Chapter 35
Luciana woke up after a night in hospital to find that she was almost her old self, except with a few extra cricks and creaks. But really, what were a few extra cricks and creaks at her stage in the proceedings?
The painkillers she had been issued for her badly sprained ankle had given her a more restful sleep than she’d had in years, helped no doubt by a mild concussion, so she was in good humor, and had color in her cheeks for the first time that year.
Violetta, on the other hand, looked like she’d just been unearthed from the ruins of Pompeii. She’d not changed her clothes nor slept a wink since Luciana had tumbled down those stairs.
“Looks like we should swap places,” Luciana said, when she saw her sister sitting there, slumped in the uncomfortable visitor’s chair like a pile of secondhand coats.
“I have something to tell you,” Violetta said.
“Am I missing a limb?” Luciana asked, feeling for her arms, her legs, her nose.
“No, I’ve hardly let them near you,” Violetta said. “It’s not about you, it’s about me. It’s about the League. It’s about this match.”
“I won’t mind if it’s my spleen, you can live without a spleen,” Luciana said. “I don’t think I’ve ever even used my spleen.”
“It’s not about spleens! Listen to me, Luciana. I don’t have a clue about Lily and Alessandro. I never smelled the orange blossom, I never felt the tingle, I never sensed anything special. My sixth sense is gone. Completely gone. Lily is the wife of poor sick Eugenia’s American benefactor. You know, the wine man. Francesca’s father. Lily is his wife! She’s come to find him and I have instead pushed her into the arms of a man whose heart has already been shattered and will now be shattered all over again and it will be my fault, all my fault. It’s the very opposite of what the Secret League of Widowed Darners is supposed to do. It’s like I have taken a sock with the tiniest hole and ripped it to shreds. No, worse. It’s like I have taken two socks and done that. I am a fraud and a failure and I deserve to be torn limb from limb.”
“Well, you’re in the right place if it’s missing limbs you’re after,” Luciana said, struggling to sit up a little higher in her hospital bed.
“This is not a joke!” cried Violetta. “This is the end!”
“Calm down, sister, calm down,” soothed Luciana. “It is not the end or anything like it. Oh, the difference a good night’s sleep can make! Listen to me, will you? Let’s just ignore for a minute the orange blossom and the tingle and the sixth sense and regard just the way things have turned out.”
“They’ve turned out to be a catastrophe!”
“Possibly for Alessandro, yes, but not for everybody.”
“Well, if he’s the calzino rotto then he is all that matters.”
“Exactly! But what if he’s not the calzino rotto, Violetta? What if Lily is the calzino rotto? Maybe it’s her heart that needs mending. Maybe Alessandro has nothing to do with it.”
“Lily, the calzino rotto?”
“We already established she’s no more foreign than anyone else.”
“But Lily and who else? Alberto? Mario? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Well, what about the husband?”
“But he’s hardly a decent man, he’s a cheat.”
“He has taken care of Eugenia and her children when most men in his place would have run for the hills years ago. Haven’t we all thought there’s more to that scenario than meets the eye? She can be wayward, and he doesn’t even stay with her when he’s here.”
“So?”
“So, need I remind you, Violetta, that sometimes cheats can be stupid and decent all at the same time.”
Many, many years earlier, when the sisters were engaged to their twin fiancés, Violetta had slipped into what she thought was her sweetheart’s bed, only to discover two terrible things: one, that the man in the bed was not her sweetheart and, two, that he should have been.
“It took just one kiss,” Luciana reminded her, “for you to realize you were engaged to the wrong man, but you knew it, just like that. Just one kiss, hm? And you did something about it even though you risked so much. You told him, you told me, you told Silvio. You could have lost us all but you believed in true love, you believed in yourself, and we believed in you, Violetta. We all believed in you. And you were right. Everything turned out just as it should have for us all. Imagine if you had been too frightened to make that move? Imagine if we had both ended up with the wrong husbands?”
“But you said it yourself, it was a mistake.”
“Yes, to begin with it was a mistake. But everyone makes mistakes. It’s being able to recognize them and having the courage to fix them that makes you special.”
“I’m not special, that’s what I am trying to tell you.”
“You are special, Violetta, that’s what I am trying to tell you. You knew who belonged to whom way back then and you did what had to be done to make it right. And it will be exactly the same this time. You are special and I still believe in you.”
Violetta was silent for a moment as she considered this.
“Santa Ana di Chisa,” she whispered, eventually, rising slowly from her chair and standing straighter than she had in months. “Oh, Santa Ana di Chisa, I have just had the most monumental realization!”
She looked at Luciana.
“It’s you,” she said. “It’s you. You are my sixth sense. I haven’t lost it at all! It’s you! Nurse, call the ambulance!”
“Violetta, you are already in the hospital.”
“I know that, but I need a ride back to town and they owe me one. Don’t look so sour, I’m not leaving you here on your own. You look perfectly fine to me right now, so it’s all downhill if you stay put. I’ll help you get dressed and then we are going home.”