Dolci di Love

Lily was walking across the magnificent piazza grande holding Francesca’s hand and only half-listening to her chatter when she saw her husband across the square.

He was waiting in the shade of the well opposite the duomo, one leg crossed over the other, hands in his pockets, sunglasses hiding his eyes.

He wore one of the polo shirts she’d given him, a fact that caught and twisted in her chest with a dagger’s vengeance.

He looked so much like himself, that was the thing: so much like the man she thought he was, the man she thought she knew. She had expected him to look different now that he was not her perfect husband but a stranger, a liar, and a thief of the future she’d assumed they had together.

But there he was, looking just like the man she’d fallen so easily in love with all those years ago, and had she not been in Montevedova’s piazza grande holding the hand of his secret love child, she would not have believed he could ever be anything else.

They’d lost pace, Lily’s limbs suddenly so heavy she could barely drag one foot in front of the other. Francesca stopped her chattering to see what was slowing them down, but then spotted Daniel.

“That’s my papa,” she cried, letting go of Lily’s hand. “I didn’t think he would be here.” She ran toward him, each smack of her sandals on the piazza’s cobbles burning like a slap on Lily’s cheeks.

She could not have planned for this, she realized. She could never have calculated the effect that seeing him would have. For all her executive expertise in navigating hiccups, absorbing variations, avoiding pitfalls, she felt nothing then but clueless. This was not boxes of cake mix and spreadsheets. This was flesh and blood and those other impossible ingredients, love and history.

She could not sink into the safe reliability of a supply chain flowchart now. She could only sink.

She watched as Daniel caught sight of Francesca, and the look on his face as he opened his arms to his little girl twisted the dagger in her chest even deeper.

Grief. The word rang in her head as clearly as the church bells she heard throughout every day she’d been away. Grief. That was what she felt and oh, the pain, the emptiness of it. Everything they had wanted together, Daniel had. There it was, nestled in his arms. He kissed the top of Francesca’s head and Lily wondered how she could keep breathing, living, caring, hoping; how she could keep doing anything after that.

All the precious control she’d spent years perfecting abandoned her, squeezing tight her heart, tearing apart her skin, leaving her raw and exposed in the searing afternoon sun.

Her shoulders started to shake, her legs trembled, and she pressed both hands over her mouth to stifle whatever was trying to get out. She didn’t want to live through this. It was too much to ask, too much to bear.

She started to sink to the ground, but as her knees buckled an old woman pushed past her, bumping into her and dropping her shopping bag, from which bounced out a hundred marbles. Marbles? They danced around Lily’s ankles clicking and clacking as the old woman thrust her out of the way and tsk-tsked while she chased them, as though it were Lily’s fault the marbles had been let loose in the first place.

“Scusi, scusi, scusi,” the old woman said, slapping at Lily’s legs, forcing her to step from side to side, and just like that, the hysteria was sucked right out from under her and rolled away as though it too were an escaped marble.

When she looked up, Daniel was frozen beneath the elaborately carved archway over the well, Francesca clinging to him as he stared out at his wife being shunted this way and that by a grizzled old woman in black.

Lily fought to contain herself, swallowing a howl of despair, breathing deeply, and reaching once more for that single glimmer of certainty: that whichever way it went, no matter how wicked the turmoil and how high the cost, Francesca deserved to have a father who loved her and showed it.

If this was about that precious child, not her tattered heart, she could do it. She took a step forward. Daniel lifted his hand to his sunglasses and pushed them onto the top of his head.

She took another step, and another, willing herself to keep walking calmly toward him, concentrating on keeping her face as neutral as possible.

He did nothing, remained frozen on the spot until she was so close she could see the fear in his eyes, the sleepless bruises below them, the gray of his skin lingering just below his shallow tan.

Lily could see the vein in his neck throbbing, the one she used to kiss and tease him about. How long since she had done that?

“Your daughter and I have been making cantucci together,” she said evenly, looking at Francesca, who beamed back at her. “You have a very special little girl here.”

Daniel looked down at his daughter and then at Lily, his tired brain still struggling to take in the combination.

“You made cantucci?” he asked his wife. It was a ridiculous question to ask, given how many others there were, but it made perfect sense to Francesca.

“We were going to make oatmeal cookies from America,” the girl said, “after her sister gave her the recipe on the telephone, but then Lillian could not find the oatmeals so she decides that we can make cantucci, only a new sort in the shape of a heart!”

She fished excitedly in the pocket of her dress where she had stashed some of the cookies while Lily wasn’t looking, but the first one she pulled out was broken, as was the second, and the third.

The smile slipped off her face and she came to Lily’s side, shy suddenly, taking one of Lily’s hands, her hips twisting, their two arms swinging in unison.

“Carlotta’s been looking after us,” Francesca said to her father, squinting into the sun. “Mamma is going pazzo again.”

Daniel appeared then the way Lily felt before the old lady’s marbles hit the ground, like he couldn’t bear it, like he wanted to collapse and let the piazza absorb him through the dusty cracks in the warm cobbles, like he couldn’t go on breathing.

He looked at Lily, his eyes clouded with secrets and shame. “I am sorry,” he said again. “I don’t know what else to say. But I am sorry, you must know that.”

“Yes, well, all that can wait,” Lily said stiffly. Logistics, she was thinking, logistics. Insure safety of product, being Francesca; then broach breakdown in supply chain, being their life; and after, consider repair strategy, being God knew what.

“I think you need to take your daughter home, Daniel,” she said briskly. “Or to Carlotta’s. That was our arrangement. Francesca needs to know that everything will be OK. And everything will be OK,” she added, softening for the little girl’s benefit. “I’m not here to make trouble, believe me.”

A thought occurred to Francesca then and she turned pleadingly to interrupt. “Can I come and stay with you, Lillian? Please! Please, please, please! No one will mind. Not Mamma anyway. Papa can tell her and then she won’t mind. Please!”

Lily kept her tone as playful as she could manage. “Sweetiepie, you need to go home and tell your mamma all about your cantucci. And give her the ones you made especially for her.” She held up a small paper sack stuffed full of their handiwork. “Isn’t that right, Daniel?”

She was angry, flustered, and it was a side of her that Lily had not seen before but she thought she understood. When a little girl’s home was not her sanctuary, she would rather do anything than go back there.

“I’ll be good! I’ll clean up! I will not make any noise. I can stay with you above the pasticceria. I will have a bath and clean my teeth and . . .” Daniel put a hand on her shoulder and Lily bent down to sweep the hair from her face.

“It’s all right, Francesca,” she said, her arms itching to wrap themselves around her. “Papa will take care of you.”

This is what it would have been like with Grace, she thought. Daniel and I together, soothing her, looking after her, making sure she knew she was safe, that her world was in order.

She looked at Daniel and wondered if he was thinking the same thing or if he ever thought about Grace now that he had his own daughter.

The strangely gentle uncertainty between them switched instantly to tension. She could almost hear it crackle and hiss.

Francesca seized the awkward opportunity the adults’ distraction provided and wriggled out of Daniel’s grasp.

“I’m not going home!” she shouted. “Never!” And she took off, running like a bat out of hell across the piazza.

Daniel and Lily, both slightly dazed, were too slow to follow and before either of them could get close to her, she had disappeared down the alley between the bell tower and the town hall, and by the time they got to the top of it, there was no sign of her.

“You go down toward Via Ricci and Piazza San Francesco,” Lily ordered, “and I’ll go down Via del Teatro toward the Corso.”

Lily left him there, bolting down the alleyway, straining her ears to see if she could hear the slap of Francesca’s sandals in the lanes and hidden stairways on either side of her.

The town of Montevedova was small, but it contained more hidden nooks and crannies than Middle Earth. Lily shouted into doorways, scuttled down dimly lit passages, even lifted a waterlogged tarpaulin from a pile of abandoned building supplies—but there was no sign of Francesca.

After half an hour of searching, she limped back to the piazza grande, and ten minutes later, Daniel appeared in the far corner, holding up his hands in a hopeless gesture.

“Where could she have gone?” Lily asked him. “She wouldn’t go home, so what about Carlotta? Would she have gone there?”

“Daniel, pull yourself together. This is hardly the time to synchronize address books. I’ve been here a week. I met Francesca straight away by pure chance and Carlotta soon after. Eugenia did my hair. I’m staying above the Ferrettis’ pasticceria. Anything else you need to know?”

“Remember?” he echoed, running his fingers distractedly through his own hair as they started back down the alley Francesca had first disappeared into.

“Yes, remember! Love at first sight? The best thing that ever happened to you? For better or worse? Is any of this sounding familiar?”

“We were made for each other?” It’s what everyone said, and she had believed it; even through the tough times, she had believed it.

“It’s true,” Daniel said desperately, still flailing for the right words. “It’s true.”

He looked so mystified that for a moment she thought maybe she had got it all wrong, that there was some logical explanation, that there would be a happy ending to their story.

“Oh, Lily. My God, I’m so sorry. That’s how you . . . ? I’m just so . . . Ah! Listen, it’s not what you think,” Daniel said.

“Daniel, I’m asking you one thing: Is Francesca your daughter? It’s a yes or no question.”

“Just answer me! Is she your daughter? Have the guts, will you, to at least tell me the truth to my face instead of hiding and lying and cheating and continuing to betray me. I’ve been through enough, for God’s sake. I’ve suffered enough. Don’t do this to me. Don’t you dare do this to me.”

She was shouting, her angry words bouncing off the dark stone of the crooked buildings on either side of them, ringing in her ears.

“I know you’ve suffered,” Daniel said, his voice also raised. “But I’ve suffered too, Lily. I’ve been through it too. I was doing it right there beside you.”

“A mistake? Nothing’s a mistake, Daniel. Nothing. We choose what we do. I chose you. I could have had anyone. I could have married anyone. I never went a day without a man who loved me my whole adult life, but I chose you to be my husband—my lawfully wedded husband, my for better or for worse husband—over everybody else because I loved you and I trusted you and I thought out of anyone in the world you would never, ever, ever do anything to hurt me like this.”

“Oh, Lily, I know. I screwed up! I didn’t mean to hurt you, please believe me. That’s the last thing I would want. I love you. I’ve always loved you.”

“Well, I hate you!” she cried. “You’ve ruined everything. I hate you! I wish you were dead, Daniel. I wish you were dead!” She flew at him then, beating at his chest, wishing she had the strength to hurt him as much as he had hurt her, deliberately or otherwise. It didn’t matter, the pain was still the same.

Daniel caught her flailing wrists, held them still, then slowly lowered them. He had tears in his eyes.

The hiss of a nearby cappuccino machine threaded up the alley between them. A pigeon flapped above their heads. A clump of chattering boys on a group outing passed the gap in the alley that opened on to the Via del Corso.