Love & Gelato

by Jenna Evans Welch

  Of course I wasn’t.

  Howard walked into the visitors’ center, and then he and Sonia both came out and started walking toward the house.

  Oh, no. I couldn’t tell him with Sonia around. Was I going to have to sit on this all night? When they got to the driveway I took the stairs two at a time down to the living room and met them on the front porch.

  “There you are,” Howard said. “How’s your day been?”

  Horrifying. “It’s been . . . okay.”

  He was wearing a light blue button-up with the sleeves rolled up and his nose was sunburned. Something I’d never experienced. You know, because I was Italian.

  “I tried calling your phone earlier, but there was no answer. If we’re going to make it to the movie, we’ll have to go now.”

  “Right now?”

  “Yes. Is Ren coming?”

  “No. He . . . can’t make it.” How was I going to get out of this?

  Sonia smiled. “They’re playing a really old movie tonight, a classic with Audrey Hepburn. Have you heard of Roman Holiday?”

  “No, I haven’t.” And could everyone please just stop talking about Rome?

  Under normal circumstances I probably would have enjoyed Roman Holiday. It’s a black-and-white movie about this European princess who is doing a world tour, but her schedule and handlers are superstrict, so one night when she’s staying in Rome she sneaks out her bedroom window to go have some fun. The only problem is that she’d taken a sedative earlier in the night and so she passes out on a park bench and an American reporter rescues her. They end up exploring the city together and falling in love, except then they don’t end up together, because she has too many other demands.

  I know. Depressing.

  I only half watched it because I couldn’t stop looking at Howard. He had this big, booming laugh and he kept leaning over to tell me the names of places Audrey and her love interest were visiting. He even bought me a giant bag of candy, and even though I ate all of it I barely tasted it. It might have been the longest two hours of my life.

  On the way back Sonia insisted I sit in the front. “So what did you think of the movie?”

  “It was cute. Sad, though.”

  Howard glanced back at Sonia. “You still meeting up with Alberto tonight?”

  “Argh. Yes.”

  “Why argh?”

  “You know why. I swore off blind dates years ago.”

  “Don’t think of it as a blind date. Think of it as going out for drinks with someone I really admire.”

  “Anyone but you and I’d say no.” She sighed. “But then again, what’s the worst that could happen? I’ve always said that a terrible date in Florence is better than a good date anywhere else.”

  Suddenly I realized I knew absolutely nothing about her. “Sonia, how did you end up in Florence?

  “Came here on vacation the summer after grad school and fell in love. It didn’t last, but it got me to plant some roots here.”

  I groaned inwardly. Maybe that was just part of the Italian experience. Come to Italy. Fall in love. Watch everything blow up in your face. You could probably read about it on travel websites.

  Sonia met my eyes in the mirror. “You know, people come to Italy for all sorts of reasons, but when they stay, it’s for the same two things.”

  “What?”

  “Love and gelato.”

  “Amen,” Howard said.

  I looked out my window and put all my attention on keeping the tears from seeping out from under my eyelids. Just gelato wasn’t going to cut it. I wanted the love part too.

  When we got back to the cemetery Howard dropped Sonia off at her house, then circled back to ours. The headlights swept eerily across the headstones, and the combination of candy and nerves was making me absolutely sick to my stomach.

  We were finally alone. It was time to tell him. I took a deep breath. I’d start talking in three . . . two . . . two . . . two . . .

  Howard broke the silence. “I wanted to tell you again how much it means to me to have you here. I know this hasn’t been easy, but I really appreciate you giving it a try. Even if it’s just for the summer. And I think you’re great. I really do. I’m proud of you for jumping in and exploring Florence. You’re an adventurer, just like your mom.” Then he smiled at me, like I was the daughter he’d always hoped to have, and my remaining courage melted like an ice cube in the heat.

  I couldn’t tell him. Not tonight.

  Maybe not ever.

  When we got inside I made some lame excuse about another headache, then trudged up to my room and threw myself on my bed. I did a lot of throwing myself on the bed these days. But what was I going to do? I couldn’t tell Howard, but I also couldn’t not tell him.

  Would it be so awful if I just stayed the rest of the summer and then went home without telling him? But then what about when Father’s Day rolled around and he expected a card from me? Or what about when I got married and he thought he was the guy who was supposed to walk me down the aisle? What then?

  My phone starting ringing and I jumped off my bed and crossed the room in two flying leaps. Please be Ren. Please be Ren, please be—

  Thomas.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Lina. This is Thomas.”

  “Hey.” I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I looked like a puffer fish. Who’d suffered some kind of emotional breakdown.

  “Did you get my text?”

  “Yes. Sorry I didn’t answer. Today’s been kind of . . . crazy.”

  “No problem. What do you think about the party? Do you want to come with me?”

  His voice was so uncomplicatedly British. And he was talking about a party. Like it mattered. I ran my hand through my hair. “What is it exactly?”

  “Eighteenth birthday party for one of the girls who just graduated. She lives in the coolest place—almost as big as Elena’s. Everyone will be there.”

  “Everyone” as in Ren and Mimi? I shut my eyes. “Thanks for asking me, but I don’t think I’ll be able to make it.”

  “Oh, come on. You have to celebrate with me. I passed my driver’s test yesterday, and my dad said I could pick you up in his BMW. And you really don’t want to miss this party. Her parents hired an indie band I’ve been listening to for more than a year.”

  I tucked the phone between my ear and shoulder and rubbed my eyes. After everything that had happened today, a party seemed laughably normal. Also, it seemed weird to go out with someone when I’d clearly fallen for someone else. But what do you do when your “someone else” wants nothing to do with you? At least Thomas was still talking to me.

  “Let me think about it.”

  Thomas exhaled. “All right. You think about it. I’d pick you up at nine. And it’s formal, so you’d need to dress up. I promise you’ll have a good time.”

  “Formal. Got it. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  We hung up and I tossed my phone on the bed, then walked over to the window and looked out. It was a clear night and the moon winked at me like a giant eye. Like it had been watching this whole complicated story play out, and now it was having the last laugh.

  Stupid moon. I put both hands on the window sash and practically threw myself on top of it, but the window wouldn’t budge.

  Fine.

  Chapter 24

  THE NEXT MORNING I WOKE just before dawn. I’d passed out on my bed fully dressed, and there was a dish of spaghetti perched on the edge of my dresser, the tomato sauce pooled in oily clumps. Guess Howard had tried to bring me dinner.

  Gray hazy light was filtering through my window, and I got up and walked quietly over to my suitcase, rummaging around for some clean running clothes. Then I picked up the journal and crept silently through the house, leaving through the back door.

  I made my way toward the back gate. Not even the birds were up yet and dew covered everything like a big, gauzy spiderweb. My mom was right. The cemetery looked completely different at different times of day. Predawn cemeter
y was sort of muted-looking, like gray had been swirled in with the rest of the colors.

  I went through the back gate then broke into a run, passing where I’d met Ren for the first time. Don’t. Think. About. Ren. It was my new mantra. Maybe I’d have it printed on a bumper sticker.

  I shook the thought out of my head, then took in a deep breath, settling on a medium pace. The air was crisp and clean-smelling, like what laundry detergents are probably going for with their “mountain air” scents, and I was crazy relieved to be running. At least now it wasn’t just my mind that was in overdrive.

  One mile. Then two. I was following a narrow little footpath worn into the grass by someone who had made this route a habit, but I had no idea if their destination was the same as mine. For all I knew, I was headed in the complete wrong direction. Maybe it didn’t even exist anymore, and then—BAM. The tower. Jutting out of the hill like a wild mushroom. I stopped running and stared at it for a minute. It was like stumbling across something magical, like a pot of gold, or a gingerbread house in the middle of Tuscany.

  Don’t think about gingerbread houses.

  I started running again, feeling my heart quicken even more as I neared the tower’s dark silhouette. It was a perfect cylinder, gray and ancient-looking and only about thirty feet tall. It looked like the kind of place where people had been falling in love for years.

  I ran right up to the base, then put my hand on the wall, trailing it behind me as I circled around to the opening. The wooden door Howard had moved for my mom was long gone, leaving a bare arched doorway that was so short I had to duck to walk under it. Inside it was empty except for a couple of shaggy spiderwebs and a pile of leaves that had probably outlasted the tree they’d come from. A crumbly spiral staircase rose through the tower’s center, letting a pale circle of light into the room.

  I took a deep breath, then headed for the staircase. Hopefully all my answers were at the top.

  I had to walk carefully—half the steps looked like they were just waiting for an excuse to collapse—and I had to do this acrobatic hurtle over the space where the final step had once been, but finally I stepped outside. The top of the tower was basically an open platform, its circumference lined by a three-foot ledge, and I made my way over to the edge. It was still pretty dark and gray out, but the view was stunning. Like postcard stunning. To my left was a vineyard with rows of grapevines stretching out in thin silvery ropes, and everywhere else was rich Tuscan countryside, the occasional house marooned like a ship in the middle of an ocean of hills.

  I sighed. No wonder this had been the place my mom had finally noticed Howard. Even if she hadn’t already fallen for his sense of humor and awesome taste in gelato, she probably would have taken one look at the view and gone completely out of her mind with love. It was the sort of place that could make a stampede of buffalos seem romantic.

  I set the journal down on the ground, then slowly made my way around the platform, scanning every inch of it. I really wanted to find some sign of my mom, a stone scratched with H+H or maybe some lost journal pages she’d tucked under a rock or something, but all I found were two spiders that looked at me with about as much interest as a pair of British Royal Guards.

  I gave up on my little scavenger hunt and walked back to the center of the platform, wrapping my arms around myself. I needed a question answered, and I got the feeling this was the best place to ask.

  “Mom, why did you send me to Italy?” My voice threw off the quiet peacefulness of everything around me, but I shut my eyes tight to listen.

  Nothing.

  I tried again. “Why did you send me to be with Howard?”

  Still nothing. Then the wind picked up and made a whipping noise through the grass and trees, and suddenly all the loneliness and emptiness I carried around with me swelled up so big it swallowed me whole. I pressed my palms to my eyes, pain ricocheting through my body. What if my mom and my grandma and the counselor were wrong? What if I hurt this badly for the rest of my life? What if every second of every day would be less about what I had than what I’d lost?

  I sank to the floor, pain washing over me in big, jagged waves. She’d told me over and over how wonderful my life was going to be. How proud she was of me. How much she wished she could be there, not just for the big moments, but for the little ones. And then she’d said she’d find a way to stay close to me. But so far, she’d just been gone. Then gone some more. And all that gone stretched out in front of me like a horizon, endless and daunting and empty. I’d been running around Italy trying to solve the mystery of the journal, trying to understand why she’d done what she’d done, but really I’d just been looking for her. And I wasn’t going to find her. Ever.

  “I can’t do this,” I said aloud, pressing my face into my hands. “I can’t be here without you.”

  And that’s when I got slapped. Well, maybe not slapped—it was more like a nudging—but suddenly I was getting to my feet because a word was pushing itself into my brain.

  Look.

  I shaded my eyes. The sun was rising over the hills, heating up the undersides of the clouds and setting them on fire in crazy shades of pink and gold. Everything around me was bright and beautiful and suddenly very clear.

  I didn’t get to stop missing her. Ever. It was the thing that my life had handed me, and no matter how heavy it was, I was never going to be able to set it down. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to be okay. Or even happy. I couldn’t imagine it yet exactly, but maybe a day would come when the hole inside me wouldn’t ache quite so badly and I could think about her, and remember, and it would be all right. That day felt light-years away, but right at this moment I was standing on a tower in the middle of Tuscany and the sunrise was so beautiful that it hurt.

  And that was something.

  I picked up the journal. It was time to finish.

  JUNE 19

  Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. I had that song lyric written on a piece of paper above my desk for almost a year, and only today does it actually mean anything to me. I’ve spent the entire afternoon wandering the streets and thinking, and a few things have become clear.

  First, I have to leave Italy. Last September I met an American woman who’s trapped in a terrible marriage because Italian law says that children stay with the father. I doubt Matteo will ever want anything to do with our baby, but I can’t take that chance.

  And second, I can’t tell Howard how I feel about him. He thinks I’ve already chosen someone else, and he needs to keep thinking that. Otherwise he’ll leave behind the life he’s created for himself for a chance to start things with me. I want that so badly, but not enough to let him give up his dream of living and working in the middle of so much beauty. It’s what he deserves.

  So there it is. In loving Howard, I have to leave him. And to protect my child, I have to put as much distance between her and her father as possible. (Yes, I think it’s a girl.)

  If I could go back to one moment—just one—I would be back at the tower, a whole world of possibility ahead of me. And even though my heart hurts more than I ever thought it could, I wouldn’t take back that sunrise or this baby for anything. This is a new chapter. My life. And I’m going to run at it with arms outstretched. Anything else would be a waste.

  The End. The rest of the journal was blank. I slowly turned to the front cover and read that first sentence one more time.

  I made the wrong choice.

  Sonia had been wrong. My mom hadn’t sent the journal to the cemetery for me—she’d sent it for Howard. She’d wanted him to know what had really happened and tell him that she’d loved him all along. And then, even though she couldn’t go back and change their story, she’d done the next best thing.

  She’d sent me.

  Chapter 25

  I PRACTICALLY FLEW BACK TO the cemetery. I was incredibly nervous, but I felt light, too. No matter what Howard’s reaction was, it was going to be okay. And he deserved to read her story. Right th
is second.

  Daylight had totally transformed the cemetery, taking it from washed-out to vibrant, and I ran diagonally across the grounds, cutting through a batch of headstones and ignoring my blossoming side ache. I had to catch Howard before he started working.

  He was sitting on the porch with a cup of coffee, and when he saw me he stood up in alarm. “You aren’t being chased again, are you?”

  I shook my head, then came to a stop, struggling to catch my breath.

  “Oh, good.” He sat back down. “Do you always sprint? I thought you were more into long-distance running.”

  I shook my head again, then took a deep breath. “Howard, I have to ask you something.”

  “What?”

  “Do you know you’re not my father?”

  For a few long seconds my words hung in the space between us like a bunch of shimmering soap bubbles. Then he smiled.

  “Define ‘father.’ ”

  My legs gave out and I stumbled toward the porch.

  “Whoa, whoa. You okay?” He put his hand out to steady me.

  “Just let me sit down.” I fell to a seat on the porch step next to him. “And you know what I mean by ‘father.’ I mean the man who gave me half my DNA.”

  He stretched his legs out long in front of him. “Well, in that case, no. I’m not your father. But if you go with another definition, meaning ‘a man who wants to be in your life and help raise you,’ then yes. I am.”

  I groaned. “Howard, that’s sweet and everything, but explain yourself. Because I have spent the last twenty-four hours completely confused and worried about hurting you, and you’ve known all along?”

  “I’m sorry about that. I didn’t know you had any idea.” He looked at me for a moment, then sighed. “All right. You up for a story?”

  “Yes.”

  He settled in, like he was about to tell a story he’d told a million times. “When I was twenty-five I met a woman who changed everything for me. She was bright and vibrant and whenever I was with her I felt like I could do anything.”