Friendship Makes the Heart Grow Fonder (21 page)

 “Come on, floor it.” Judy leaned back and clicked her seat belt on. “We’re not a bunch of soccer moms, are we?”

“I am!” Becky gasped as they zoomed past an Audi on their right. “Clearly we’re not on some rural back road anymore.”

“Somewhere,” Judy said, raising her voice a little over the rising pitch of the engine, “Audrey’s braking foot is twitching.”

“And Gina’s,” Becky added, “is pressing harder on the floor.”

Monique made a strangled little laugh. “We’re going eighty-five.”

Becky glanced at the speedometer, the needle straining to the right. “My minivan would be shaking in protest by now.”

Monique pressed even harder on the gas. She shifted gears, and the car lunged. Becky had the odd sensation that it moved faster
than they did, that the car itself was trying to zoom out from under their seats. They approached an underpass only to zip
through it. She’d hardly registered the pass of the shadow before they were zipping under a second, shooting by cars in other
lanes at a rate that made the palms of her hands tingle.

 Monique’s voice was high and tight. “Ninety!”

 “That BMW we passed,” Judy said, “isn’t that it up ahead?”

Monique’s voice was a warning. “Judy, this isn’t a race—”

“You’re not going to let some weenie in a BMW,” Judy said, “beat our sweet little Porsche, are you?”

Monique made a little grunt and pressed even harder on the gas. They were flying over these gentle hills, riding the rim of
the curves that sent her body leaning to the left and to the right. The car’s purring matured into growling, the power beneath
them a palpable thing.

Then suddenly she was laughing. The effort stretched her face muscles in a way that felt achy, unfamiliar. Judy whooped and
Monique squealed and Becky surrendered to the hilarity, even as some small voice in the back of her mind whispered,
this is a fairy tale, and all fairy tales end.

She waved the little voice away.

Right now she was laughing.

Right now she was happy.

Becky leaned against the window of the Porsche as Monique navigated through the streets of Munich in search of their hotel.
The neighborhood they passed through smelled sour-sweet, of hops and fermentation. In the back Judy took a long, dramatic
breath and exclaimed it smelled like Oktoberfest.

Becky nestled further into the soft leather. She couldn’t help but compare this large, industrial city to the little medieval
town of Landsberg am Lech that they’d all visited an hour ago. They’d opted for a pit stop to stretch their legs and indulge
in a late-afternoon snack to hold them over until the feast they’d be digging into tonight, under one of Munich’s Oktoberfest
tents. It had been like stumbling through a forest and coming upon a German fairy-tale town. The place was full of charming
towers—the Bayentor with its crenellated roof and artful brickwork corners, and the fanciful Mutterturm with its conical green
caps—both of which she’d sketched. Ludwig Street boasted colorful four-story stone buildings cheek by jowl, topped with steep-pitched
red roofs. She and the girls had lingered longer than they’d intended. They bought a gelato from a riverside vendor and watched
the swans swim in the turquoise water like three little Gretels drugged by magic candy.

Judy stopped humming long enough to glance out the window. “I think those are the Oktoberfest tents back there,” she said,
gesturing down a street. “Are we close to the hotel, Monique? It’d be nice to just walk to them.”

“Once we made the decision to come here," Monique said, "I made a point of choosing a hotel as close as possible to the Weisn.”

Judy said, “And you got one at this late date?”

“Lucky I guess.”

“Lord, you must have paid a fortune for it.”

“Not really. It’s nicer than the one I’d reserved before. In the original itinerary we were supposed to be in Munich days
ago, and
that
room was hard to find and expensive. But someone must have cancelled because I found this one on the first try. Becky, keep
your eyes open for Parkstrasse.”

Becky blinked rapidly as the twilight washed the world to gray. “Judy and I should switch places. I can’t help you anymore.”

“Wait—there’s the street.” Monique hit the signal and glanced over her shoulder to change lanes. “We’re just a few blocks
away now. That road we just passed was my marker, to tell me that I’m close.”

“Monique,” Judy murmured, “are you sure this place isn’t a dump?”

“We’re arriving in Munich in a Porsche. You think I’m parking this thing on the street in front of some rent-by-the-hour hotel?”

“But there shouldn’t be a decent bed available in a sixty-mile radius.”

Monique shrugged. “It got good reviews.”

“It’s Oktoberfest. Everyone leaves here soused or hung-over but happy.”

“There it is.” Monique headed farther down Gollierstrasse. “The big red building with the sign.”

Judy’s head popped between the seats, and her eyes widened. “Hotel Ludwig?”

“Yup.”

“Well I’ll be damned.”

Monique pulled the purring vehicle to a stop in front of the building. “We’ve got the four-bedroom apartment too. One bedroom
more than we need.”

Becky snorted, “Not if we can get Judy an Italian.”

A valet approached the car, and reflected in his eyes Becky saw a feverish appreciation for the jewel-blue confection that
they’d just parked. She stepped out of the vehicle feeling like a high roller, when in reality she had a desk full of bills,
no income, and a six-year-old minivan approaching one hundred thousand miles waiting at home.

Monique came around and tossed the keys to the valet with breezy, grinning aplomb. Falling into step behind her—it was starting
to go from twilight to dark—Becky followed Monique through the glass doors of the hotel while Judy came up from behind. Judy
put her German to good use instructing the valet to unload the trunk. No doubt he’d be baffled when he saw their battered,
worn, decidedly non-designer luggage.

The hotel lobby was a well-lit modern place. A sparse collection of blond wood chairs clustered around a low table by the
front window. Monique approached the desk but Judy physically stopped her and walked on ahead, speaking in confident German
to the woman at registration.

Monique turned to Becky with a conspiratorial roll of her eyes. “You know she’s going to be like this when she gets home too.”

“Bossing everyone around? Swearing at will? Renting little sports cars?”

“Poor Bob.”

“I wouldn’t pity him too much.” Becky eyed her friend, now leaning across the registration desk. “She seems so happy these
last few days. So much happier than when she was back home, obsessively mowing her lawn.”

“Oh, lord. My lawn. I forgot to arrange for someone to mow it.” Monique let her eyes flutter shut for a moment. “You know
what? I don’t want to think about going home right now.”

“I hear you.”

“I don’t know if it’s the Porsche or something else. But I haven’t done anything this crazy in years. I haven’t had this much
fun
in years.”

Becky was about to tell her that it felt like they’d stepped through some portal into another world. A world where the sun
always shone and troubles fluttered away and, with a wave of a magic wand, bills disappeared, princes never left you, and
disease would never touch your children. Judy’s cry of surprise interrupted her.

Judy gaped at the woman at the registration desk, who rumbled an explanation, her open palms suggesting a state of affairs
outside her official ability to remedy. Judy slapped her hands on her head. Then she swiveled on one heel and joined them
by the chairs.

“Well,” Judy said, “you’re not going to believe this.”

Monique said, “They bobbled our reservation?”

“Oh, no, we’ve still got the four-person apartment. But now I know
how
we got it.”

“My epic skills in navigating online registration forms, of course.”

Judy shook her head.  “It’s October third.”

Becky said, “Is that some kind of German national holiday or something?”

“This year, it’s the official closing day for Oktoberfest.”

Monique leaned into Judy. “You mean
opening
day.”

“At noon today,” Judy said, “the riflemen fired their gun salute on the stairs of the Bavarian monument, and that was it.”

“But it’s not ‘Septemberfest,’” Becky said. “It’s Oktoberfest.”

“Which apparently begins in September.” Judy waved her arm in the general direction of the city. “All afternoon they’ve been
closing down the tents. The whole city is in extended-hangover mode. I think the woman at the registration desk is still drunk.”

An odd light gleamed in Monique’s eyes. “Well, there it is. I guess I can’t check Oktoberfest off Lenny’s list.”

Judy’s head shot up. “You absolutely
can
check this off Lenny’s list. It’s still Oktoberfest until midnight.”

“Technically.” Her eyes narrowed. “I suppose.”

“Technically and in spirit,” Becky countered. “Tonight we’ll take a walk to where the tents were and, in Lenny’s honor, we’ll
spill some microbrewery Bavarian beer.”

“No roasted duck,” Judy lamented. “No dumplings. No pastry at the Café
Kaiserschmarrn tent. We came here in a Porsche. We came for Oktoberfest. I want to dance with drunken Germans in lederhosen!”

The words echoed through the room. An elderly woman passing through the lobby stopped in her tracks. The worker at the registration
desk shot them a glare. A crowd of college-age men, shuffling through the front door, winced at the noise then tugged their
coats closer as they headed toward the elevator.

Judy slapped a hand over her mouth. “I can’t believe that I just yelled that.”

“You said it in English,” Becky said.

“Most Germans speak English!”

Monique snickered. “Then everyone knows you’re macking for men in lederhosen. And I thought you had a thing for Italians.”

“I don’t know, Monie,” Becky said, “do you think we can distract her with a few drunken Austrians?”

“It has worked before.”

“Stop!”

Becky struggled to control herself. For Judy’s sake she really did try to choke down the laughter. She tried so hard that
tears squeezed out the corners of her eyes. She glimpsed Monique’s face contorted with the effort. Only when Judy’s laughter
spilled out between her fingers did Becky allow the hilarity to overcome her for the second time that day.

She thought of Brianna’s Tickle Me Elmo that giggled with one press of his hand. With a second press, the doll’s laughter
rumbled, just as Becky’s had in the Porsche that afternoon. But a third press set Elmo vibrating in the kind of convulsive
glee Becky witnessed in Brianna sometimes, when the girl was exhausted at dinner and Brian started monkeying around and shoving
peas in his nostrils. It was a whole-body seizure, a roiling hilarity that set shoulders shaking and made her fling her head
back to gasp in air.

That’s what seized the three of them now, as they bent over in the lobby. Becky gripped Monique’s shoulder as a stitch clutched
her ribs. Each time Becky tried to straighten up, she would catch Monique’s laughing brown eyes, or Judy’s arcing gray ones,
and the laughter would seize her all over again.

She knew she would remember this moment. It’d be branded in her mind more than the castles she’d seen in Germany or the food
she’d eaten in Paris or the jewel-blue Porsche she’d traveled in. This memory sizzled with the same intensity of the midnight
kiss from Marco, of Brianna red-faced with laughter nearly tumbling off her chair.

Joy had felt for so long like something snatched away, a magic ring stolen, now forbidden and undeserved.

If she could only find a way to bring it home.

“
J
udy,” Monique said, gesturing to the ugly, rock-like lump rolling in her friend’s hand. “I hate mushrooms.”

“It’s a white truffle.” Judy lifted her palm into the Italian sunlight. “Does this look like one of those dirty lumps you
buy at the local grocery store?”

“A truffle is a fungus, and funguses are grown in piles of manure.”

“These aren’t grown in manure. They’re routed out by specially trained pigs or dogs or something.”

“Ooh, yum. Fungus
and
dog spit.”

“And when they’re fresh, they retail for two thousand bucks a pound.” Judy shaved off a little piece of the thing with the
edge of her Swiss Army knife. “They’re harvested between September and December so right now they’re prime and in season.
How can you say no?”

“If I’m going to have a truffle, it’ll be the chocolate kind.”

“Philistine.”

Monique folded her arms. “Do you guys know what a virulent fungus does when it attacks the human body?”

“Stop projecting your fears on this succulent
trifola d’Alba
.”

“In any language, it’s still a moldy tumorous growth.”

“That’s like saying a Porsche is just a car.” Judy nudged one slice aside with the tip of her knife and then cut off another.
In the shade of the stone wall Judy offered a piece to Becky. “How ’bout you, Beck. You feeling adventuresome?”

Becky seized it. “I’m so in.”

Monique watched as Judy slipped the sliver onto her tongue. To Monique the truffle—and all the mushrooms piled on the little
cart nearby—smelled vaguely pungent, like old cheese and musky moss. The scent threatened to turn her stomach, but not Judy’s
apparently. Judy’s eyes fluttered closed. As she chewed she lifted the shriveled, ill-formed thing to her nose. Her nostrils
flared as she breathed in the scent.

“Tonight I’m having pasta with truffle butter,” Judy said. “Two servings at least.”

Becky held out her hand for another bite. “We’re staying here for dinner, yes?”

Monique shrugged. “We’ll stay the night if you want.” She was sure they served more than just truffle pasta in the little
restaurants around the square. “I saw a sign for a pensione down that side street.”

“Thank goodness we didn’t start this trip in Italy.” Becky popped the thing in her mouth. “You’d need a forklift to pry me
away from here.”

Monique let her gaze pass across the town, a pastry sweet of a medieval village perched on the height of a hill. They’d spent
yesterday morning visiting the castle at Neuschwanstein, the afternoon at a late lunch in Innsbruck in Austria, and they’d
crashed at night in a pensione
outside Verona. Lenny’s list had them attending the wine and truffle festival in Alba, but as they traveled through northern
Italy, Monique knew she and the girls wouldn’t make it that far west. Especially when the little town of Neive loomed into
sight.

They’d all glanced at one another. Sure, the truffle festival at Alba had donkey races and locals in medieval costume, truffle-seeking
forays and live music…but this little village amid the barbaresco vineyards was nearly free of tourists and full of cheese
and wine shops, quiet and seemingly unexplored.

They hadn’t exchanged a word. They drove into town and found a parking spot near the top of the hill where, between streets
and buildings, there lay a breathtaking view of the surrounding vineyards.

Becky said suddenly, “Is that your phone ringing, Judy?”

Judy probed her belly pack as the sound repeated. “Nope, not mine.”

Monique realized that the ringing was coming from her pack. She fumbled it off her shoulder and pulled out her cell phone.
“It’s Kiera.” Monique panicked when she saw notifications for six texts, but as she scanned the contents she relaxed. She
did a quick calculation of the difference in time zones. “I guess she’s awake now. She must have finally seen the photos from
Neuschwanstein I texted her yesterday.”

“You’ve got time to answer them,” Judy said, flicking her wrist to look at the face of her watch. “The wine tour at La Contea
doesn’t start for about an hour.”

“Can we wander back to that little cheese shop?” Stepping out of the shadow into the sunlight, Becky squinted in the vague
direction of one of the narrow streets. “Wasn’t it down there somewhere? I want to buy some of that jam made out of grape
must. It smelled so good.”

“Cugnà,”
Judy murmured, wrapping her two remaining truffles back up into the paper.

Becky raised a brow at Judy. “You speak Italian now?”

“No, no, I just liked the word. It stuck in my head.” She gave a little shrug. “You know, if you start serving that up with
toast for breakfast, Brian and Brianna may never eat Welch’s again.”

“The Swiss chocolate is for them,” Becky said. “The jam is for me.”

“Well, this lactose-intolerant woman is going to skip the visit to the cheese shop.” Monique waved the cell phone. “I’m going
to find a place to sit and catch up on these. Text me when the wine tour is about to start, and I’ll meet you at the entrance
to the cave.”

Monique waved as they headed down the hill to a building with a bell tower. She swiveled on a heel and headed in the opposite
direction, up to the top of the hill to a plaza she’d noticed when she’d parked the Porsche. Around the side of a building,
a stone terrace jutted over the edge of the hillside. She took a seat on the bench against the wall. The seat warmed her thighs
and the gritty stone tugged the fibers of her yoga pants. Through a gap in two lower buildings there lay a crazed staircase
of red roofs, and beyond, a stretch of combed fields.

She flipped through Kiera’s text messages.

Mrs. Lorenzini must have loved this castle. It’ll make a great cake.

LOL, Mom, nice hair in this shot should I make an appointment for you at Bangz when you get home?

Grand-mère
told me to text you hello and that she hopes you’re enjoying yourself. Like it’s not obvious.

I bought some clothes at the mall so don’t freak if you see the charges on your credit card.

BTW, we finally won a race against Livingston.

Mom…when are you coming home?

Reading the last text, Monique felt a quiver of motherly instinct. Kiera could find out the flight information in a flash.
The itinerary was pinned on the bulletin board in the kitchen. Clearly her daughter craved something more than her estimated
time of arrival, and Monique didn’t have to think long about what that might be. Kiera needed reassurance that her mother
missed her, that she’d come back soon, and that when she did everything would be exactly the same.

Monique curled both her hands over the cell phone, wishing she could text a full-bodied hug to her daughter. Kiera was such
a creature of feeling and sensitivity, still struggling to muddle everything all out like every teenager who’d ever lived.
Her daughter probably didn’t even see the irony in her yearning for her mother to return, when it was Kiera herself who was
truly planning to leave. For the past four years Monique had made Herculean efforts to reassure her that she would always
be around. This vacation was the longest the two of them had ever been apart. And now she held in her hand Kiera’s plea, uncertain
and subtly alarmed, a tremor of growing realization.

Mom might not always be there.

She set her thumbs to the keypad.
Not long now, sweetie. I’m taking the red-eye on Friday. Miss you terribly. Can’t wait to see you.

She hit send and slid the phone on the bench beside her. She gazed over the stretch of the vineyards, admiring the blush of
russet on the fields and a touch of gold here and there. She heard the noise that the text had slipped into the ether. Slipping
her sunglasses on top of her head, she raised her face to the sunlight.

Did I do wrong, Lenny? Loving Kiera as fiercely as I do? Loving
you
as strongly as I still do, holding on to you even now?

In the breeze Monique felt a disturbance in the air, a subtle shimmering of light and sound. The feathery ripple interrupted
the chatter of the Italian shopkeeper around the corner of the building. The subtle disruption put a tremor in the high steady
whine of a small Italian car laboring to climb up the hillside from below.

She stilled, softly reaching for the wisp of his presence. Lenny had always wanted to come to Italy. He would have loved the
slow, bone-seeping warmth of this place. He’d have loved the mossy smell of the streets, the shops with cured meats hanging
in the windows, the pungent cheeses in boxes of straw, the bottles of ruby-red wine. He’d have eaten egg tagliatelle, scarfing
down the noodles tossed in butter and covered with truffle shavings. He’d have tried the wild boar stew she saw advertised
as a specialty of one restaurant, a robust meat in a peppery marinade. This trip to an Italian wine and truffle festival wasn’t
one of the mysterious little breadcrumb-clues Becky claimed Lenny had sprinkled in that bucket list, mysterious messages from
beyond. Of all the things Lenny had talked her into adding to his list, this trip to northern Italy was one she could say
without question that Lenny would have enjoyed wholeheartedly.

She willed him closer, aching for the moment he’d settle his big body on this stone bench, when he would finally speak to
her in that voice she loved, about the dinner they would have eaten, the wine they would have drunk, the vineyard they would
have toured, the drive they would have taken. He’d speak to her of Kiera’s growing confidence, of Kiera’s college plans, of
the wonderful life they would all have lived together.

He was near. She was sure of it.

She missed him so much on this trip.

Finally he would come.

Monique did not know how much time had passed, sitting on the bench with her head leaning against the sun-warmed stones, waiting
for that electric charge in the space where Lenny should be. It could have been minutes. It could have been hours. She knew
her face had gone wet, because a breeze slipped up the hillside and made the tracks on her cheeks cold.

Then a shadow crossed beyond her eyelids.

She blinked her eyes open. Judy came around beside her. Becky followed more slowly in her wake.

“I see why you ignored your phone.” Judy settled on the bench. “This view is breathtaking.”

Monique lunged for her cell phone lying on the bench just before Becky, with her peripheral vision issues, threatened to sit
right down on it.

Monique fumbled with her phone. “Did you call?”

“Judy texted twice,” Becky said. “But who knows about the cell service here? You probably didn’t receive them.”

Monique looked at the screen and saw that she had two missed texts. Texts she hadn’t even heard, though the phone ring was
set on high.

“I must have dozed.” She tried to force her voice back to normal. “I suppose I missed the winery tour.”

“There’s going to be another one in English in an hour,” Becky said. “We changed our tickets. We didn’t want to do it without
you.”

Monique canted forward to slip the phone into her daypack by her feet and hide the stupid trail of tears that still clung
to her cheeks. She tried to wipe them off with the back of one hand while she rifled needlessly in her daypack with the other.
She took a deep gulp of air—air somehow cooler and thinner than before—and then squared her shoulders and straightened back
up.

“You know, Monie, I’ve been meaning to ask you a question,” Judy said. “It’s about something weird that happened last May.”

“Last May?”

“I was making sausage and peppers for dinner,” Judy continued. “I’d forgotten to pick up some onions at the grocery store.
So I came over to see if you had one to spare.”

Monique frowned. “Judy, you do this every time Maddy comes home. I buy extras just for you.”

 “Your front door was open so I let myself in. I was about to call out, but then I heard you talking to someone.”

Monique felt a painful little prickling at the back of her neck.

“I knew it wasn’t Kiera,” Judy said. “Kiera was upstairs. I heard her singing, really loudly. You were in the kitchen with
your back to me, running a soapy sponge over a saucepan. You were talking in a low voice, like someone was in the room with
you. I put my head around the door but there was no one there. No one I could see anyway.”

The prickling intensified and invaded her throat. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t look at either of them. She felt the shame
of it radiating. She stared at the path of moss in the mortar between the paving stones, feeling like a thirteen-year-old
whose diary had just been read over the school loudspeaker.

And she became aware, in slow degrees, of a ribbon of collusion between the women flanking her. Maybe it was the way they
were both canted back on the bench, still as stone. They weren’t picking threads from the seams of their well-worn jeans or
idly examining their ragged cuticles or closing their eyes and lifting their chins to the sun. Even their feet were equally
still, balanced tensely on the heels of their sneakers.

Monique cocked her head a fraction toward Becky. “You knew this, too, didn’t you?”

Becky laced her fingers around one raised knee. “Two summers ago I fetched Brianna and Brian off your swing set, long after
dark. The kitchen window was open and you were laughing out loud. I hadn’t heard you laugh in so long, Monie. I was so happy
for you. I wondered what Kiera had said that made you laugh like that. That’s when I realized you weren't talking to Kiera.”

“Neither one of us blames you,” Judy said. “God knows if something happened to Bob, I’d still be complaining to him that he
never makes the bed.”

Monique swallowed the lump growing in her throat and pressed back against the stone wall. The rough edge of the mortar snagged
in her loosening braids. She was a nurse; she was supposed to understand grief. A nurse saw grief up close on a regular basis.
She’d seen it the very week before she’d come here, in the eyes of a young mother and father as she handed over the carefully
swaddled body of their twenty-five-week infant—heart-size and far too young to live despite how hard everyone at the NICU
had tried. There was no getting used to the distorted faces of the anguished parents. They pressed their hands against their
mouths and bit their knuckles as if they could physically hold in the pain.