Her anger was palpable despite the low tenor of her voice.
Nina closed her eyes for a moment. “I never asked him to do that,” she almost whispered. “I wanted him to meet Olivia. But he didn’t know about her. I was—I was planning to tell him when I came. But he didn’t know about that plan either. I—my last letter was taken. It was thrown away.”
The two women stared at each other, both torn with grief and anger over a man who had clearly never been good enough for either of them. I wondered if either of them could see it.
“I think,” said Signora Marradi, “that you must go.”
“But—” Nina tried.
“No,” said the other woman. She shook her head, causing small wisps of gray and black hair to feather around her shadowed features. Suddenly, she looked quite tired. “You have done enough. Please leave.”
Nina opened her mouth like she wanted to argue again. But there was nothing else to say. Several awkward seconds ticked by before I realized I needed to do something.
“Come on, doll,” I murmured, holding out a hand to Nina, who was still paralyzed in her chair. “Let’s go.”
This time, she allowed me to pull her up and take her to the door, leaving the numbed Signora Marradi staring at her espresso.
“Thank you for the coffee,” I called before the door shut behind us.
There was no reply.
Nina walked as if in a trance as I guided her down the stairs, out of the courtyard, and to the sidewalk that would take us back to town.
And it was there, finally, that she stopped again.
“Well,” she said softly as she turned to me, eyes glistening. “I suppose that’s it, isn’t it? I don’t know what I was thinking, coming here.”
I stroked her cheek softly, wiping a few stray tears with my thumb. “You thought you were doing the right thing, baby. You did the best you could.”
“Which accomplished nothing,” she said bitterly, then pressed her face into her hands. “Oh God, what if that’s all I’m really capable of? Just…nothing?”
“Ah, Ms. de Vries!”
We turned to find Signora Marradi walking swiftly down the sidewalk while shoving her arms into a worn trench coat to guard from the cold that she was otherwise underdressed for.
“Here,” she said crisply as she came to a stop and thrust a piece of paper at us like it was a weapon.
Nina was upset enough that I took it for her.
“What’s this?” I asked.
Nina wiped under her eyes. When she was finished, she wore a strange smile that made her look like a sad doll. An actual doll.
“An address,” said Signora Marradi. “For Giuseppe’s olive farm near Siena. Do you know it?”
She searched Nina’s face. The underlying question was clear too: had she known it with him?
But my girl, to her credit, didn’t look away, despite the fact that her deep gray eyes still welled as recollections clearly washed over her. Instead she lifted her chin, looked straight into Signora Marradi’s eyes, and nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “I know it.”
Signora Marradi didn’t look away either. Anger, then understanding flashed through her dark eyes as well.
“The farm, we have to sell it,” she said. “My daughters, they are there now to prepare.”
Nina started in obvious surprise. “Sell it? But I thought Peppe did that before…”
She trailed off as Signora Marradi shook her head.
“No,” she said. “He wanted to, but the girls were so upset, he kept it.”
She shrugged, if to say, that was that. Then she glanced sadly back at Nina’s purse, as if she still saw the picture of Olivia laughing across the black screen on her phone.
“I think they would like to know about their sister,” she admitted. “You should go there and tell them. Giuseppe is dead. I will not keep his secrets anymore.”
Chapter Fifteen
Nina
Secrets.
The word rang inside me like a gong as we drove out of Florence.
“You’re very quiet,” Matthew said. “More than usual. What’s on your mind, doll?”
He switched gears and sped forward as traffic disappeared on the highway, away from the city. He hadn’t said it, but I rather thought he was enjoying the Ferrari more than he let on. Normally I might have enjoyed his obvious pleasure. Right now I barely noticed.
“I was thinking about Giuseppe.” I turned to him, suddenly uncertain. “Do you really want to hear this?”
Relief washed over me when Matthew simply shrugged. “I mean, I’m not surprised, given what we’re doing. And we all have our pasts, baby. You wouldn’t be you without yours.” He flashed a brilliant, slightly sharkish smile at me. “I want to know all of it. Even if it does make me want to punch a dead man.”
I bit back a smile. His humor was perhaps a bit ghoulish, but I preferred joking to jealousy. So much better than the brutal possessiveness I’d endured from my husband.
But Calvin had never really been a husband at all, had he? Maybe that was part of why.
“I was thinking of what his wife said,” I answered as the hills of Tuscany ebbed and flowed around us. “About his secrets. It made me wonder how many she had to keep.”
“I think that probably depends on what they were. You, for one. But it doesn’t sound like you were much of an anomaly in his life.”
“No,” I said shortly. “It doesn’t.”
I felt like a fool. I shouldn’t have been angry, of course. A twenty-year-old girl getting involved with her forty-two-year-old married professor? It was beyond cliché. Tragic, really. Pathetic. Even more, perhaps, if he really had intended to leave his family for me, as his wife said.
“But you know, everyone has secrets,”
