“It seems like a very long time ago,” Tom Fairchild said to his wife, Faith.
“It was.”
She closed the small travel journal she’d been reading parts aloud from and stood up. They’d been sitting on the deck of their cottage in Maine, watching their family kayak in the cove. Everyone had come for the Fourth of July. Faith had found the notebook in one of the boxes she had brought up to sort through this summer. There had never seemed to be time before, but now they had it in abundance.
“You were a little in love with Freddy,” Tom said.
Faith did not disagree but countered with, “And you with Sky, that woman from California.”
He smiled. “Very lovely—and very troubled. I can tell you now. They were married, but to other people. She was trying to decide whether to leave her husband. Jack, that was his name, right?”
Faith nodded. This was the sort of thing she remembered. She sat back down.
“Anyway, Jack wanted to leave his wife. He’d run into a neighbor in Florence that day we all went to the big market and he’d realized he couldn’t live like that. I guess he’d had to duck into an alley or something.”
Or something, Faith said to herself. She remembered this, too.
“She wrote to me that winter care of the church to thank me for listening. She was leaving her husband, and Jack was leaving his wife, but they weren’t rushing into anything. They wanted to be sure they loved each other and it wasn’t just the excitement of an affair.”
“Could never understand that notion,” Faith said. “It seems to me you’d be so nervous covering things up that any excitement wouldn’t be worth it. All those lies to keep straight, schedules to mesh. Which also reminds me. That’s where you bought me the first Fope bracelet—at the jewelers on the Ponte Vecchio.” Tom had added two more since then.
“I have very good taste,” Tom said.
Faith was still back in the past. “No one was who they seemed at first—except us and the Rossis. All kinds of masks. The terrorists of course. The Nashes weren’t even British. I totally missed that one. Even that young man the Rossis hired to be Francesca’s assistant turned out not to be who he seemed in the beginning. The Russos, Sky, Jack—everybody was hiding something. And Olivia, big-time. What do you think ever happened to her? No way to find out.”
Faith had hoped to stay in touch with the young woman for many reasons, but Olivia—if that was her name—had immediately vanished into the black hole that was Whitehall and the MI6.
“And don’t forget those two Southern ladies.” Tom started to laugh, and Faith joined him.
Two years after their return from the trip, a cookbook, lavishly illustrated with color photos, had arrived in the mail at the parsonage with Hattie Culver listed as the author. The title was Buon Giorno, Y’All: A Southern Chef Cooks Italian. Sally Culver was listed as her assistant in the acknowledgments. There was no note. Faith had immediately called Francesca, who had received one, too. “I would have helped them! They didn’t have to be so sneaky. They must have gone all over Italy doing the same thing from what I can tell from the recipes,” she’d said. Cucina della Rossi was not in the acknowledgments, and yes it had been sneaky, maybe worse. But the Rossis had let it go. The cucina had been a huge success, and now Gianni and Francesca’s children were running it. The Rossis had bought Jean-Luc’s villa, expanding their vineyards, olive groves, and the school. It was year-round now, functioning in the winter months also as a language program.
Yes, it had all been a long time ago.
“Happy, darling?” Tom asked.
“Very,” Faith said.
Far from the Tuscan hills, they sat hand in hand quietly watching the tide go out—and they’d watch it come back in the morning when they woke up.