by Paula Kay
“Yeah, tomorrow should work for me. I really have nothing going on other than my mega video game tournaments.”
“Well, I’m so relieved that I can manage to pull you away from your computer for a few hours.”
“Anything to spend time with my bestie.”
They both laughed.
“So, you’ve hardly talked about Harvard or the internship at all the last few days.”
“Oh, and you miss me talking your ear off about school and work, do you?”
“No, not really. It’s nice to see a side of you that’s not so consumed by school or work. That’s all.”
“I know. Honestly, I haven’t thought about much else ever since I found out about Arianna. It’s almost as if I’ve just stuck a little placeholder in my life until I hear something. I hope it’s soon though, because I’m gonna have to get back to thinking about other things soon. I can’t let the whole summer go by without being serious about my studies. And I do have the writing class coming up. That starts in a few days. But it’s more fun for me than anything really.”
“Oh hey, speaking of your writing. You never did tell me what happened the other day when your parents read your short story. I think that was the day that everything happened.”
“It was. Funny you should mention that, because I was all set to tell you how great the conversation with my mother had gone. She seemed to really love the short story and both she and my father at least said that they were really proud of me.”
Thomas looked like he was studying her while she spoke. “Why do you always say that as if they wouldn’t be proud of you, Iz?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know how to explain it. I just feel like the writing seems more frivolous. And I know how hard they’ve worked to set me up for success—for getting me into the right school and everything. I know how much they’ve given up for me.”
She noticed Thomas didn’t seem to be fully buying into her explanation. “What?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I just wonder how much of that is in your head. Maybe they have no idea how much pressure you feel. You never talk to them about it—not really. Not as it relates to what you think they feel, anyway.”
Thomas did have a point. She did feel that she was opening up more to her parents these days and, as rough as it had been, the conversation about Arianna and Isabella’s adoption had made her feel a lot closer to her parents. She finally did feel like she could talk to them about things that were bothering her, especially since she now felt really supported by them in her quest to reach out to find out more about her birth mother.
“Thank goodness I have a friend as smart as you,” she teased him.
“You mean, as forthright?” Thomas laughed.
“Yeah, that too. I know you’ve got my back anyway. That’s a good thing.”
Isabella grinned as she took a big forkful of food. The volume on her phone was off, but she had it sitting right next to her while she ate her lunch. She saw the notification of the e-mail update out of the corner of her eye. She dropped her fork down against the plate, which made Thomas look up at her.
“Thomas, it’s a reply—from Douglas.”
Chapter 12
Isabella quickly scanned the e-mail, feeling the tears coming. Everything about Douglas’s response was perfect. Everything about it led her to believe that he’d been thrilled to hear from her.
“Izzy!”
She looked over at Thomas, who was grinning and waiting patiently for her to finish.
“Well?”
She smiled back at him. “You’re really not gonna believe any of this. Want me to read it to you?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Okay.”
Dear Isabella,
How absolutely wonderful to receive your e-mail. I cannot tell you how happy it has made me and a handful of people that will want to know all about you.
I don’t want to overwhelm you with too much information before you tell me that you’re ready, but the short version is that I received your e-mail while having dinner in Tuscany, Italy yesterday.
Why is this important, you might ask?
Because I am here along with a small group of people who loved your mother, Arianna, including your biological grandparents who own a vineyard here. The timing of your e-mail with our little reunion has been the celebration of the evening and we are all desperate to talk to you when you’re ready.
We’d all love the chance to get to know you, Isabella, and to be able to tell you about your mother, who was very dear to each one of us.
We also have the matter of your inheritance to discuss.
Please let me know your phone number and a good time for you to talk, or feel free to phone me any time at the number below if a phone conversation sounds like a good next step to you.
I will look forward to hearing from you soon.
Sincerely,
Douglas
P.S. Regarding my relationship with Arianna, I was her friend and attorney at the time of her death, but I’ve known Arianna ever since her parents brought her home from the hospital as an infant. (Her father was my best friend.)
Thomas handed her a napkin from across the table, and Isabella didn’t miss his own tears as he quickly brushed them aside. He got up to join her on her side of the booth, putting his arms around her in a big hug as she wept against his shoulder.
Isabella cried for a good few minutes—from the sheer scope of what she’d just learned in that short e-mail. They were tears of joy for everything that she was going to get a chance to know about her mother. She felt confident in that now.
Finally she pulled away from Thomas when she thought that she’d be able to speak.
“Thomas. I have grandparents.”
Thomas grinned. “You have grandparents that live in Italy.”
Isabella laughed. “Imagine that. I really can’t believe it.”
Both of her sets of grandparents had passed away when Isabella was a small child, so to think that she might actually have an opportunity to meet her biological grandparents was incredible to her.
“And Douglas seems very kind, doesn’t he?”
Thomas nodded and Isabella thought he seemed genuinely so happy for her.
She wrapped her arms around his neck again, giving him a tight squeeze. “Thomas, what do you think this all means? Who do you suppose that little reunion refers to and do you think I’ll get a chance to meet them all?”
He was laughing at her. “Well, let me ask you this. Would getting to meet your grandparents be enough to get you on a plane to Italy?”
“Oh.” Isabella stopped smiling for a second, then she laughed. “I hadn’t honestly thought about that. Do you think they’d come here?”
“No way. If you get invited to go visit your grandparents at their vineyard in Tuscany, I am absolutely not going to let you turn that down.”
Isabella laughed at how he’d stressed the part about them owning the vineyard which was pretty darn incredible.
“Okay, well, I guess I’d have to strongly consider that invitation, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. I think I’ll start by e-mailing Douglas back. Not sure about the timing, but I’ll see if he can call me tomorrow at some point. I hope I won’t be too nervous to speak to him—it kinda sounded like he’s still there—at my grandparents’—didn’t it? Oh, how weird that I just called them my grandparents.” Isabella laughed at herself and her rambling. “I guess I’m a little excited. What about my parents? I should tell them right away, yes?”
Thomas nodded his head. “Yes, I think so. I mean, there’s no reason to keep it from them, right?”
“No. I need to be sure that I keep them involved. I don’t want them to have any doubts about anything. I’m sure they don’t—not like how it would have been if I was actually getting ready to talk to Arianna—but I still feel like I need to reassure them, ya know? That I’m not going anywhere.”
“Try not to worry too much about it. Just let it be what it is.”
>
“Gee, thanks for the advice. Did you get that out of a self-help book?”
Thomas quirked his eyebrow. “It’s something my dad says to my mom all the time, actually.”
They both burst out laughing, and Thomas moved back around to the other side of the booth to finish his lunch.
Isabella picked up her phone. “So I’m gonna e-mail him back right now. I’ll just keep it short and see if there’s a time that works for them.” She sent off a quick reply and then worked to contain her excitement enough so that she could finish her lunch. Before she’d even finished, she saw that she’d heard back from Douglas already.
“He says tomorrow is perfect. They’ll call me at two o’clock.”
“What is it, Isabella?”
She guessed that the look on her face was reflecting the P.S. that she’d just read.
“He says to think about coming to visit. Here, let me read it to you…‘P.S. I know it’s so early to say yes to something like this, but please consider coming to Italy for a visit. We can talk about it more tomorrow and of course only do so if and when you feel comfortable, but nothing would make this little crew here happier than to meet you.’”
Isabella knew she probably looked a bit stunned, but nothing about any of this should really shock her, considering the circumstances of everything that had happened.
“Wow. They want to meet me.”
“Of course they want to meet you, Iz. The question is, will you do it?”
Isabella was starting to feel a little overwhelmed with everything. She knew that it wasn’t what Douglas had intended, but now that the question of her visiting was out there, she was faced with a whole other set of challenges—namely her fear of flying, but also the fact that she did have such little time this summer with her internship starting the next week. How could she possibly work that out?”
Just let it be what it is. She laughed at Thomas’s words, apparently still on her mind just when she needed them, and felt slightly less anxious.
“Isabella.”
“Yeah?”
“Everything’s going to be fine. I promise.” Thomas reached over to grab her hand, and she felt thankful that he was there with her now as she sorted through all of her emotions about what had transpired just in the last hour.
“I know. You’re right. I need to just take it one step at a time and not get ahead of myself. For now, I’ll focus on the call tomorrow. I don’t have to decide anything right now. They might not even want to meet me after we talk. Who knows?”
“Well, they’re gonna want to meet you. I mean, unless you’re planning to do something really freaky on the phone.”
“Oh, hush. Don’t jinx me.” Isabella looked at her phone then, noticing how much time had gone by since they’d sat down. “Oh, shoot. I gotta run to meet Ms. Carlson. Sorry. I didn’t mean to monopolize so much of our conversation.”
“Yeah, yeah. No problem.”
Thomas never got annoyed about such things. He’d listen to her talk about her feelings all day, if it would help her. He was a good friend like that.
“Thanks for everything. Call you later.”
Isabella set off walking in the direction of her meeting at the cafe, so many thoughts filling her mind—thoughts that she couldn’t wait to share with Ms. Carlson.
Chapter 13
Ms. Carlson listened intently while Isabella filled her in on everything that had happened since she’d last seen her.
“Wow, you weren’t kidding when you said that a lot has happened.”
Isabella nodded. “Crazy, right?”
“So, tell me how you’re feeling in general right now? How’s your anxiety?”
“I’ve been feeling pretty good—once I’d gotten through the rough stuff with my parents—but with this last e-mail I just got from Douglas…”
Isabella didn’t even know if she could put into words what she was feeling. Everything had happened so fast, and she really hadn’t had a lot of time to process any of it.
“What about it? Are you feeling unsure about wanting to talk with him?”
“No, not that at all. I mean, I am a little nervous to think that I’ll probably be talking to my grandparents. That’s something I never really expected would happen so soon.”
“So, what has you feeling anxious about it?”
“Just at the end of Douglas’s e-mail to me, he mentioned that I should think about coming to Italy. I guess I’ll know more after I talk to him tomorrow, but it sounds like maybe he will be there for a while. I mean the idea of going to Italy—of meeting my grandparents—is really kind of crazy. But the idea of actually flying there still does terrify me, even though I know I really do need to get over that fear—that it shouldn’t keep me from going—and it wouldn’t. I’m pretty sure I could overcome that, but I don’t know why I’m even talking about this right now because I can’t…”
Ms. Carlson reached out to place her hand on Isabella’s arm while she stopped talking for a moment to catch her breath.
“You can’t what?”
“I can’t go this summer. I have my internship starting next week. There’s no way that anything is going to happen that fast. Maybe I could go at the end of the summer, but that’s when Thomas wanted me to meet him and I’m afraid I’ll be too stressed out about school anyway, so—”
“Isabella,” Ms. Carlson interrupted. “Let’s stop for a minute.”
Isabella laughed. She didn’t know what she was getting all worked up about. She’d been perfectly fine a few minutes ago. She guessed that it was because she’d grown to be so comfortable here, talking to Ms. Carlson—like she could really be herself with her.
“Okay, sorry. It’s just that all of a sudden, everything is hitting me and I realize that none of what I’m talking about has a remote chance of happening—just because of the timing, I mean. Except for the communication, of course. There’s no reason why I can’t just be content with the e-mails and phone calls for now, right? I’m sure they’d extend another invitation to come visit for later in the year. At least I’d assume that they would.”
“Well, let’s just hold on for a minute and talk this through.”
Isabella sat back in her chair, trying to convince herself to calm down again as she listened to Ms. Carlson.
“Let’s talk about choices.” She winked at Isabella. “Because you do have some here, you know.”
“Okay.”
“Firstly, it sounds like maybe you’re getting ahead of yourself just a bit. You’ll probably have more of an idea after tomorrow’s call as to whether you’d even like to go for a visit, right?”
Isabella nodded. She’d been telling herself this too, but it didn’t stop her mind from racing ahead to the possibilities.
“Second thing to consider…about your internship. What would happen if you didn’t do that? Could you not do it? Do you think you could get them to postpone your start date? So that you could take a few weeks to go to Italy if you decided that’s what you wanted?”
Ms. Carlson waited while Isabella considered the questions.
“I feel like I can’t say no to the internship. I think my parents would kill me if I didn’t do it. It’s such a good opportunity, really—for anyone going into law.” She let herself just sit with the thought for a moment.
“What’s that look? What are you thinking?”
“Well, for one thing when I took the internship, it was about more than just the money; but for sure I needed the money that a summer job would bring me. But now I don’t know if that’s as much of a concern any more. I have no idea what this sum of money is that Douglas has mentioned—the trust fund from Arianna, from my mother—but he certainly made it sound substantial enough that I’m guessing not working this summer wouldn’t hurt me too much. So, I guess it could be an option.”
“And what about how your parents might feel about that? Do you think you can be okay if they disagree with your decision?”
A week ago Isabella didn’t think
she would be okay with something like that—not by a long shot—but now, after everything that had happened, after the conversations that she’d had with her parents in the last few days, she felt like maybe it was time for her to start making some decisions without worrying so much about their approval.
She nodded slowly in response to Ms. Carlson’s question. “Yes. I think if I could get to a place where I’m comfortable with that as a decision, I’d be okay with it, regardless of what my parents think. Do you think that’s selfish of me?”
She wasn’t sure why she bothered asking the question, really. She knew what Ms. Carlson’s answer was going to be. It was something that they’d talked about in the past—how Isabella needed to start making decisions for herself, without worrying so much about what her parents or other people thought.
“Isabella, I think you’re a very smart young woman, fully capable now of making decisions for your life as the young adult that you are. It would be one thing if we were talking about decisions that could harm you or set you going down a wrong direction in life, but that’s not the case here. As much as I know you think your parents have this idea of what your ideal future should be, maybe they’d surprise you. Maybe you don’t give them enough credit.”
Isabella considered Ms. Carlson’s words and had to admit to herself that there might be some truth to them. She wasn’t sure any more if all of these expectations she’d been heaping on herself over the years were because of her parents or some kind of false assumption that she’d held about what they wanted for her.
She was sure that they wanted her to be successful—to strive for excellence—but maybe her ideas about what that looked like were not the same as what she thought her parent’s ideas were. Her mother had said something to her just the other day after reading her short story—right before all the craziness happened—about her and Isabella’s father just wanting Isabella to be happy. Did she mean it? What about her writing? Isabella barely let herself have the thought—there were too many other things to think about right now.