Chapter 2
“Yes.”
“Marcus.”
“No.”
Julian paused.
“I haven’t even said anything.”
“You were about to upgrade us.”
“I was.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I helped your baby. Not because I was auditioning for a better seat.”
Something unreadable passed through his expression.
Then he nodded.
“Fair enough.”
I left.
Five minutes later Marcus appeared beside my row carrying two pillows, a blanket, a bottle of water, a sealed fruit cup, and noise-canceling headphones in a child-sized case.
I stared at him.
“Seriously?”
“He was specifically told not to upgrade you.”
“So he sent supplies?”
Marcus lowered his voice.
“Mr. Vale considers instructions open to interpretation.”
Maya stirred.
Her eyes opened sleepily.
“Mommy?”
“I’m here.”
She sat up, hair tangled around her face.
Her gaze landed on Marcus.
At three, Maya had the fearless curiosity adults spent years learning to suppress.
“You’re very big.”
Marcus solemnly nodded.
“I’ve been told.”
“Are you a giant?”
“Only before breakfast.”
Maya considered this.
Then she held up her stuffed rabbit.
“This is Waffles.”
Marcus shook one floppy fabric paw.
“Pleasure to meet you, Waffles.”
Maya accepted him immediately.
Children had instincts about people that adults complicated with experience.
“Where’s the baby?” she asked me.
“Sleeping.”
“Good.”
She yawned.
“Babies need naps.”
Marcus looked toward first class.
“That one certainly does.”
For the remaining hours of the flight, Leo cried only twice.
Both times briefly.
By the time we landed at Leonardo da Vinci airport beneath a washed-blue Roman morning, I had convinced myself the coincidence with Sofia meant nothing.
Rome held millions of people.
Casa Bellini had welcomed guests for decades.
Mara could simply have stayed there.
That was all.
Life sometimes arranged strange intersections without meaning anything by them.
I repeated that to myself while standing at baggage claim with Maya half asleep against my leg.
Then my suitcase failed to appear.
Of course.
After twenty minutes, the conveyor belt stopped.
I stared at the empty carousel.
“Mommy, where’s our bag?”
“A very good question.”
Maya hugged Waffles.
“Did it get lost?”
“No. It’s just taking a different adventure.”
I had exactly one change of clothes for Maya in my backpack, toothbrushes, passports, my wallet, and €274.
Everything else I owned was apparently enjoying a different adventure.
I was filling out the lost baggage form when a familiar voice behind me said, “Problem?”
Julian.
He had removed his suit jacket and rolled his sleeves to his forearms.
Leo slept in a carrier against his chest.
Marcus stood behind him pushing enough luggage for a diplomatic delegation.
“My suitcase is missing.”
Julian looked at the empty carousel.
“Which airline tag?”
“I can handle it.”
“I didn’t say you couldn’t.”
“You were thinking loudly.”
A hint of amusement touched his face.
“Is that something nurses learn?”
“Mostly mothers.”
Maya peeked around my leg.
Julian noticed her.
His entire demeanor changed.
He crouched slightly rather than towering over her.
“You must be Maya.”
She nodded.
“I’m Julian.”
Maya studied Leo.
“That’s your baby.”
“That’s right.”
“He was loud.”
Julian sighed.
“I’ve received similar feedback.”
Maya leaned toward the carrier.
“Now he’s cute.”
“Thank you. His public relations team will be relieved.”
Marcus turned away, shoulders moving suspiciously.
Maya whispered to me, “What’s public relations?”
“I’ll explain when you’re forty.”
A woman from the baggage desk approached and told me the suitcase appeared to have remained in New York. It would likely arrive the next day.
Likely.
I thanked her because there was nothing else to do.
Outside, the Roman air was already warm.
Sofia had promised to collect us, but my phone showed three messages.
The first apologized.
The second apologized more urgently.
The third explained that a plumbing leak at the guesthouse had flooded part of the kitchen and she could not leave.
I closed my eyes.
Naturally.
“Taxi?” Julian asked.
“We’ll manage.”
“Claire.”
“I said we’ll manage.”
“So you have transportation?”
“I have optimism.”
“That’s not transportation.”
“It is when you’re broke.”
The word slipped out before I could stop it.
Julian said nothing.
I looked away.
I hated the heat climbing into my cheeks.
Hated that money could transform ordinary problems into humiliations.
A missing suitcase was an inconvenience to him.
To me, it meant calculating the cost of replacing Maya’s pajamas against tomorrow’s breakfast.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “That wasn’t your problem.”
“No,” Julian replied. “But we’re going to the same place.”
I looked at him.
“We are?”
“Casa Bellini.”
I had forgotten.
Marcus opened the door of a black van waiting at the curb.
A child seat had already been installed.
Julian gestured toward it.
“You can spend sixty euros proving you don’t need help, or ride with us and spend nothing.”
I folded my arms.
“That was almost persuasive until the proving-you-don’t-need-help part.”
“I’m learning.”
“Slowly.”
“Very.”
Maya tugged my hand.
“Mommy, can we ride with the giant?”
Marcus looked toward the sky.
Julian almost smiled.
Twenty minutes later, we were driving toward Rome.
Maya sat beside me narrating everything she saw.
“Tiny car!”
“Yes.”
“Another tiny car!”
“Yes.”
“Mommy, all the cars are tiny!”
Across from us, Julian was answering messages on his phone while Leo slept.
But every few seconds he glanced at his son.
Not anxiously anymore.
Simply checking.
I recognized it because I did the same thing with Maya.
“You really didn’t know why Mara wrote Sofia’s name?” I asked.
His phone lowered.
“No.”
“Did you ask her family?”
“Mara had very little family left. Her father died when she was young. She and her mother were estranged for years, although they reconciled before Leo was born.”
“Her mother?”
“Teresa Romano.”
“Is she in Rome?”
“She died last year.”
“I’m sorry.”
Julian nodded.
“There were many things Mara believed she had time to explain.”
Outside, Rome unfolded in sun-bleached walls, umbrella pines, scooters, balconies spilling flowers.
Maya pressed her forehead to the glass.
Julian looked at me.
“How well do you know Sofia?”
“Not very. She was close to my mother when they were younger. Mom called her our cousin even though technically she’s my mother’s second cousin.”
“And your mother?”
“Died two years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
It was my turn to nod.
The strange thing about grief was how easily two words could contain years.
“She visited Rome?” he asked.
“When she was young. She spent almost a year here.”
“With Sofia?”
“I think so.”
He glanced at Mara’s notebook resting beside him.
“Did she know someone named Mara Romano?”
“I have no idea.”
Casa Bellini stood on a narrow street in Trastevere behind an ivy-covered wall and a faded green door.
It was not a hotel in any traditional sense.
It was an old family house converted into eight guest rooms surrounding a tiled courtyard with a lemon tree in the center.
Sofia rushed through the door before we had finished unloading.
“Claire!”
She was somewhere in her early sixties, silver threaded through dark curls, linen apron dusted with flour despite the alleged plumbing emergency.
She embraced me so tightly I almost lost my balance.
Then she knelt and opened her arms to Maya.
“Finally.”
Maya looked up at me.
“It’s okay.”
She accepted the hug.
Sofia kissed the top of her head.
“You look exactly like your grandmother around the eyes.”
Something tightened unexpectedly in my chest.
Then Sofia stood.
Her gaze moved behind me.
To Julian.
All the warmth disappeared from her face.
Not fear.
Recognition.
“Oh,” she whispered.
Julian stopped.
“You know me?”
Sofia didn’t answer.
Her eyes had moved to Leo.
One hand rose toward her mouth.
“Sofia?” I said.
She blinked rapidly.
Then she pulled herself together.
“You should all come inside.”
Julian remained where he was.
“You knew Mara.”
It wasn’t a question.
Sofia looked at him for a long moment.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Inside, please.”
The courtyard smelled of basil and wet stone.
Maya discovered a shallow fountain containing three goldfish and immediately forgot the adults existed.
Marcus remained nearby while we sat beneath a striped awning.
Sofia brought coffee, water, and slices of orange cake nobody had requested.
Italian hospitality apparently considered emotional revelations impossible without food.
Julian placed Mara’s notebook on the table.
“She told me to find you.”
Sofia touched its cover.
“She said you might.”
“You could have contacted me.”
“I promised her I wouldn’t.”
His jaw tightened.
“Why?”
“Because she wanted you to come voluntarily.”
“I brought my six-month-old across the Atlantic because my dead wife left four words in a notebook.”
Sofia’s face softened.
“Yes.”
“That seems sufficiently voluntary.”
Despite the tension, I almost smiled.
Sofia sat opposite him.
“Mara stayed here nine years ago.”
Julian frowned.
“We were together nine years ago.”
“I know.”
That silenced him.
“She came alone,” Sofia continued. “For six weeks.”
Julian looked genuinely confused.
“When?”
“The summer you separated.”
Something shifted in his expression.
They had separated once.
I suddenly felt like an intruder.
“I should take Maya upstairs.”
“No,” Sofia said.
I looked at her.
She glanced at me, then Julian.
“Claire is part of why Mara chose this house.”
Now I was the one staring.
“I never met her.”
“No. But she knew about you.”
The courtyard seemed suddenly too quiet.
“How?”
Sofia stood.
“Come with me.”
She led us through the house to a small room behind the kitchen.
Shelves lined the walls, filled with ledgers, photographs, postcards, recipe books, and boxes labeled by year.
Sofia climbed a short ladder and removed a blue tin.
“After Claire’s mother died, she sent me several things.”
“My mother sent you things?”
“Your mother prepared them before she died. Her attorney mailed them.”
I felt disoriented.
Sofia placed the tin on the table.
“I was told to wait until you came to Rome.”
I stared at her.
“You knew I was coming.”
“You called me.”
“No. I mean before I called.”
Sofia looked guilty.
“Yes.”
My heartbeat changed.
“When?”
“Nearly two years ago.”
I thought of all the conversations with my mother during her final months.
The things we had said.
The things we had avoided saying.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because Helen asked me not to chase you. She wrote that if you ever chose Rome for yourself, then I should give you this.”
Julian stepped back slightly, giving me space.
I appreciated it more than I expected.
My fingers trembled as I opened the tin.
Inside were photographs.
Letters.
A faded train ticket.
A pressed yellow flower.
And a cassette tape labeled in my mother’s handwriting.
ROME, 1994.
Maya appeared beside me with Waffles tucked beneath her arm.
“Is that Grandma?”
She pointed toward a photograph.
My breath caught.
My mother was twenty-something, sitting beneath the same lemon tree outside.
Beside her was Sofia.
Three other young women crowded around them.
I recognized none of them.
On the back, my mother had written four names.
Helen.
Sofia.
Teresa.
Anna.
Julian leaned over my shoulder.
His breathing stopped.
“Teresa.”
I looked at him.
“Mara’s mother?”
He nodded.
Sofia rested both hands on the table.
“Helen Bennett and Teresa Romano were friends.”
“How close?” I asked.
“Very.”
My entire childhood shifted slightly, like a picture hanging crooked on a wall.
“My mother never mentioned her.”
“There was a reason.”
Julian looked at Sofia.
“What reason?”
Sofia opened one of the envelopes.
She removed a photograph.
This one was more recent.
Nine years old, perhaps.
Mara stood in the courtyard beneath the lemon tree.
Younger, smiling, her hair tied back.
Beside her stood my mother.
I sat down.
“No.”
Sofia’s voice was gentle.
“They met here.”
“My mother knew Mara?”
“Yes.”
Julian took the photograph.
His composure finally cracked.
“Mara never told me.”
“She intended to.”
“When?”
May you like
“When she believed she understood what Helen had been trying to tell her.”
I turned toward Sofia.
