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Samantha was exhausted, but she wasn't going to tell Edo that. He'd already slowed down enough times for her to catch her breath. She stumbled along the path under the gnarled oaks and stopped to lean against one for a moment, closing her eyes.
When she and Edo had first come through here, she’d reached out to touch a tree and suddenly found herself in a memory from the first day she’d come to live with Grandma Lucy when she was ten.
They’d gone for a walk in the woods behind Grandma Lucy’s house, and Samantha had been delighted when they’d come into a clearing around a giant silver maple tree. Samantha tried to reach her arms all the way around to hug it, but couldn’t. Grandma Lucy greeted the tree like an old friend, calling it “Albert.” She said as a little girl she’d stolen a sucker plant from the roots of the tree in the yard and planted it way out here, and it had grown up with her. She’d said the tree knew all her secrets, and once, when her memory had started to go but she was having an aware moment, she’d told Samantha that it was a good thing she’d given all her memories to Albert so he and his saplings could remember things for her.
The day Grandma Lucy forgot who Samantha was and chased her out of the house with the filet knife, threatening to call the cops, Samantha had run, sobbing, to Albert. She’d beaten her fists against his trunk until they’d bled, then collapsed at the base, asking the tree over and over again how he could have let her grandmother forget her.
When she’d stood before the door in the wall back there, Samantha had stared at all those names and initials, especially the ones tied together with plus signs or hearts. Had it worked? Had those people remembered each other? Did the door remember for them? Was there anything that could tie people together that way? Samantha’s experience said no. And it wasn’t just that Samantha was cursed or something—look at that poor girl who had kissed Edo. She’d kissed him and he didn’t even remember her name. But could Samantha really blame Edo? Maybe the girl had been as forgettable as Samantha.
She pushed away from the tree and caught up to Edo, who had stopped to wait for her. Thankfully, they were headed downhill now. But once again, she stood torn between two paths—the main path down Cypress Alley, along which she could see several large sculptures, or a side path that branched off into the woods, which promised mystery. She turned to Edo and put her hands on her hips.
“Are you trying to torture me?” She gestured at the two paths. “I have to miss the sculptures to unlock this mystery, or forever wonder what I missed. But either way I feel I'll regret it.”
“Or either way you'll love it.”
She cocked her head to the side. He made a good point. “But I picked last time, so it's your turn this time. Which way do we go?”
Edo immediately turned off to the side. She wasn't surprised; she’d noticed that he had been all too happy to detour to the wall a few minutes before. He didn't seem to like staying on the touristy paths—though technically these were all touristy paths since these gardens were essentially an outdoor museum. She hurried to keep up with him.
“It was my turn, I think.” His voice was light.
“Your turn for what? Choosing the path? That's what I said.”
Edo shook his head. “For the question game.”
Even though she had originally suggested the game, Samantha found she was a little nervous to play it again now. She'd come too close to uncomfortable honesty already today when she'd almost told him that she wanted to write her name on the door so that something in Florence would remember her because she didn't think he would.
When she didn't respond, Edo asked anyway. “This is a very important question. Are you ready?”
She tried to sound certain as she said, “Of course.”
Edo stopped her with a touch on her arm and faced her with raised eyebrows. “Are you sure?”
Her arm was suddenly hypersensitive, all sensations tuned to where his finger had just been. What was he going to ask? She nodded.
Just before he spoke, she saw a glint in his eye. “This question could make or break our friendship.”
She clutched the straps of her backpack. “You mean, this could tip the balance as to whether you regret paying for me or not?”
“If you get this wrong, you are on your own for the bus fare back.”
“I was going to pay that anyway!”
Edo held up a hand to silence her. “This is serious, so take your time.” He gazed at her so intensely her breathing sped up, then spoke slowly and carefully. “Do raisins belong in cookies?”
The relief that washed over her was such a rush that she burst out laughing. “That's it?”
“This is a big deal,” he said, managing to look affronted while still laughing.
“All right, fine. Raisins do not belong in my cookies, but others are welcome to them.”
Edo slanted his gaze at her as though weighing her answer. “I'll give you half points for not wanting them in your own cookies, but I feel your dedication to the cause could use some work.”
They started walking again.
Samantha raised a finger. “My turn to ask the question.”
“You can't beat the cookie question.”
That was a challenge, and now Samantha was torn. She knew what she really wanted to ask, but asking “Is this a date?” would probably stop the entire game. Instead, she fell back on an old icebreaker. “If you could choose to fly, become invisible, or read minds, which would you choose and why?” It was as bad as an internet quiz, but at least it was a question.
“Fly,” he said without any hesitation.
“And why,” she prompted.
They suddenly came through the trees to a little round garden with a tall hedge planted around the edge and a large, white marble egg shape in the center. Samantha stopped, turning in a circle and taking in the ring of plants, then looking up at the open sky above them.
Edo pointed up. “If I could fly, I could go right up into the sky, right now. I wouldn't have to worry about hills and the walk back to the bus station; I could just go. Freedom.”
The sky above them was beautiful and clear, but Samantha felt no tug toward it. She liked this place, down here, surrounded by these sturdy trees in a ring watching over and guarding this spot. It was safe. It was protected. “I might read minds.”
He considered for a moment. “It could be useful sometimes, but don't you worry you might find out things you didn't want to know?”
“If people are thinking things I wouldn't want to know, I'd rather know so that I could clear out of their space.”
Edo raised his eyebrows in surprise and started walking towards an opening on the other side of the trees where the path continued on. “You'd rather just move on, then? Not try to convince them to think differently?”
“Depends on what they’re thinking, I guess. But if someone is thinking they’re bored of me, or that they want to be somewhere else, or that I really need to get a grip on my life... Yeah, I'd rather just move on.”
After a short pause, Edo said, “Is that what you're doing here? Getting a grip on your life?”
Samantha squeezed the straps of her backpack, her pulse too strong for such a simple question. Hearing her own insecurity played back to her like that made her recognize it for the first time. Did she feel out of control, or was she just worried everyone else thought so, thought that she should just bounce back, go to school, find a boyfriend. Pretend she hadn’t killed her own dreams and then still lost the most important person in her world.
When she didn’t answer, Edo asked again. “Is that why you always dreamed of coming to Italy? Have you always thought Italy would help you get a grip on your life?”
She shot him a glance, but he didn't seem to be making fun of her. He seemed interested, but in a clinical way. Not like he really wanted to know more about her specifically. He was not ready for the emotions and questions that would have to be involved in her answer. So she just shrugged instead. He was probably just trying to make conversation since he was stuck with her. If she could read minds, she'd know whether or not to clear out right about now.
They took turns asking a few more idle questions, but nothing that really mattered. Questions about where they'd been born, their favorite subjects in school—generic get-to-know-you questions. Then, finally, they emerged from the trees onto a flat area with a large pond surrounded by statues set into sconces around the walkway. A sculpture of Poseidon rose from an island in the center of the pond surrounded by several other figures that were probably water gods. A half-submerged Pegasus and rider seemed to be bursting from the pond.
Samantha looked around at all the statues, both in the pond and ringing it, and had a sudden, urgent need to look each of them in the eye. She turned to Edo pleadingly. “Can I—I'll come right back around—” and then, without waiting for an answer, she turned and scurried off around the edge of the pond.
One by one she greeted the statues—the little boy, the maid, the woman with a hand on her hat and two dogs at her feet. With each one, Samantha felt more and more sure of herself. More sure of herself than she'd been in a long time—since she’d left college? No, even before that.
Since John had left her?
They’d dated for most of their senior year of high school and started college together as a comfortable couple. Their relationship had never been all-consuming, like some of her friends’, but Samantha had preferred it that way. Comfortable was nice.
A week before midterms during that first semester, John had come up to her, grinning.
“I got tickets!” he said.
She looked up from her red backpack, where she’d been digging for quarters to grab a granola bar from the vending machine. “Tickets?” she asked blankly.
He stared at her, as if waiting for it to come to her, and then rolled his eyes. “For Rubeus Eats the Chord!”
That did ring a bell. It was a band John had become obsessed with. “Oh, cool.” She found her last quarter and sighed in relief. A granola bar probably wasn’t the best dinner, but she didn’t have time for anything more these days; she was spending every waking minute in the studio trying to get her project done before midterm reviews.
“Yeah, so we’ll leave Friday night, drive partway, stay the night at my aunt’s place, then the concert is Saturday and we can do the whole drive back Sunday. We’ll just make a weekend of it.”
Now it was her turn to stare at him. “Leave Friday.”
“Yeah.”
“Like, this Friday?”
He ran an exasperated hand through his hair. “Yes! I told you the concert was this weekend!”
“But it’s midterms!”
He rolled his eyes. “When did you become such a stick in the mud?”
“I’m just being a good student!”
“I’m not even asking you to skip class!” His lips tightened. “You know what? Forget it. I should have known. If I can’t even get you to go to a party, why did I think you’d go to a concert?”
Samantha cringed a little inside. She had gone to one party with him, their first weekend on campus. John had already seemed to know everyone, and she’d trailed along behind him for two hours as he’d woven through the crowd exchanging fist bumps and jokes. Occasionally he’d turned, seen her, and then introduced her like it was an afterthought. Within an hour, most of the people had been sloshed, and around that point John had started forgetting to introduce her at all. It had been so awkward.
“Look, Samantha,” John said, rubbing a hand across his face and looking tired. “Let’s just forget this. All of it. I mean, you’re nice and all, but...”
He’d just let it hang like that, and eventually Samantha had nodded, and he’d shrugged and left. She’d stood there holding five quarters and filling in the blank over and over.
Boring.
Lame.
Unwanted.
She hadn’t even cried. Not then, anyway; she’d pushed A4 for her granola bar and eaten it on the way back into the studio.
She hadn’t cried until she’d passed him on campus a month later. He’d been laughing and walking with his arm around a slim brunette, and there hadn’t even been a flicker of recognition in his eyes when he’d seen Samantha. That had confirmed what the missing word in his unfinished sentence had really been: Forgettable.
Looking back now, though, standing in this sunny garden full of statues and ancient trees, Samantha found the memory didn’t hurt quite so badly. Here, on this flagstone path by a pond in Florence, she found a part of herself that she'd been missing. And as she came around the last curve of the pond and saw Edo tucking a sprig of white flowers behind the ear of a stone dog, she decided. She was not going to be forgotten this time. She hadn’t done anything about John, but she was going to do whatever it took to make this place—this man—remember her.
As she walked toward him, Samantha studied Edo more openly than she'd allowed herself to yet. His hair was the perfect length for running fingers through, and he had just enough stubble on his jaw to be interesting without looking scruffy. His green eyes were clear and had long lashes. His grin, when it slipped past his guard, made her stomach warm. He really was ridiculously handsome—it wasn't just that she'd been surrounded by old men for too long. She stopped in front of him and put her hands on her hips. He looked up guiltily from placing another sprig of the white flowers in the open mouth of the dog statue. He quickly put his hand behind his back, like a little boy who’d been caught.
“I found you, you know.”
Edo looked confused. It was adorable.
Samantha grabbed Edo's hand, ignoring his surprise and her own physical reaction, which was even stronger than it had been on the bus that morning. “Over here.” She waited the length of a heartbeat, and when he didn’t take his hand away, she pulled him a little farther back around the pond, stopping when she reached a fountain that was not running but had standing, brackish water in the small pools on either side. “There.” She pointed at the angry, bug-eyed fish that made up one side of the base of the statue. “See? He looks like you did when we first met.”
“Hey! I wasn't that bad.”
Samantha kept waiting for him to let go of her hand, but he didn’t, so she didn’t either. “Yes. You were.”
Edo lifted their clasped hands and pointed with one finger at the statue at the top of the fountain in the center of the pond. He squinted along his pointing arm as though sighting in on the statue’s head. “No. I'm that one.”
“Poseidon?” Samantha laughed, swinging their clasped hand to point at a humbler figure at the base of Poseidon’s sculpture. “Maybe that one.”
Edo pulled the hands back up again. “Neptune—this is Italy, not Greece. But yes, him. The perfect example of Italian masculinity.”
Well, she couldn't exactly argue that—not with the way her stomach was dancing just from holding his hand. Fortunately for her sake, just then a heron flew over and landed on Neptune's head. She nodded sagely. “Ah, I see. A birdbrain.”
Edo lowered their clasped hands with a look of good-natured defeat.
Samantha nudged him with her shoulder, still holding his hand. He didn't move away as quickly as he had earlier. “Maybe not the quintessential example. Maybe just a good one.” She grinned at his look of surprise, dropped his hand, and skipped off away from the pond. She hadn't held a man's hand in five years; she had to be careful or she might lose brain function and look like a total idiot.