Ben and I were in the old stable yard watching the return of his backhoe and the cement mixer and the digger.
“Ciao, signore, ciao, dottoressa,”
the drivers called cheerfully, as though the machinery had never disappeared and was now, like magic, reappearing.
“Domani, signore,”
they said, “we begin work.” And Ben nodded and said that was good.
We were surprised to see Maggie, in high-heeled pink mules, coming down the path waving at us. It was only noon, practically the crack of dawn for Maggie.
“I have it,” she said, giving us that infamous smile that I knew hid a thousand Machiavellian secrets—like, for instance, whether or not she could really read those tarot cards. She flourished a rusty-looking iron key. “The key to Donati’s office in Florence,” she told us, looking very pleased with herself.
Ben gave a low whistle. “Maggie, you’re a genius.”
“Well, of course I am. My detective got it from Donati’s landlord.”
“The landlord
gave
the detective the key?” Even I thought that sounded doubtful.
“Not exactly. Let’s just say the detective ‘happened by it.’”
“How?”
She gave us that smile again and said, “Ask me no secrets, I’ll tell you no lies. Here’s the address.” She passed Ben the piece of paper. “Now all you have to do is go there and search his office.”
My eyes swung nervously from Maggie to Ben. “Isn’t that called breaking and entering, in police language?”
“Hardly ‘breaking,’ my dear,” Maggie said soothingly. “
Entering
maybe. But that’s all right.”
“Is it all right?” I asked Ben.
He gave me a grin that matched hers. “Who knows?” he said, “but I’m game if you are.”
Donati’s office was on a mean little street near the station, tucked away behind a dry cleaner’s and a funeral home. The looming buildings blocked out the sun, and I shivered, suddenly chilled. Ben shoved the giant key into the lock.
“What if he’s in there?” I said, still nervous. He gave me a definite James Bondish look (one brow lifted, a quizzical little smile), then he pushed open the door and slid inside. I slid after him, into total darkness. “Jesus,” I whispered, shocked. “We really are breaking and entering.”
He grabbed my hand and closed the door behind me. We stood for a long minute in the darkness. I scrunched up my eyes, listening hard. I could swear I heard someone
breathing
in there. Then I realized it was me. “Can’t we at least put on the light?” I whispered.
But Ben had already left me. He swung a flashlight around, and I caught a glimpse of a heavy wooden desk with one of those green shaded lamps, a leather chair, and a layer of dust. It was obvious that nobody had been here for a long time, and I thought, relieved, that at least Donati wasn’t about to spring out at us from the darkness.
Ben was already opening drawers and filing cabinets, whisking through them fast. Nothing. The thin beam from his flashlight fastened on a green iron safe standing in the corner. It wasn’t large, just about big enough to put your jewels in, if you had any.
“How about a little safecracking?” he said.
My teeth chattered with fright. I had never done anything illegal in my life, unless making love in the back of a car is illegal, that is. “We don’t know how to open it.”
He gave me that arched Bond eyebrow again and knelt in front of the safe.
“Ben, we
can’t
do this. Please, let’s just
go
.” I held my breath as he put his ear to the safe, twirling dials and listening, just the way they did in caper movies. I was stunned. “Where did you learn safecracking?”
“I’m a kid from the Bronx, remember? You learn a lot of stuff on the streets.”
“Apparently not enough,” I said, because he was having no luck. The safe remained firmly closed.
He took a small Swiss Army knife from his pocket, flipped it open to the little screwdriver, then proceeded to remove the screws from the hinges. “Any kid could have opened this,” he said, forcing the door wider.
I dropped to my knees beside him and we stared at the bulky document tied loosely with pink tape and with a broken red wax seal.
The
ah-aha-aha
wail of Italian police sirens suddenly split the silence. We looked at each other open-mouthed. The sirens stopped, and the door burst open.
We were caught red-handed. Stealing Count Piacere’s last will and testament.
I scowled as I glared between the bars at Ben in an identical little holding cell opposite. He wasn’t even looking at me. He was peering down the dimly lit corridor to where a guard sat. On the table in front of the guard was the evidence, still bundled in its pink legal tape.
“Damn it,” I said, shivering with chills and fury, “we didn’t even get to see if the count had left the villa to Nonna.”
Ben shrugged. “At least we found the will.”
“Yeah, and now we’ll have to find Donati to prove he’s the real criminal and not us.”
“I wouldn’t bet on that. Donati knew the game was up long ago. He just took my money and ran. We’ll never see him again.”
“I wish you’d told me that earlier.” I slumped onto the hard wooden bench, staring at my feet. I noticed my toenails needed polish.
Ben had called Maggie, and we were waiting for her to arrive with a lawyer. He told me that she had laughed and said not to worry, my dears, she would be there in a flash with her own attorney. “The very best, of course,” she had said. I surely hoped she was right and not just consulting those tarot cards again. I stared angrily at my unpolished toes.
“I guess this is as good a time as any to ask if you’ve decided you love me.”
“What?” I looked at Ben in disbelief.
“Well, things couldn’t get any worse. So I may as well hear the bad news now.” He was leaning against the bars, and there was a kind of desperate look in his eyes. “Cash is in our past, Gemma,” he said softly. “It’s time to go on living.”
The ice around my heart was melting into puddles of what was surely warm maple syrup. Cash, I thought. Oh, Cash, my love…
“Marry me, Gemma,” Ben said.
At least I think that’s what he said. I was so dazed I asked him to repeat it.
“Marry me, Gemma,” he said again.
I gulped. “Why? I mean, why do you want to marry
me
?”
“Because you’re crazy, you’re funny, you make me laugh, and I love your hair.”
“My hair?”
I ran my hands frantically through the hated blond halo.
“I always wanted to marry a Botticelli angel.”
“I’m no angel…”
He gripped the bars of his cell tightly, looking at me. “Damn it, Gemma,” he groaned, “why are you making me work so hard? I love you. All I’m doing is asking you to marry me.”
“In a
jail cell
?” I gripped my own bars angrily. “I mean, couldn’t it at least have been on the church steps in Rome? On a café terrace drinking champagne? In the garden at the villa by moonlight?”
“It could,” he agreed, “but I’m asking you now.”
I looked doubtfully at him. I wanted to love him, I wanted to be able to say it, to be free to say it. And free to love again.
“I know all your secrets,” he said. “I
know
you, Gemma, and I love you.”
I began to cry. Of all
times
—when the man I now knew I loved had actually asked me to marry him, even if it was in an Italian jail cell. The mascara I wish I had never worn was running down my face as I sobbed uncontrollably. Ben just stood there, watching me. He didn’t say, Hey, babe, it’s okay, everything’s all right. He just stood there and waited for me to stop. Which eventually, I did.
“Okay, so now you’re over that,” he said calmly. “Are you going to marry me, or not?”
“Not,” I whispered, confused, but he looked so stunned, I guess maybe I didn’t get it right. “Try me again with that one, will you?” I said.
“Tell you what,” he said with an exasperated look, “why don’t
you
ask
me
this time?”
My knees finally gave way. I sank to the stone floor and pushed my hand through the bars toward him. “Ben Raphael, I love you,” I said. “Will you please marry me?”
And he gave a great shout of laughter and said, “Darn right I will, Gemma Jericho.”
I had asked a man to marry me and he had said yes. I was the happiest woman in the world
. I thought of my dear love Cash. I would always share my love between him and Ben. But I was alive again, and all of us who have suffered a loss know this moment when there comes a turning point and life goes on.
And my lovely Ben, my savior, my new best friend, my lover and fellow criminal, keeper of my secrets and master of my soul and my body, will be my husband.
Ben took a little velvet pouch from his pocket and pushed it across the strip of floor between our cells.
I wriggled my arm through the bars, trying to reach it; it was just a finger breadth away. “Damn,” I muttered. Wiggling both hands I almost had it.
Yes!
I edged it toward me. My fingers encircled it.
“Open it,” Ben said, kneeling opposite me in his cell.
The metal bars cut into my arms as I jiggled the pouch open and saw the ring. It was the one I had so admired and longed for in the old jewelry store on the Ponte Vecchio. The one with the twisted bands of gold, centered with a cabochon of clear crysal surrounded by pinpoint diamonds. The one I just knew had been given to some beautiful young Florentine aristocrat by her long-ago beloved.
“How did you know?” I whispered.
“Never underestimate the power of daughters.”
“Livvie told you?”
He nodded. “I wish I could put it on your finger. And then I would kiss you.”
We knelt there, in our jail cells, staring longingly at each other. I looked down at my beautiful engagement ring still on the floor. I nudged it toward me until I got close enough to push it onto the proper finger. I held out my hands through the bars to show him. It sparkled softly in the dim light.
“Did I really ask you to marry me?” I said.
Ben nodded. “And I said yes.”
“Then shouldn’t I be the one giving you the ring?”
“That’s okay. I’m trusting you’ll keep your word.”
I sighed happily, trying to wiggle my hands back through the bars. “Oh,” I said. “Ow.” I tried to pull my arms toward me.
“Ouch!”
I said.
I was kneeling on the floor of the cell, with my arms poked through the bars.
Ben clapped a hand to his forehead. “Don’t tell me,” he said.
“You’re stuck.”
“It could happen to anyone. You put your arms through bars, you’re gonna get stuck.”
“Pity you didn’t think of that earlier.”
“But then I wouldn’t have been able to put on your ring.”
“True.”
“What am I going to do now?” I asked meekly.
By the time Maggie had arrived, they had cut me out of there with a heavy-duty steel cutter that I thought was going to saw my arms off. And the cost of the “operation,” I was warned sternly by the chief of police himself, would be paid for by me.
It turned out that of course Maggie knew the chief. She explained to him in her delightful English-Italian mix that we had only been searching for what was rightfully my property, and that Donati was the real criminal who had taken the
americano
’s money and run. We apologized sincerely for wasting police time and appreciated the trouble they had taken, and of course we would pay any necessary costs.
She had us out of there in a flash and into her “best” car, a big old yellow Rolls that dated from the fifties and floated along the bumpy little roads as gently as a baby’s pram. The butler/majordomo/chauffeur drove, and Maggie sat beside him with the count’s last will and testament, still folded neatly, on her knee. I was dying to know what was in it, but I didn’t want to seem pushy. Not when I had just become engaged to the man whose villa I might, or might not, now own.
“Ben and I just got engaged,” I said instead.
“In
a jail cell
?” Maggie sounded so Oscar Wilde that I laughed. “So you finally asked her, Ben?” she added.
“I did. And she asked me. We both said yes.”
“Well, of course it was written in the tarot cards. Congratulations, my dears, we will have champagne tonight to celebrate. And caviar. I do so love caviar, don’t you?”
I eyed the document in her lap anxiously. “Maggie?”
“Yes, my dear?”
“Do you think…I mean, could you just look at the will and see—”
“Of course.” She ripped off the pink tape and rustled through the stiff parchment covered with spidery handwriting. “Piacere wrote it himself,” she said. “And he signed it.
And
it was witnessed.”
She skimmed the pages, then she looked up, beaming. “Winner takes all,” she yelled, delighted.
“Maggie,” Ben said, exasperated, “exactly
who
is the winner who takes all?”
“Why, Sophia Maria is, of course.”
Nonna had decided she wanted a true old-fashioned Italian wedding in the village square at Bella Piacere. That way, she said, everyone could come.
She had what she called a “final shopping blowout” in Florence, where, to her delight, she hit the sales. “Dolce e Gabbana,” she told me proudly, showing me the dress and the matching shoes. If I’d had any shock left in me, I would have fainted. Whoever thought my mom would even know about D & G, let alone wear it for her wedding?
Then my friends Patty and Jeff arrived from New York, thrilled to be part of it all, happy for Nonna, and dying to meet Ben.
“Hey, ‘hag,’ you’re looking pretty good,” was Patty’s greeting to me. Then she saw Ben and added, admiringly, “And now I know the reason why.”
We had all moved into the villa, and now we put Patty and Jeff in a corner room in one of the little square towers. It had windows on three sides looking out at the overgrown garden at the front and the villa’s tiled roofs to the left and the Tuscan hills to the right. Jim said it was a pity it wasn’t going to be a hotel anymore because it was just about perfect, and that we would have to throw them out of there to get rid of them. But I told them that we would have to sell the villa.
“Sell it back to Ben,” Patty said. But Ben had already bought and paid for the villa once, and that would hardly have been a good business deal for him.
After the wedding, Nonna and Rocco were to drive in Rocco’s truck to Forte dei Marmi, a pretty little beach resort, for their two-day honeymoon. Fido was to stay with Maggie, and Guido Verdi, the mayor, who was also to be Rocco’s best man, was personally going to take care of the cow. But by then, of course, Livvie and I would be back in the wilds of Manhattan. Our bags were packed, and we were leaving paradise the day after the wedding.
Livvie hated to leave. When she wasn’t busy organizing the wedding flowers, which Nonna had put her in charge of, as well as her own and Muffie’s wedding outfits, she moped around with a sorrowful look on her face. I had also caught that same wistful expression in Ben’s eyes.
And me? Had I let myself, I could have broken down and cried buckets of tears at the thought of leaving Bella Piacere and our lovely villa, but I reminded myself that this was Nonna’s moment, and that I had no right to spoil her happiness. Still, even though I now had Ben, how would I manage in New York, back in my daily life in the trauma room, without Nonna always being there, without seeing her every Sunday?
The day of the wedding arrived at last. Clear and blue and hot, with no hint of those warning purple clouds. But then, of course, it would not have dared to rain on Nonna’s wedding day.
The whole village had joined in the planning. Trees and shrubs in giant planters blocked traffic from entering or leaving the village and lent a verdant garden look to the cobbled square. Buntings were strung from the umbrella pines and along the street, fluttering in the sirocco, which was blowing heat from the Sahara again, and banners with Bella Piacere’s emblem and Count Piacere’s coat of arms hung from lamp standards and in windows.
Ancient speakers like giant megaphones had been attached to roofs at each corner of the square, and long trestle tables were covered in red-checked paper cloths, with bunches of wildflowers picked in the hills by Livvie and Muffie stuck into yellow pottery jugs. Flimsy folding chairs listed rockily, and round red paper lanterns swung overhead. Children in their Sunday best chased each other, knocking over chairs and hiding under the tables. A black dog lifted its leg in one corner, then went sniffing after a crowd of other dogs, and the tabby from up the hill took a position in a sunny spot on one of the tables.
Old women in their black and shawls, who remembered both Nonna’s and Rocco’s mothers, climbed the steps into the church, crossed themselves, and took up their usual seats near the front. The bridal couple’s old school friends were there, in colorful silks and good suits with huge pink carnations pinned to the lapel, and so were their smart sons and daughters and packs of grandchildren, plus the village’s young marrieds with their new babies. Rocco’s olive grove workers were there too, and all the local farmers, and the owners of the vineyards, as well as the local gentry, most of whom had known Rocco all their lives.
A wooden platform for dancing had been built over the bocce court, and musicians were setting up the drum kit and testing their accordions and fiddles. Rocco’s special white cow was tethered under the trees with a trough of sweet hay to keep her happy, busily whisking away the flies with her tail and watching the world go by from her long-lashed liquid-brown eyes.
The simple honey-colored church, with its brass candlesticks burnished to a fine gleam, was filled with flowers of every sort and color, and the heavy smell of incense mingled with that of tuberoses and lavender. The
signora
in the pink linen dress, who was also the local librarian, pounded out snatches of Bach and Vivaldi on the old pump organ, while one unfortunate lad, sweating up in the loft, worked the bellows, and a crop of choirboys, big-eyed Italian movie urchins, all jostled and sniggered, undaunted by Don Vincenzo’s warning glares.
Don Vincenzo had bought a new soutane and shined his shoes, and Rocco was smart again in his black suit and the blue silk tie Nonna had given him. His bristly hair was gelled flat, and not a whisker was out of place on his mustache. He waited at the altar beside Mayor Guido, and with Fido, who, with special dispensation from Don Vincenzo, sat at his master’s heels, looking worried in a large pink satin bow.
I took my seat at the front, as nervous as if I were the bride. And, in the white dress I had bought in that mad moment in Florence without ever trying it on, I could have been. It was the one I’d worn to Ben’s Fourth of July party. I’d looked so gawky and odd in it then, but now, with my new suntan and Maggie’s diamond drop earrings and the sexy “look of love” that hung around me tangible as smoke, somehow I looked kind of cute.
Maggie was over the top, as usual, in her favorite peacock blue, a shimmery sequined dress that would have looked good on a movie star half her age, and all her best diamonds, plus a gigantic aquamarine tiara. She sat beside me, mopping her tears with a tiny linen handkerchief, though the ceremony hadn’t even started yet. “I can’t help it,” she boomed over the roar of the organ, “I always cry at weddings. Except my own, of course.”
I heard the rustle of silk and the sound of footsteps on the stone floor, and I turned to look. Ben was giving Nonna away, and they stood together, caught for a moment in a muted ray of sunlight that filtered through the stained glass.
The bridesmaids, Livvie and Muffie, wore pale celadon-green cotton T-shirt dresses they had chosen themselves, and Livvie had colored their hair a delicate lemon color. They were barefoot and each carried a single tall sunflower, held like a candle in front of them. Today they looked less like
Nosferatu
extras and more like frescoed cherubs.
Sophia Maria was the star of the show. Hair pulled softly back, begonia lipstick perfectly in place, in a pale silk dress splashed with watercolor flowers, low-cut with a little “shrug” around her bare shoulders for the church, and a tiny hat with a flutter of spotted net over her eyes, she was…just lovely. She carried a simple bouquet of those little pink Tuscan roses and white hydrangeas and cream lilies from the villa’s gardens, and she had the happiest smile on her face.
I looked at Ben as he walked my mother down the aisle. He looked so good, all dressed up in a dark blue suit, my heart flipped and my knees turned to jelly all over again.
I ran my hands through my hair, completely wrecking the careful job Livvie had done combing it into place, and the gardenia I had tucked behind my ear fell over my glasses.
I thought about how much she had changed, from the lonely suburban widow to this pretty, happy woman. Had I changed too? Yes, of course I had. I still looked the same, and I was still “the walking disaster area,” as Ben called me. But I had changed inside. Now I saw the world through clear eyes, unclouded by regrets and sadness. Like Nonna, I was taking my happiness where I found it, and for as long as it lasted. And for both of us, I hoped it would be forever.
The choir sang, the vows were said, the organ pounded out the wedding march, and
signor
and
signora
Cesani emerged from the church to the pealing of a cracked bell, with smiles big enough to match the quarter moon. The sirocco blew, hot and spicy, the sun settled over the velvet hills, the birds fell silent, and the crickets started noisily up. The voice of a fellow Tuscan, Andrea Bocelli, singing “Time to Say Goodbye” came at full tinny blast over the loudspeakers as Rocco turned to his bride and planted a big kiss on her mouth. Then, “Let the party begin,” he cried.
I hugged Nonna so tightly, she complained I was crushing her dress, but our eyes met in the long, loving look that I knew just as well as I knew that other combative look she so often gave me.
“Good luck, Momma,” I said in a voice choked with tears, and she said, “I have everything I want, daughter, including luck.”
Then it was Livvie’s turn to kiss her. She said sadly, “What shall we do on Sunday now, Nonna, without you there?”
But Nonna just nodded wisely, and said, “We shall just have to see about that,
ragazza
.”
I congratulated Rocco and warned him he had better look after Nonna. He gave me a wink and that beaming toothy smile, smoothed his mustache, and said, “You betcha,” in something approximating English. Fido scratched at his pink satin bow and allowed us to pat him, and Livvie even kissed his pink nose, which made him sneeze. Then champagne corks were popping and platters were being carried to the table, and the party began.