Dolci di Love

by Sarah-Kate Lynch

  ‘Is pesto the one with all the basilico?’ asked the widow Ciacci. ‘Waste of parmiggiano if you ask me.’

  ‘What did she say?’ asked Lily.

  ‘Tell her about Santa Rita di Cascia,’ suggested Luciana.

  ‘There is one widow in our league,’ Violetta obliged, ‘now passed away, who think Santa Rita di Cascia is good, but then we find out only reason is because Santa Rita di Cascia has stigmata, a wound on her head that smells very bad, so she become a recluse until near her death, when it smells of cinnamon rolls.’

  Fiorella looked at her. ‘And?’

  ‘And this one widow, now passed away, she like cinnamon rolls.’

  Even Fiorella looked slightly dumbfounded at this.

  ‘So how did you stumble on Santa Ana di Chisa?’ Lily wanted to know.

  ‘Was not so much of a stumble,’ Violetta said.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means if we have festa or holiday it must be when Father Dominico is visiting Vatican because there could be some problem.’

  ‘Some problem?’ hooted Fiorella. ‘Ooooh, I get it. I get it and I love it!’ She jumped around the kitchen like the little frog she was.

  ‘Get what?’ Lily said, reaching out to stop her bouncing.

  ‘Santa Ana for Anne of sewing,’ Fiorella said in Italian, between laughs. ‘And Chisa for “chi sa.”’

  ‘Chi sa? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Who knows!’ roared Fiorella, refusing to speak English. ‘Chi sa for who knows. Violetta, you are the cat’s pyjamas. You made up the League’s patron saint!’

  ‘Well, no one else found one for us,’ Violetta answered in Italian.

  ‘What are you saying?’ Lily wanted to know. She was learning the language but this was beyond her. ‘I can’t understand you.’

  ‘Santa Ana di Chisa, she’s blonde, like you,’ Violetta told her. ‘But not so tall.’

  And so it was decided that the feast day of Santa Ana di Chisa would be celebrated on the first Sunday in July and that as it was the Ferrettis’ idea, amorucci would be the patron dolci.

  Half an hour after kissing her baby goodbye on the day of the inaugural festa, Lily was kissing her sister hello outside the pasticceria.

  ‘I just can’t get used to everything being so goddamned beautiful,’ Rose said. ‘Even Al is looking pretty good these days. Who knew? I thought we were beyond that.’

  ‘Where is he?’ asked Lily.

  ‘He’s working on the gondola with Alessandro,’ Rose answered. ‘I have a horrible feeling we may end up with one of those things in the yard back in Connecticut.’

  ‘Well, at least you’re nearer to water,’ Lily said, giving her sister a hug. ‘Thank you so much for being here, Rose. All of you.’

  ‘Are you kidding me? A summer vacation in Tuscany? I admit, at first I didn’t want to bring the family with me, but with every passing day, I swear, those kids are more adorable and Al a little less past his sell-by date. There must be something in the air.’

  They both lifted their noses and sniffed.

  ‘Rosewater and almond,’ Lily said. ‘Are the kids already in the kitchen?’

  ‘You betcha. Those little old ladies came out and snatched them right out from under me.’

  The door tinkled as Lily opened it to go in. ‘Are you coming?’ she asked her sister.

  ‘Oh, no, I bow to your undisputed superiority in the kitchen,’ Rose said, with a smile. ‘I’m going to take a walk in the Italian sunshine with only a large pastry for company if you don’t mind.’

  ‘See you in the piazza?’

  ‘See you in the piazza.’

  Lily’s happy heart swelled even more when she walked into the kitchen and saw the production line of children gathered around the old refectory table.

  Jack and Harry were arguing with each other, as usual, but also competing for the attention of Francesca, who was instead in the thrall of Emily and Charlotte, who in turn were besotted by the extremely beautiful Ernesto.

  Violetta, Luciana, and Fiorella sat in the corner of the room, gossiping in Italian, something that, with Lily at the helm of the pasticceria, they now had a lot more time for.

  The Ferretti sisters were in extremely good humour. They’d started a fund, so Violetta told her, with the increasingly healthy profits from the pasticceria and so were both taking expensive medication for their arthritis, which made them far more limber. Violetta in particular had a new spring in her step thanks to the added advantage of a stent in her heart, which had, unbeknownst to her, been giving her chest trouble for quite some years. They both had new dentures.

  There were many meetings down the secret stairs Lily wasn’t supposed to know about to plan where else this health fund should be spent, and she had noticed that a lot of the old women she often found huddling around the fluted bowls in the pasticceria now bore new white teeth and more than a couple had hearing aids.

  The sisters, Fiorella, and a handful of other old darners were now in such good health, so Lily had been told, that they were planning a trip to Cremona to broaden their horizons. It was the birthplace of Stradivari, and now that they could hear better, they particularly liked violin music.

  In fact, they had it playing in the kitchen, although it was hard to hear it over the sound of the children making amorucci.

  Jack, at eleven, had been skeptical about the whole business of baking to begin with but actually liked the scientific part of getting the right combination of ingredients and producing the right result, and he was good at organising the other children to do things for him.

  Harry had a thing for knives and so liked chopping, although he had to be watched, and the twins would do pretty much what Jack told them to, unless they were busy fussing over Ernesto, who had no interest in what was going on at all but just loved being fussed over.

  Francesca made it clear that she was in charge of the cookie cutter, but as the production line rolled out, she allowed her ‘cousins’ all to have a turn.

  For the next couple of hours, Lily wrangled the gang of children as they mixed, baked, cooled, sliced, baked, cut, and tasted so that when Daniel arrived with Matteo, the last of the amorucci was ready to be packed up and carried to the piazza for the festa.

  She and her husband then tottered up the hill, laden with boxes and surrounded by the excitable children, arriving in the square to find it transformed into a humming marketplace built around a heart-shaped table already bearing dozens of fluted bowls, each one piled high with amorucci. The table had been Carlotta’s idea, and she was there decorating it. She had quite an artistic eye, as it turned out, and had left the Borsolini brothers for good to nanny Francesca and Ernesto and help out in the pasticceria.

  Alberto had one of four wine stalls on the square. There were two pecorino stands, four salamis, two cashmeres, three souvenirs, three linens, one air freshener, Mario’s gelati, five fresh pasta, six fruit and vegetable, a tourist office stand, and a temporary Poliziano. The Borsolini brothers had strangely not received any of the information about the festa nor been invited to the planning meetings, and also missing was the parish priest, Father Dominico, who had been called away to Rome for a meeting with the Pope, which for curious reasons never eventuated.

  For a couple more hours, Lily worked the stall as locals and tourists helped themselves to the free amorucci piled up in the bowls, then bought packet after packet after packet to take home. Violetta and Luciana would be able to afford bionic limbs on the proceeds of the inaugural Santa Ana di Chisa festa.

  Finally, the crowds started drifting off, and looking up across the piazza, Lily forgot her weary legs as she saw her sister and Al standing at Mario’s gelati stand. He too had done a roaring trade: his amorucci-flavoured gelato proving more popular even than the triple chocolate. It had been Francesca’s idea to put the outside bits of the cantucci hearts into an ice cream, and commercially speaking, it was an extremely viable prospect.

  Rose and Al were leanin
g into each other, laughing at something Mario was saying and looking far from the pale, rattled creatures who had gotten off the plane clearly not talking to each other a month before.

  Harry, Jack and Francesca were chasing each other around the well, while the twins were playing with Ernesto as Daniel, sitting in the shade with Matteo, chatted to Alessandro. It turned out the two men knew each other before Lily had arrived on the scene, as Alessandro was one of the small wine producers that Daniel was targeting to represent.

  They liked each other, which helped when Lily told Alessandro that she was pregnant but staying with her husband. He had been stunned at first but never angry nor possessive of her baby. He agreed to stand back and let Daniel be the child’s father and to have whatever role Lily saw fit in the future.

  ‘I have not made the best of fathers,’ he told her, ‘but I know you will make a wonderful mother.’ He was now seeing a beautiful young doctor from Montalcino. And she wasn’t the only one Lily hoped he would see.

  ‘Let’s clear the amorucci off the table and get ready for lunch,’ she suggested to Carlotta as she watched the various members of her hotchpotch family congregate in different parts of the piazza. Soon they were all sitting around that giant heart shape eating, drinking, chatting, and laughing as they piled their plates with spaghetti thick with anchovies, caramelised onion and breadcrumbs; orichiette in a rich bolognese ragu; fettuccine with lemon, hot peppers and pecorino; fried zucchini flowers stuffed with three different cheeses; eggplant dripping in oil and garlic; and crusty ciabatta bread.

  Lily sat between Rose and Daniel, with baby Matteo being passed from lap to lap like the happy fat plaything he was, even sitting at one point in the arms of Eugenia, pale and nervous, but there among them, with her own sister for ballast and her children in good hands. Alessandro sat across the heart from Lily, his girlfriend Angelica on one side of him, confident and strong, lacking the deep-rooted complications of which he was so full. On his other side were two empty seats populated at different times by various children and causing Lily a little anxiety until across the piazza she saw another young woman with a boy of about three shyly approach the rowdy group.

  ‘Come on, come on, sit down, I’ve been waiting for you,’ she called, waving them in next to Alessandro.

  ‘Everybody, this is Sofia and her son Massimo.’

  Alessandro stood as his daughter slipped in next to him and pulled her little boy onto her lap. Lily knew he wanted to leave, but she also knew he wouldn’t. He was a decent man. Slowly he sat down and introduced his daughter to his girlfriend. The next time she looked, Massimo was in his lap.

  ‘I see you, Lily Turner,’ said Daniel, handing her Matteo. ‘I see you.’

  ‘I know you do,’ she said with a smile, and she kissed the top of her baby’s head, thinking for the thousandth time that there was no better smell in all the world.

  Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mario packing up the last of his stall.

  ‘Get Al to swap chairs with one of the kids, will you?’ she asked Rose, and carrying her plump brown boy on her hip, she walked over to Mario and brought him back to the table, sitting him beside Carlotta, so close that their elbows were touching. They were two shy, stubborn people, but Lily was certain they were made for each other and would, one day, realise it.

  In the shade of the duomo, a handful of elderly friends watched on, all eyes glistening behind variously thick spectacles.

  ‘Santa Ana di Chisa willing Daniel will live a long and healthy life,’ Violetta said, ‘but one day that Lily is going to make a hell of a widowed darner.’

  ‘Not that you need to be widowed,’ Luciana reminded her.

  ‘Not that you need to be able to darn,’ added Fiorella. ‘Because it doesn’t really matter how you get rid of the hole, does it? Just that you do.’

  ‘A mended sock certainly lasts a lot longer,’ agreed Violetta, handing around a bag of chili pepper and chocolate amorucci. ‘In fact sometimes the darned bit is stronger than anything else.’

  ‘It could end up being your favourite part, I imagine,’ said Fiorella. ‘Even if to begin with, you didn’t think it matched.’

  She looked at Violetta, who smiled.

  ‘All praise to Santa Ana di Chisa,’ she said, and her friends all agreed.

  ‘All praise to Santa Ana di Chisa!’

  Acknowledgments

  The older I get, the more people I have to thank, but the less I can remember who or why. What’s that about? So thanks, everyone, everywhere, for all your help. I needed it and can only apologise if I fail, here, to thank you personally for giving it.

  One person I could never forget to thank is my dear friend Bridget, who shared with me the story of baby Stanley, the newborn she held in her arms for just six days before his biological mother changed her mind and wanted him back. Such difficult days…subsequently illuminated by another baby, the stellar Stella, whose arrival made, and continues to make, Bridget and so many other people so very happy.

  My cousin Frances Kennedy in Rome deserves at the very least a great big kiss for just being such a cool chick and all-round support system and for introducing me to Montepulciano, the real-life Tuscan hilltop town on which Montevedova is based. Go there—it’s pretty much as described, minus the pasticceria, although there’s a fantastic one called Mariuccia in nearby Montalcino. Stock up on dolci, then go to Abbey Sant’Antimo and listen to the monks’ Gregorian chanting. Now that’s what I call a day in the country.

  Tuscany is as drop-dead gorgeous as everyone says it is and all praise to Santa Ana di Chisa for helping me convince my Australian BFF Ronnie into coming with me on my second research trip to save me from being lonely. Even more saintly praise should be heaped upon her husband, Raoul, who I had completely forgotten speaks Italian (and cooks and cleans and drives). How ever would we have found the Prada outlet shop without him? Two GPS systems, two guide books, and a map certainly weren’t getting us there.

  I carelessly left my own husband, Mark Robins, at home during this research trip. He was busy in Queensland building a large boat called the Dawn Treader for the third installment in the Narnia film franchise, and it just didn’t seem right to drag him away from his twelve-hour working days to trip around the Tuscan countryside in a navy blue Fiat 500.

  Unlike Santa Ana di Chisa, Mark Robins is a real saint.

  As usual I would like to thank my wonderful agent, Stephanie Cabot, without whom I might still be stuck in an office writing captions about cellulite on the thighs of Hollywood movie stars. And I’d like to thank Denise Roy, my amazing editor at Plume in the US, for making me work harder than I’m naturally suited to, and the vibrant Anna Valdinger and team at HarperCollins Australia and New Zealand.

  More than anything, though, I would like to thank the readers who continue to e-mail me to tell me that they like my books. Most of the time I am at home, on my own, stuck in front of the computer, halfway through the new one, with only the dog and perhaps a little something sweet for company. Often my head is in my hands, and I am wondering what the hell I am doing. Sometimes I am drawing up a list of other things I could do instead, although that can be quite depressing as there don’t seem to be that many jobs for five-star resort inspectors or chocolate tasters.

  Then, just when I am seriously starting to consider what role I could fulfill at the circus—that doesn’t involve heights or working nights—I will hear the friendly little ‘bing’ of an e-mail arriving. More often than not it’s someone who has taken the time and effort to say they’ve just finished reading something I’ve written and they’d like to say thank you.

  I can’t tell you how much this fills my heart with joy. ‘Hey, circus, find yourself another fat and/or bearded lady,’ I will cry. ‘Stick your five-star resorts where the sun don’t shine,’ I’ll continue. ‘Get those dark chocolate truffles away from me at once. I don’t need to taste them!’*

  So to those of you who have written to me already, grazie; so often y
ou make my day. And to those who have yet to get in touch but think they might one day like to, visit my website at www.sarah-katelynch.com, and you can e-mail me from there. I look forward to hearing from you.

  This story, by the way, this book, is about mending broken hearts. If you haven’t ever had one, count yourself lucky. But if you have, well, never forget that we’re all in this together. I know some breaks are worse than others, but I also know that we will get our happy endings if, as Tinker Bell says, we believe in them. And if we look in the right places.

  About the Author

  SARAH-KATE LYNCH lives for some of the year on the wild west coast of New Zealand but escapes whenever she can to such far-flung corners of the world as the vineyards of Champagne, the streets of New York, and the hilltop towns of Tuscany. Sometimes she allows her husband, film art director Mark Robins, to come with her. You can read more about her, or just look at the pictures, at www.sarah-katelynch.com.

  Copyright

  HarperCollinsPublishers

  First published in the USA in 2011 by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First published in Australia in 2011

  by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited

  ABN 36 009 913 517

  harpercollins.com.au

  Copyright © Sarah-Kate Lynch 2011

  The right of Sarah-Kate Lynch to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.

  This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.