Authors: Lisa Desrochers
He grasps my hand. “What’s wrong?”
“That,” I say, pointing at the tiny little plane that everyone else is climbing into without batting an eyelash. “Is there a train . . . or a bus?”
“Corsica is an island, Lexie.” His voice is calm, but amusement dances in his eyes.
“Okay, a boat then? There has to be a boat, right?”
“Yes, there is in fact a boat.”
I’m starting to hyperventilate and lean my hands on my knees. “Can we take the boat? Please?”
“This is about your fear of heights?”
“And my fear of plummeting from them. Yes.”
“Can I coax you onto this very airworthy vessel if I promise to distract you?”
Breathe.
Breathe.
Breathe.
“How?”
“With my quick wit, infinite capacity for engrossing conversation, or if all that fails, with these.” He pulls a small white paper bag out of his satchel and hands it down to me, where I’m still stooped over, trying to catch my breath.
I open the end of the bag and hold it over my nose and mouth, watching it inflate and deflate as I hyperventilate into it.
“That wasn’t quite what I had in mind,” Alessandro muses.
When I can finally breathe, I stand up and look into the bag. Currant croissants. Four of them. “Hope you didn’t want any of these because I just loogied all over them.”
“Are you ready?” he asks, his eyes flicking to the plane.
OhGodohGodohGod.
He loops an arm through my elbow, and we shuffle slowly toward the plane. It takes me a few minutes to climb the stairs, and Alessandro puts a hand on my head, reminding me to duck when we get to the door. I step through and look over my surroundings.
On the jetliners I’ve taken back and forth to San Jose, I’ve been able to sit far enough from the window that I could pretend outside didn’t exist. Not here. There are twelve rows of three seats, two on one side and one on the other. We’re last on board, apparently, because the harried-looking flight attendant rushes us up the narrow aisle to our seats, in row five—on the two side, thank God. Alessandro gestures for me to slide in. I just shake my head and point to the aisle seat. The flight attendant barks something at us in Italian, and Alessandro purrs something back, then slides into the window seat. I sit next to him and buckle up. He twists his arm through mine and grasps my hand, and I don’t resist.
When we lurch into the sky a few minutes later, I feel a joint in Alessandro’s hand pop under my death grip. “I think I broke you,” I mutter, trying to lighten my grip a little. “Sorry.”
“I am yours to break.” He peels his hand out of mine and circles me in his arms, pulling me tight to his side. I turn my face into his shirt, and he strokes my hair.
“Your wife is afraid of flying?” A woman’s voice asks from across the aisle, but I’ve finally found a spot that works, so I don’t move.
“Yes, she is.” Alessandro’s voice vibrates into me from where my ear is pressed into his chest, and I’m more than a little surprised that he didn’t correct the woman—tell her I’m not his wife. But instead, when I burrow tighter into him, he tips his face into crown of my hair, and I feel his warm breath.
I like this Alessandro—the one without the white collar.
M
Y NERVES, BY
the time we land forty minutes later, have less to do with hurling through space in a tin can and more to do with meeting Alessandro’s family. I’ve found the key to flying. I just need to worry about something else.
We taxi to the terminal, and the pilot parks the plane. After few more minutes, fresh air wafts through the open door, and I know it’s okay to peel myself off Alessandro.
“That wasn’t so bad, yes?” he asks when I look up at him. I’m sure I’ve left a Lexie print in his chest.
“If you say so.” I breathe a deep, relieved breath as I duck under the door and out of this death trap. Alessandro escorts me down the stairs and into the terminal with a gentle hand on my back.
The airport is small, and our plane seems to be the only one here at the moment, so the bags come up fast. I look at Alessandro as we climb into a taxi on the curb. “Please tell me Corsican taxi drivers aren’t suicidal.”
He leans into the cab. “Êtes-vous suicidaire?”
The driver, a good-looking man in his thirties with horribly crooked teeth, cracks up. “Non,” he says.
Alessandro turns back to me. “Apparently, this one is not.”
“That didn’t sound Italian,” I say.
“This is France, Lexie,” he says with an amused smile, urging me into the taxi with a hand on my back. “They speak French here.”
I slide in and scoot across, and Alessandro folds himself in next to me. “What about your family? Do they speak English at all?”
“My mother obviously does, but my grandparents don’t.”
I hadn’t thought of that till just now.
“It’ll be fine, Lexie,” Alessandro says with a squeeze of my hand, reading the anxiety that I’m sure is plastered all over my face. He leans forward. “Cardiglione,” he tells the driver, and we’re off like a shot.
The taxi driver lied. I know this because we almost died three times before we ever left the city limits and another three as we twisted up the narrow, windy road carved into the hillside rising away from the ocean. My heart is beating in my throat half an hour later when the driver finally skids to a stop. Next to the car, a set of steep marble stairs leads up from the road to a path that wends through a few rows of budding grapevines toward a white, two-story house built into the side of the hill. Alessandro pays the driver, then climbs out and retrieves our bags from the trunk before the driver fishtails off.
I do a 180. “This is beautiful,” I say, taking in the view back toward the expanse of cobalt blue ocean across the street from the house.
“It is,” he answers. He loops his bag over his shoulder and takes mine in his hand, then grasps my hand in his other and leads me across the street toward the stairs.
Once we get to the top, I realize the grapevines are just the tip of a huge garden. There are fruit trees to the right, past the vines, which are just starting to flower, and on the left is a large patch of freshly turned earth.
“Who is the gardener?”
“Pépé. My grandfather,” he says, leading me past.
An older, pear-shaped woman bursts from the front door, holding up her arms and shaking them at the sky as she spouts French so fast I don’t catch anything but, “Alessandro!” Her face is covered in soft wrinkles, and her dark hair, twisted into a bun on the back of her head, is shot through with silver. But she has Alessandro’s eyes. She waddles to us before we can reach the door and, after hugging Alessandro, grasps my face in her hands. “Jolie fille, jolie fille! Bienvenue!” She plants a wet kiss on each of my cheeks then takes my hand and tows me toward the house, yelling something at the door. As we step through, a short, stout man with gray hair and a cane steps into the hall. “Alessandro,” he says, clapping his grandson on the back and kissing both cheeks.
“Pépé, c’est Lexie,” Alessandro says, taking my hand and pulling me closer.
His grandfather grasps my shoulders and kisses both my cheeks. “Bienvenue.”
“Merci,” I say. And that’s all the French I know.
“Lexie,” he says to me, “these are my grandparents. You can feel free to call them Mémé and Pépé, as I do.”
His grandparents lead us deeper into the house to a living room. Knitting in a chair near the window is a woman who can’t be anyone but Alessandro’s mother. She’s long and slender, in a flowing black skirt and a white top, with dark hair pulled into a tight bun. She has his same high cheekbones and arched brows over charcoal eyes. His same straight nose and full lips. And when she looks up and smiles softly, I see him in that gesture too.
She lays her knitting aside and stands. “It’s nice to have you home, son.”
He leads me to her and kisses her on both cheeks. “Mom, I’d like you to meet Lexie Banks.”
She reaches for my hand and presses it between hers, and I start a little at the scars on her wrist. Ten years later, they’re still twisted white knots. It looks like she meant business, and I catch myself wondering how she survived. “Alessandro has told me much about you.” Her voice is deeper than I would have expected, and soft, and her words flow smooth and slow as molasses through a musical French accent.
I flash him a glance, wondering exactly what he’s told them. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Can we offer you a cool drink after your trip?” she asks, releasing me. As she moves past us toward the kitchen in the back, I notice how deliberate her movements are. She’s got Alessandro’s grace, but it’s as if it’s in slow motion.
Alessandro takes my hand. “I’m going to show Lexie to her room, then we’ll be back down.”
His mother nods.
His grandmother says something else I can’t understand and pats my arm as Alessandro leads me to the stairs. I smile and nod because I have no idea what else to do, and she smiles back and grabs my face, kissing my cheeks again.
“What did I just agree to?” I mutter as we climb.
“To eat.” He grins at me. “She says you’re skinny, and she’ll fatten you up.”
“Great.”
At the top of the stairs, he pushes open a door. “This is the bathroom.”
I peek in. It’s small, not more space than will hold a sink, toilet, a small tub, and maybe a person, but it’s clean. “Good to know.”
I follow him to another set of stairs, and he points down the hall. “Mémé and Pépé sleep down there, and my mother’s room is here,” he adds, tapping a knuckle on the door next to the bathroom. We start up the tight spiral staircase to a third floor that I didn’t know existed. At the top of the stairs is an open door into a small room with a gabled ceiling—so probably the attic. There are two twin beds with an old wooden chest of drawers in between that take up the entire space.
“This is where you’ll stay,” Alessandro says, putting my bag on the bed nearest us.
“What about you? Where’s your room.”
His eyes flit around the bare walls. “This
is
my room. Mine and Lorenzo’s.”
“Oh.” I step between the two beds. “Which one’s yours?”
He moves behind me, and I can feel him, so close. “This one,” he says, pointing to the one away from the door.
I turn to him. “So, where will you sleep if I’m in your bed?”
“I’ll be on the sofa in the family room.”
“There are two beds in here,” I point out with a tip of my head toward Lorenzo’s. “I trust you to be a gentleman.”
His eyes go distant for just a second before he breathes deeply and turns away. “Thank you, but I’ll be fine on the sofa.”
We spend the rest of the afternoon and evening eating and talking . . . or at least Alessandro’s grandmother is talking. She’s obviously very happy to have him home. I assist her in the kitchen as best I can, with help from Alessandro to translate, and she makes this dish that, even though I have no idea what it is, melts in my mouth.
His grandfather lights a fire in the fireplace after dinner, and his grandmother talks some more as we sit around it drinking something warm and sweet from mugs. Occasionally, Alessandro looks at me when he’s talking, and I hear my name, but I don’t know what he’s saying.
But it’s his mother I watch. She sits in her chair near the window, knitting. She hasn’t stopped since we got here except to eat dinner, and her eyes never leave her work. At the dinner table, she rocked herself gently as she ate, like the rhythmic motion pacifies her—keeps her focus off bigger things, like life.
It’s late when everyone starts looking like they’re heading to bed. Alessandro walks me up the two flights of stairs to his attic bedroom.
I turn to face him at my door and hear people shuffling around a floor below. “Your family seems really amazing.”
He nods. “My grandparents are extraordinary people.”
“And your mom?”
He breathes deep. “She’s better.”
I think of the things that happened to her to bring her to this place. “I’m glad.”
The sadness clears from his eyes, and he rubs his temple as if it hurts. “Tomorrow, I’ll take you up the mountain to the Natural Park of Corsica. It’s like your national parks. I’ve told Mémé we won’t be back for dinner.”
“But it’s your last night at home. Shouldn’t you spend it here with your family?”
“I’ll see them again after the ordination.” He takes my hand, and his gaze becomes deeper in the dim light, seeming to search my soul. “I want to share the places I love with you before I don’t have you anymore.”
I swallow back my hammering heart. “Thank you.”
“Is there anything you need?”
“No. I think I’m fine. Unless . . . do you want to . . .” I lift my fingertips to his temple. “I could massage that.”
His eyes darken as they gaze into mine. I push the door open behind me. An invitation.
His fingers brush over my cheek as he leans in and kisses my forehead. “I’m so pleased you came, Lexie, but I can’t go in there.”
I look up at him, and his hand pauses on my face. His fingers tighten slightly, urging me toward him, but just as he lays his other hand on my hip, someone closes a door downstairs.
He lets me go as if I’ve burned him and steps away, lowering his smoldering gaze. “Good night.” Then he’s hurrying down the stairs.
T
HE SMELL OF
espresso and something baking wakes me from a sound sleep, and my stomach growls. Mémé kept shoveling food onto my plate last night, and I kept eating it, so I can’t possibly be hungry, but that’s not going to stop me from eating anything that smells this good. I roll out of bed and pull jeans on under the black silk sleep shirt I brought as an alternative to what I normally sleep in, which is nothing, then grab the towel Mémé left for me and skip down the stairs to the bathroom. Thankfully, it’s unoccupied.
There’s no actual shower, just a hand spray attached to a hose from the spigot of the tub, but it will have to do. I sit in the tub and do the quick washup, then dry myself off, brush my teeth, and throw my jeans and sleep shirt back on.
When I open the door, I hear the deep hum of Alessandro’s voice speaking French with his grandparents from downstairs. I start my feet toward the spiral stairs to the attic, smiling, but when I turn to look where I’m going, I have a minor heart attack.
Because Alessandro’s mother is standing in her doorway, watching me.
“Oh . . . hi. Were you waiting for the . . .” I trail off with a vague gesture at the bathroom door, a little creeped out by her blank stare. “Well, sorry to take so long in there.” I start to hurry past her. “It’s all yours—”
Her hand darts out as I pass and grabs my arm, scaring the snot out of me. My eyes are about to pop out of my head when I turn to look at her. Her expression is still blank, but her grip is surprisingly strong. “He is in love with you.”