The Pairing

We go south. Orla drives us through the hills toward Siena, past the tower houses of San Gimignano and the walled palazzos of Montepulciano, along cow pastures and olive groves and patchy wheat fields.

In the distance, copper-and-green hills fold over one another like mussed-up linens in a bed as wide as the sky.

The motorway exits east toward crunchy gravel roads that bounce us in our seats until the bus pulls off at an overgrown stone gate.

Theo, who fell asleep mid-sentence before we even left, jolts awake against my shoulder and picks up where they left off.