Dolci di Love (25 page)

T
he widows were in their underground HQ a week later, eating
amorucci,
when the widow Ercolani dropped a bombshell.

‘Who was that old man I saw you with behind the bus station yesterday?' she asked Fiorella, a mean little glint in her eye. ‘That was quite a conversation you were having by the looks of things.'

Fiorella looked warily at the inquisitive faces around the room. ‘It wasn't that sort of “behind the bus station”,' she said. ‘Trust me, he did not lay a finger on me.'

‘Yes, but who was he?' insisted the widow Ercolani. ‘Or would you like me to tell everyone?'

‘Have you been spying on me?' Fiorella accused her.

‘Yes, I have,' the widow Ercolani answered proudly, ‘and it's just as well, because otherwise how would everyone else in the League know what a phony you are. A phony, a fake, and a fraud.'

‘A phony?' asked the widow Benedicti. She had grown quite fond of Fiorella. They all had—apart from the widow Ercolani it seemed.

‘A fake?' repeated the widow Mazzetti.

‘A fraud?' piped up the widow Ciacci.

Violetta and Luciana just looked at each other and shrugged. They had recently decided that when you were this close to a hundred, nothing was really that surprising.

‘Yes, all of those things,' the widow Ercolani confirmed. ‘And do you want to know why? She's not a widow. That was her husband behind the bus station. He's alive and extremely well by the look of him.'

Half a dozen mouths in various stages of toothlessness fell wide open.

Fiorella looked at Violetta, who just raised what was left of her eyebrows.

‘OK, OK, OK, I confess,' Fiorella said. ‘I'm not as widowed as I originally made out. But he did run off with my sister and he does live in Naples.'

‘And Eduardo?'

‘And Eduardo! Of course, Eduardo. Always Eduardo!' She pushed her spectacles up her nose, balled her hands into tight little fists, raised her rounded shoulders, and looked for all the world ready to take on the Italian heavyweight boxing champion, but then Fiorella Fiorucci stunned them all by bursting into noisy uncontrollable tears.

‘I was lonely,' she cried. ‘I've been lonely ever since Eduardo left for the war, but the older I get, the lonelier I am. No one notices me. I wore red stilettos and no one so much as looked at my feet. I was invisible until you let me join the League. You are ornery,' she said as she pointed to the widow Ercolani, ‘but the rest of you are like sisters. I've never been so happy.' And she cried fit to drown the lot of them in her tears.

‘There, there,' said the widow Ciacci, moving over to give her a comforting pat.

‘What was your husband doing here?' asked Luciana.

‘He and my selfish slattern of a sister have run out of money. He came back because he wants to sell my apartment out from under me.'

‘She can't stay in the League,' the widow Ercolani said. ‘There
are rules, remember?' She prodded the widow Mazzetti, who looked slightly sheepish.

‘Now, let's not be too hasty here,' Violetta said. ‘There are rules and then there are rules.'

‘There are two lots?' asked the widow Mazzetti, who only had one clipboard.

‘If recent events have taught me anything,' Violetta said, ‘it's that times have changed and we must change with them. Fiorella, you have been a welcome addition to our League, and the fact you are not a widow is beside the point. You are right. You are a sister. We are all sisters.'

‘But that's not what—' the widow Ercolani started but was interrupted by the widow Pacini, who hated the thought of anyone being lonely.

‘I agree with Violetta,' she said.

‘Me too,' said the widow Benedicti.

‘Same here,' the widow Ciacci concurred.

‘And here,' added the widow Mazzetti. ‘Although perhaps we should think about redrafting the constitution.'

‘Widow Ercolani, do you care to say something else?' asked Violetta. But the widow Ercolani knew when she was beat. She just shook her head and looked at her feet.

‘Right, then. It's decided. Once again, welcome, Fiorella, to the Secret League of Widowed (or Otherwise) Darners. Now, on the subject of darning, progress as you have probably seen is slow but steady with Lily and Daniel. We had hoped there might have been more of a breakthrough by now, but they are seeing each other every day and obviously it's working out very well on the
amorucci
front.' There was a chorus of ‘
sí
,
sí
,
sí
.' They really did like the
amorucci
.

‘Anyway, it's clear to us that Daniel is not the problem. He will do anything to win her back, according to a granddaughter of the
widow Ciacci, who overheard every word of their conversation at the Bar Francesca the other evening and happened to pass it on. It is Lily who is wary.'

‘That's not all she is,' said Fiorella. ‘Three pregnancy tests in one day usually only means one thing.'

Violetta nearly choked on her
vin santo
as Luciana gave a startled cough. Turned out some things still were surprising.

‘Lily is pregnant?' Violetta asked.

‘I reckon,' answered Fiorella.

‘She's the size of a breadstick,' pointed out the widow Ercolani. ‘She can't be that pregnant.'

‘No, she can't,' agreed Violetta.

‘In the name of Santa Ana di Chisa,' cried the widow Benedicti. ‘It must be Alessandro's! Partial undress must be all you need these days.'

‘Yes, it must,' agreed Violetta.

‘But this is a catastrophe! She belongs with Daniel but she carries another man's child?'

Violetta felt a delicious warmth creep over her like a feather duvet. It was her instinct, safe and sound, guiding her toward what was right.

‘Yes, she does and yes, she is,' she chortled. ‘Ladies, gather round.'

S
he should have put two and two together the moment her insides failed to shrink from the cry of that fat baby girl in the piazza.

She was tired, she was pale, her smooth skin was unusually spotty, she had a headache, she had sore breasts. She'd had most of these symptoms before, after all. But she'd expunged the afternoon on Alessandro's couch from her mind, so it did not occur to Lily until she realised her period was late that she could be pregnant.

But she was.

She just knew it. The timing, the nausea, the enormous incongruity of it all. It had to be! Still she ran down to the pharmacy at the bottom of town, foregoing the prying eyes at the busy pharmacy that was closer to the
pasticceria
, and bought a pregnancy test. It was positive. So she ran back and bought two more. All three said the same thing, but they didn't even have to—she felt it. She felt it in her skin, in her hair, in her eyes. She felt it everywhere.

And this time, something inside her whispered that the little angel already nesting there, despite the complications it was going to deliver, had fought this hard to get this far and would keeping fighting all the way to the end. Or the beginning. This little angel, she truly believed, was hers for keeps.

Sitting in her tiny bathroom, the third positive stick in her hand, the terrible wonder of it all flooded through her, starting at her toes, stopping for a moment to spin about the tiny new life forming in her centre, then shooting up past her chaotic heart to her whirring mind.

She was having Alessandro's baby.

It was a disaster. A wonderful, amazing, awful, joyful, frightening, extraordinary disaster.

There was so much about it that was wrong! Alessandro didn't want a baby with her. He hardly knew her. She hadn't even seen him since this most miraculous of conceptions. And she didn't want a baby with Alessandro, either.

There was her age, her career, her marriage, the fact she was in Italy and had promised to help with Francesca, the Ferretti sisters, the
amorucci
…

There was so much that was wrong. But the kaleidoscope of complications was overshadowed by what was right. Lily wanted this baby. More than anything else in the world, she wanted this baby. She had always wanted this baby.

She walked to her picture window and sat on the sill, watching the ridiculous countryside crawl out of its sleepy state the same way she did every morning. She laughed to herself, delighted, then bit her lip to keep from crying. More than anything else in the world, she wanted this baby.

‘Lillian!' she heard Francesca call from the kitchen. ‘Where are you, Lillian?'

‘I'm up here, sweetie,' she called back. ‘Come for a visit.'

The clatter of her footsteps up the little stairway swelled Lily's already overflowing heart and when Francesca burst into the room and came running toward her, she couldn't keep the tears from flowing.

‘What's the matter?' Francesca asked, as she fell into Lily's arms. ‘Are you sad?'

‘No, honey, I'm not. I'm happy. I know it seems silly but sometimes grown-ups cry when they're happy.'

‘Why are you happy?'

Her life was so far from the perfection of her dreams that it was laughable. The picture of that huddle of children gathered around her and Daniel as they grew old together lost in the mists of their broken marriage.

And yet she had found the closest thing on earth to a daughter and was now, finally, God and all the saints willing, going to be a mother.

‘I don't know,' she said to Francesca, giving her a squeeze. ‘I just am.'

‘Come on,' Francesca said, holding out her hand. ‘The Ferrettis need you to go on an errand.'

Relieved to have some time to herself to digest the topsy-turvy turn her future had just taken, Lily agreed to deliver a carton of
amorucci
to a trattoria in Montechiello, another tiny hilltop town about a forty-minute drive away.

‘Your first commercial order,' she remarked as she picked up the box. ‘Congratulations.'

‘You cannot miss trattoria,' Violetta said, virtually shoving her out the door. ‘Is only
ristorante
in town.'

Lily could barely remember driving there, her mind was whirring so fast. Should she go home to New York now? It seemed the most appropriate course of action—she needed to see specialists, go through the usual testing rigmarole after all. Or did she? She thought of the smile she kept finding on her face. Tuscany seemed to have put it there so firmly after such a long absence. She had a lot to thank this beautiful corner of the world for.

She parked at the portal to Montechiello and started to climb up to the trattoria with her box of
amorucci
. Red geraniums spilled over the edge of the ancient stone fence that ringed the town, a bright green and yellow lizard basking in the heat flicked out its tongue at her. She poked her own tongue back at it. It was a perfect temperature, the sun dancing across her back, a slight breeze tickling her face.

She pushed open the door to the restaurant. It was dark, with no one behind the counter, but a set of double doors opened out on to a terrace that overlooked the pretty valley she had just driven through.

‘Hello!' she called as she stepped out on to it, catching a whiff of the jasmine that crawled up the trellis behind her.

A single table with a white tablecloth that flapped slightly in the breeze was set up at the edge of the terrace. A bottle of wine and two glasses sat on top of the table. Behind it was Daniel.

‘Oh, it's you!' she said.

He laughed, and in that moment he looked just like the Daniel she had fallen in love with all those years before. A slightly smudged version, admittedly, a little lined, a little crestfallen, but still, the very same Daniel.

‘Yes, it's me,' he said. ‘Would it be too corny to say we must stop meeting like this?'

She smiled back at him and sat down at the table. ‘I never minded a bit of corny,' she confessed.

‘I'm supposed to be meeting a new winemaker here, his wife called me first thing this morning, but our hostess now tells me he was held up. She just left me with this bottle before rushing off on some emergency of her own. I know it's early but would you care for a little wine?'

He went to pour her some, but Lily held her hand over her glass. ‘Not for me, thank you, no.'

‘I'm sure I could find a white, if you preferred, or a prosecco. It's not champagne, but—'

‘No, Daniel, really. I am not drinking.'

‘Not drinking?'

He looked at her, concerned, and just like that she knew that she did love him, that she felt love more strongly than anything else, and whatever the history, it was up to her to roll those boulders away from the difficult access to her heart. She could do it if she wanted to.

And right then, sitting in the lazy sunshine, a new life radiating in her belly, she wanted to.

Her timing was off, to say the least, but now that she was looking at the future instead of the past, she felt certain again. It was as simple as that; she felt certain about him.

Of course, he might not feel so certain about her, in the circumstances, but there was only one way to find out.

‘Will you really love me always, Daniel, no matter what?'

He looked taken aback, but answered nonetheless. ‘Yes, I will.'

‘Even if I've done something that will change everything between us forever?'

‘I don't think that's possible.'

‘Trust me, Daniel, it's possible. In fact, it's a dead certainty.'

‘You're scaring me, Lily. Are you OK?'

‘I'm fine, I'm better than fine, but I still need you to promise that you'll love me, no matter what.'

‘I can't imagine what the “no matter what” would be, but yes, Lily, I mean it when I say it: I will always love you.'

‘Because I think I know now how you felt after you met Eugenia and found out about Francesca, about having all the right things but with the wrong person. I think I know that.'

‘I'm so sorry, Lily. I know you don't want to hear it anymore, but that doesn't mean I will ever stop being sorry.'

‘No, Daniel, things are different now. It's me who is sorry,' she said. ‘I'm pregnant.' And even the look on his face could not take away the thrill of those words.

‘I met someone here. I don't love him, in fact I hardly know him. And I know you will think I did it to hurt you, but I didn't. I wasn't thinking about you, I was thinking about—well, I don't know what I was thinking about. And I don't know what is going to happen now because I have my job in New York, but I have never been happier than I am baking
amorucci
with your daughter. I don't know where I should go or what I should do, but I can't honestly say I wish none of it had happened because I'm pregnant, Daniel. I'm pregnant, and I really feel that this time it's going to work out. I really do. Somehow without anything to back me up and all the usual evidence to the contrary, I think this time it's going to work out.'

Daniel put his glass slowly back on the table. A seed pod crackled nearby in the heat. A motorcycle roared past on the road below them.

‘Please say something,' Lily said.

‘I'm in shock, Lily. What do you want me to say?'

‘I want you to say that even though we've made a mess of everything, you still love me and you want to help me and together somehow we'll figure it all out.'

‘You want me to be happy you're having another man's child?'

‘Under any other circumstances I would not even contemplate asking you to be happy I was having another man's child,' she said. ‘But under these circumstances, that's exactly what I'm asking.'

‘Jesus, Lily, it just seems…'

‘Impossible? Yes, it does seem that way. But is it? I'm happy you have Francesca. I really am. I never thought I would be, and if I hadn't come here I never would have found that out. But I did come here, I did find it out, and more than that, I'm happy
I
have her. I want to help you, Daniel. And I know it's not perfect but it's better
than it was, than we were. We'll have a family. Not the one we dreamed of, and certainly not a traditional one, but we'll have a family. Together.'

‘I feel ambushed,' he said.

‘I know the feeling,' she told him, but gently. ‘The difference is I'm sitting here in front of you telling you. You're not finding out about it in a golf shoe. You said you could help me forgive you; well, now I accept your offer. And I can help you forgive me.'

‘But forgiveness doesn't work that way. Remember?'

‘It should. I remember that.'

Daniel looked at her across the table, the rolling green hills of Tuscany framing her beautiful face, the veneer that had disguised her for so many years ripped away, leaving her just the way he always pictured her in his mind.

She was blossoming in front of his very eyes, this woman with whom he had shared and lost so much. Could it work? This bizarre patchwork of unrelated children and battle-scarred parents? His wife was bearing another man's child, which wounded him in a way he wasn't sure he could heal. He wasn't even sure he wanted to. Yet he had wanted her to do just the same. And she was looking at him now with such confidence, such faith, looking at him the way she used to look at him long ago when their future was full of undashed hope and limitless possibilities.

The truth was, if he discounted all the things he had done wrong and all the things she had, he still felt the same way about her. But now there was this baby and it would be between them forever, reminding them of all their foolishness and the heartbreak it had caused.

‘I know what you're thinking,' Lily told him. ‘You're thinking that this is too much, too painful, that there's no getting over it. But Daniel, I'm probably the only person in the world who knows that
you can
. Maybe not this minute, maybe not this week. But you
can. You still love me, you want to help me, and together we can figure it all out.'

‘I don't know,' he said. ‘Lily, I really just don't know.'

She reached across the table and took his hands in hers.

‘Well, that's all right,' she said. ‘Because I do.'