you managed to keep buried.”

“Fair enough.”

For a moment, he thought he might tell her what was really going on, how he’d considered ending his life. It had been such a relief to tell Faith. In a way, sharing it had distanced himself from it. But telling Bianca now wouldn’t do any good. She was already giving him her best advice. Knowing the truth would only scare her.

Especially since he wasn’t sure what to expect once he returned home.