'Why are you smiling?'
'Nothing.'
Given what he now knew about Signora Docci's modus operandi, it wasn't so surprising that she'd even found time for a bit of matchmaking along the way. There were any number of
It was warm enough to have dinner on the terrace. His mother excelled herself in the kitchen; his father cracked open a couple of bottles of vintage claret he'd been saving for Adam's graduation. They raised a toast to Harry, and when they speculated about some of the scrapes he must surely have got himself into by now, it was good to hear the sound of his father's laughter again.
Inevitably, some hours later, Adam found himself tiptoeing down the corridor toward the guest bedroom. Antonella was waiting for him, already naked beneath the sheets. The need for silence only heightened the intensity of their lovemaking. When it was over and they were lying tangled in each other, he cried, overwhelmed. Antonella licked away his tears and held him.
Later, out of the darkness beside him, she said, 'My grandmother thinks she knows who Flora's lover was.'
'Huh?' he grunted, from a delicious half-sleep.
She repeated herself.
Now he was awake. 'Who?'
'She wouldn't tell me. She will only tell you, in person—
'Does she ever stop?'
'Stop?'
'Playing games.'
He tried to summon up anger at this latest piece of manipulation, but it was a struggle. Signora Docci might think that responsibility for her behavior stopped with her; he wasn't so sure. He had reassessed many things over the past week, but he hadn't quite been able to shake the conviction that someone else had been controlling matters all along.
He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen his parents both in their dressing gowns in the kitchen. His father was seated at the table with Fausto; his mother was frying bacon at the stove.
Adam shuffled up to her in his pajamas and gave her a kiss on the cheek. 'Morning.'
'Is Antonella awake?'
'I don't know. I didn't look in on her.'
She slipped him a knowing look. 'Well, why don't you take her up a cup of tea anyway?'
'Good idea.'
He filled the kettle, glancing over at the table as he did so. Fausto was explaining something to his father in rapid-fire Italian while shifting pots of jam, cutlery and other objects around in some kind of demonstration.
His mother leaned close to him and whispered, 'We think it's the Battle of Hastings.'
IT HAD RAINED IN HIS ABSENCE, ENOUGH TO SWELL THE grapes on the vines and raise hopes of an acceptable harvest. There was even a faint tinge of green to the scorched pasture below the grotto, although this was about the only noticeable change in the memorial garden.
Adam opened the book Signora Docci had given him. It was his for the keeping, a gift: a leather-bound edition of Ovid's
It was short and very touching, and tucked into the same page was a small piece of paper on which she had written:
He found the line in the text and smiled. She intended to make him work for the answer.
It hadn't come to him by the time he reached the glade of Hyacinth. Standing before the statue of Apollo, he opened the book again at the relevant passage. It dealt with the story of Deucalion and Pyrrha, the lone survivors of the great flood, whose raft grounded itself on Mount Parnassus. The line itself read:
He looked up at Apollo perched atop Parnassus, his mountain home—only it wasn't Mount Parnassus, because it rose to a lone and very pointed peak. It was unlike Federico Docci to deviate from Ovid without a reason; his attention to detail was too meticulous.
He worked his way through the other options—Mount Olympus, Mount Helicon—but again he turned up a blank. That's when he realized he was coming at it all wrong.
He wasn't looking at Apollo; he was looking at Flora's lover in the guise of Apollo. Which meant that he wasn't looking at Mount Parnassus; he was looking at, well, just a mountain, one that climbed to a high, sharp peak.
A tall mountain.
