by Jen Carter
So it didn’t matter if I liked change. It needed to happen, and the next morning was a good time to start.
Stella’s note said Holly had found the scrapbook, so it seemed like a trip to our grandfather’s vineyard where Holly poured wine in the tasting room full-time while finishing her Art History PhD was in order. I could take the scrapbook back to Holly, and there was a pretty good chance I’d see Stella up there, too. Stella’s family lived down in the coastal city of Carlsbad in Northern San Diego County near me, but since her husband Jason was the general manager of the family winery, they often spent weekends up there. Jason could work as needed, the boys could run around Aldo’s house, and Stella could just…I don’t know. Be Stella. Before she had kids, she was the winery’s event planner. Now she only helped out with big events. I’m sure she liked being up there so that she could make sure everything was up the Stella-standard. I often wondered why they even bothered to live in Carlsbad with how much time they spent at the winery. They just needed to move up there.
Decades ago, my grandfather Aldo planted one of the first vineyards in the Temecula Valley, and his wine had always been very popular. Not long after he established himself as one of Southern California’s best winemakers, he wanted to expand—though not when it came to wine production. He wanted to build a destination getaway for wine tasters. Thus, Otto Viti was born. Literally eight vines in Italian, Otto Viti was an enclave of eight tasting rooms for local wineries, specialty shops, and fantastic restaurants. Often called OV for short, the single-street was just steps from my grandfather’s vineyard and had visitors coming and going constantly.
As I drove past OV’s main strip on my way to Aldo’s house, I promised myself I would spend more time up there. In the last year or so, the make up of OV had shifted some. A couple older business owners had retired, and the new ones taking over were about my age. They all seemed to be pretty nice. The Sweet Spot, OV’s little bakery, had just been passed down from the original owner to her granddaughter. The little coffee shop had been converted to a coffee-and-book shop, aptly renamed Books and Brew. And then a little homemade, organic, holistic shop called Mortar and Pestle had opened. I think they sold cosmetics, bath stuff, and minor aches-and-pains remedies. Stuff like that. Maybe if I spent more time in OV, I’d know for sure. And I’d be getting out of the work-and-home bubble that Amanda had talked about.
I parked my car in Aldo’s driveway, grabbed the scrapbook, and walked to the front door. Before letting myself into the house, I turned and looked around. The vineyard covered the entire hillside in front of the house, all the way down to Otto Viti below. Being mid-winter, the vines were bare, but they still reminded me of childhood. How many weekends had we spent running through the vineyard, pretending to help but actually plotting out adventures? Too many to count. And all such wonderful memories.
Inside, the house was silent. Aldo wasn’t in the kitchen, which meant he was probably having coffee with his buddies or playing chess at Check Mate, Otto Viti’s little chess shop. Retirement certainly had its advantages, and Aldo had filled his retirement with friends, games, and more friends. That was one of the many things I loved about him—his friendliness and willingness to give anything a chance.
I walked through the house to Holly’s room. “Knock, knock,” I said, opening my younger sister’s bedroom door. I peered inside and saw Holly’s shaggy mane spread across her face and pillow. How could she breathe under all that hair? “Hey sleepy-head, why aren’t you awake yet?” I said.
Holly groaned.
“Come on, get up. I want to talk to you.”
She groaned again. “Why are you here? What time is it?”
“It’s ten-thirty. Time to get up.”
“It’s Saturday.”
“Yeah, and you’re almost twenty-seven years old. Responsible adults your age have been up for hours.”
Holly groaned for the third time. “Seriously, why are you here?”
“I brought Mom and Dad’s honeymoon scrapbook back. I heard we’re going to Italy.”
Holly stirred. “This couldn’t have waited another couple hours?”
“Nope.” I walked to Holly’s bed and sat on the edge. “Where did this idea come from? This whole idea about going to Italy?”
Holly rolled over and yanked on her comforter, unable to pull it out from under me enough to cover her head. “Since it looks like I’ll probably be living with Aldo the rest of my life, he and I decided to organize the junk room. I needed more space for my books. There was all kinds of stuff from Mom and Dad in there, and when we went through it, we found the scrapbook. And the rest is history, as they say.”
“So you and Stella decided to take a trip to Italy?” I said.
“I decided that I wanted to go to Italy, and Aldo offered to pay. Then I asked Stella because she’s easy to convince. And I figured if I could get her to agree, you’d have to go, too.”
Oh.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Did she really think I might not want to go?
Holly sat up and pushed her tangled hair off her face. “Don’t look at me like that. You know Stella is easier to convince than you. Your first response to everything is always no.”
I didn’t think no was my first response to everything all the time. Sure, I did go through a mental list of possible scenarios and outcomes before saying yes, but that didn’t mean I always said no.
The sound of little boys laughing drifted down the hall toward us, quickly followed by the chant, “Good morning, good morning, good morning!”
Our four- and five-year-old nephews, Hudson and Thatcher, raced through the doorway and jumped on Holly’s bed.
Good morning, good morning, good morning!” they continued to sing.
Holly grinned and tickled them. “Hey buddies, good morning!” She glanced at me. “Jill, if you had woken me up like this, I would have popped right out of bed.”
Sure.
Hudson climbed over the tangled covers and limbs on the bed and threw his arms around my neck. “You’re here!” he exclaimed. “Yay! Are you going to stay all day?”
I squeezed my nephew. “I don’t know, we’ll see.”
Stella appeared in the doorway. She looked exactly the opposite of Holly. Granted, Holly had just woken up and Stella had probably been up for hours, but our older sister looked put together no matter what time of day. Her bobbed hair was always perfectly styled, her makeup was always perfectly understated, and her accessories were always perfectly matched to her perfectly seasonal outfit.
“Jill, oh good, I’m glad you’re here,” she said. Then, turning her attention to the boys, she continued, “Hey guys, how about you go play with your cars in the playroom for a bit? Then I’ll make you a snack and take you to the chess shop.”
Hudson slid off the bed and made a beeline for the door. Thatcher did the same, though he paused long enough to hug me before chasing after his brother.
Stella sat in the chair at Holly’s desk. “So are you in, Jill?” she asked. “Want to go to Italy with us?”
The way she said it irked me. Like they were going with or without me. What I wanted to do wouldn’t change their plans no matter what.
“I think I’m in,” I said. “But I have some questions.” I pointed at Holly. “She just said Aldo offered to pay. Really?”
“He did,” Stella said. “I don’t think he should, though.”
“Easy for you to say,” Holly said. “You have money.”
“Don’t complain about her having money,” I said, unable to keep from smiling. “We both benefit from that. I’m next in line for one of Stella’s hand-me-down cars.”
Holly flopped back on the bed. “Oh, I forgot. That means I’ll have to wait another two or three years for my next hand-me-down car. And I still don’t have money to pay for a trip to Italy.” She covered her head with a pillow.
“Oh stop, you two,” Stella said. “We’ll figure out the money issue later.” As a second thought, she added, �
�And same goes for the car. We’re almost ready to get an SUV, so we’ll talk about that later, Jill.”
Score.
“But for now,” she continued, “what other questions do you have?”
“When do you want to go?” I said. “And where in Italy are we going?”
“We’ll go in summer when you’re on break from teaching,” Stella answered. “I can’t be away from the boys for too long, so we won’t be able to trace every step of Mom and Dad’s honeymoon. That would take a couple weeks. I was thinking one week total, including travel time. We’d hit the highlights—just a few cities.” She looked back and forth between me and Holly. “Thoughts?”
“I don’t care,” Holly said, her voice muffled under the pillow. “As long as I don’t have to plan anything or pay.”
I nodded. “Sounds good to me. Did you have particular cities in mind?”
Stella shook her head. “No, but I was thinking last night about something…” her voice trailed off as she held out her hand. “Can I see the scrapbook?”
I stood and walked it across the room to her. She opened it to the last page. With a glance at me, she ran her fingers over the inside of the back cover. “Did you notice this?”
I leaned down to get a better look as she pulled her fingers away. The back cover had a flat, raised square embedded in it. “What’s that?” I asked. “There’s something in there?”
Stella shifted in her chair and rummaged through Holly’s desk drawers until she found a pair of scissors. She opened the blades and ran one of them along the edge of the raised square.
“You’re too quiet over there,” Holly said, her face still covered with a pillow. “What are you doing?”
“There’s something hidden in the scrapbook,” I said as Stella continued to run the scissors around the raised edge. “We’re finding out what it is.”
“Something hidden?” Holly said. “That sounds just like Mom. Everything was a treasure hunt with her.”
Stella peeled back the square she had cut away and extracted a folded piece of paper. It must have been well-preserved inside the scrapbook cover because it wasn’t yellowing—and yet I was sure it must have been there since my mom put together the book of memories.
Stella unfolded it. Her eyebrows furrowed. “Huh,” she said.
“What’d you find?” Holly asked.
I looked over Stella’s shoulder. “Numbers, mostly,” I said. “It looks like the names of three cities and three long numbers.”
“Each number begins with CP,” Stella added.
I pulled my cell phone from my back pocket and keyed in the first number. Nothing came up. I tried the second, and again, nothing. “These CP numbers don’t mean anything to Google.”
“What are the cities?” Holly asked.
“Vernazza, Florence, and Rome,” Stella said.
“There we have it,” Holly said. “That’s where we’ll go, and maybe we’ll figure out what those numbers mean along the way.”
FOUR
Present day
I wanted to be excited about our trip to Italy. I really, really did. But there were two reasons I wasn’t as excited as I could have been. And their names were Holly and Stella.
Holly came down to Carlsbad the night before our trip and stayed at my apartment. Since I lived so much closer to the San Diego Airport and she wasn’t a morning person, it made sense for her to spend the night. Stella wanted to leave for the airport at six o’clock in the morning, and there was no way Holly could have made it without me there to drag her out of bed. But what didn’t make sense was her boyfriend Guy dropping her off. He invited himself to stay for dinner, then proclaimed that Amanda’s Americanized interpretation of rolled tacos was subpar. I could handle his incessant quoting of the philosophers Michel Foucault and Friedrich Nietzsche. I could deal with his aversion to deodorant and his penchant for giving advice that wasn’t asked for. But criticizing rolled tacos? Rolled tacos that someone else made and he ate for free? Please. I’d never see what Holly saw in him.
Then there was Stella. She showed up at my apartment at five-fifty, clipboard in hand. Clipboard. In. Hand. Wasn’t this supposed to be a vacation? Who brought a clipboard on vacation? And how many people did their hair and makeup, wore clothes that looked appropriate for Wimbledon sidelines, and were that chipper for a plane ride?
Only one person. Stella. Only Stella.
How in the world was I related to these two?
Luckily, our grandfather Aldo, who insisted on treating all of us to this trip, drove down from Otto Viti to see us off. Aldo was a short, round, balding man of seventy-four, and as far as I could tell, he never had a bad day in his life. Perpetually optimistic and kind, he was a great buffer between me and my sisters. Stella’s husband, Jason, who was driving us to the airport, was also optimistic and kind. He was a good balance to his tightly-wound wife—and he was a good buffer, too—but no one could hold a candle to Aldo. He made my heart feel light, no matter the circumstances.
“All right, let’s go through this one more time,” Stella said, standing beside Jason’s Range Rover and studying her clipboard. Amazingly, she wasn’t scrutinizing Jason as he loaded our luggage into the SUV. We had gotten big backpacking-across-Europe backpacks that could be converted to rolling suitcases, and surely she wanted to add her two cents about which way they should lay in the cargo area. But no, she kept quiet. Well, she kept quiet about that, anyway. “I want to make sure we have everything,” she said.
I was just about to object, but Holly beat me to it. She said, “It’s all taken care of, crazy sister. Everyone who needs to be here is here. Aldo came down to say goodbye, and he’ll stay and watch your darling boys while Jason drives us to the airport. Almost all the luggage is in the car, and if Jason drives the speed limit, we’ll be at the airport more than two hours before our flight. What else do we need to go over?”
“There’s so much more,” Stella said, her eyes still glued to the clipboard. “Did you both change your cell phone plans so that you’ll have coverage in Europe?”
“Yes,” Holly and I said.
“Do you have your passports?”
“Yes.”
“Did you pack layers of clothing in case the weather is unpredictable?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have all your tickets? Oh, wait. I have all that. Did you bring something to do on the plane?”
“Stella, you’re so annoying,” Holly said. “We’re big girls. We’ve got everything we need. Let’s just go.”
As Jason loaded the last huge backpack into the SUV, I caught him suppressing a smile. He sure had to have a good sense of humor to live with my older sister.
“Goodbye, Holly,” Aldo said, stepping closer to his youngest granddaughter and wrapping her into a hug. When he let go, he turned to me. “Goodbye, Jill.” It was my turn for a hug, and then Stella’s turn. “You three,” he wagged his finger at us, “you remind Italy how wonderful the D’Angelos are, okay, yes?” He kept wagging his finger at us as he chuckled.
Oh, how I loved my grandfather.
We all hugged him again and then climbed into the SUV.
“You know,” Stella said from the front seat, “one day you’ll thank me for being so organized.”
Unlikely.
As Jason pulled out of the driveway and we all waved to Aldo, Holly said, “Wait, Jason. Stop. We have to go back to Otto Viti. I forgot—”
Stella whirled around, giving Holly a death stare. Holly dissolved into a fit of giggles.
“Just kidding!” she said.
Inwardly, I laughed. Outwardly, I kept quiet. I didn’t want to be on Stella’s naughty list. Not right at the beginning of a week-long trip at least.
“You’re making it hard to want to spend so much time with you, Hol,” Stella muttered as she turned back around.
Holly giggled again. “The feeling is mutual.”
***
Maybe my sisters weren’t the only reasons I didn’t entirely lo
ok forward to this trip. I also hated flying. Always had. I purposely stayed up really late the night before and skipped my morning coffee, hoping that if I popped a sleeping pill thirty minutes before boarding the plane I’d be able to sleep most of the way to Italy. And then once I got there, I’d be able to relax and enjoy myself.
Luckily, it looked like I was going to get my sleeping wish. As soon as we were settled in our seats, drowsiness began settling over me. Good. I leaned forward, grabbed a brush from my carry-on, and quickly began arranging my hair into two French braids.
“What the heck are you doing?” Holly asked from my right.
“Braiding my hair,” I said. “Last year when I went to London with that group of students, the girls gave me this tip. Braids keep your hair untangled and out of your eyes. They’re really easy to manage, and it doesn’t matter if they’re nice and tight or a little messy. So I like them for traveling.”
Holly gathered her unruly mass of hair and tied it into a floppy knot on the top of her head. “Braids also make you look like you’re twelve,” she said.
“And your weird half-bun, half-ponytail is better?” I asked.
“It’s a conversation starter.”
I finished my braids and returned the brush to my carry-on. What was she talking about? I must have been getting really drowsy because the idea of messy hair being a conversation starter just didn’t make sense to me.
“Seriously,” Stella said from my left, “do we really have to start bickering already? We haven’t even taken off yet.”
“It’s not bickering, Stel,” Holly said. “It’s a deep, philosophical conversation. Since not all of us can have sleek movie star hair to accompany our sleek movie star sunglasses and earrings and handbags and shoes, alas, we must find the best way to deal with the meager circumstances our hair must endure.”
My eyelids felt heavy. I might have normally agreed with Holly, but finding the words didn’t seem worth the effort. Why was Stella wearing big hoop earrings on a thirteen-hour flight anyway? That seemed…uncomfortable.