Wish You Weren't Here

Chapter 31

Ava

Who knew I liked dirt this much?

My cheeks feel toasty from the sun. My knees are dusted with earth. My fingers smell like Genovese basil. It’s fantastic.

Verga lies in the corner of the garden, stretched out in the sun like he’s a celebrity on a chaise lounge in Cannes. He’s moved so little that every now and then I walk over to check that he’s still breathing. Nina stands behind me, pointing to the tomatoes over my shoulder, explaining which are ripe and which need another day on the vine. I squeeze one to test it as she taught me and it explodes between my fingers, seeds and tomato guts spraying onto the apron with Michelangelo’s David standing triumphantly on the front.

“Did il pomodoro offend you somehow? You must have something pent up in there, cara,” Nina murmurs as she turns to her eggplants. I know she’s smiling even as I stare at the way the falling sun makes the streaks of gray shine white on the back of her head.

I wipe at the goo on my hand with the hem of the apron and give a small grunt. I have so many things “pent up” in here, Nina. So. Many.

Perhaps it’s the newest image of Ethan and the Viking goddess in the background of Olivia’s campaign event—the way their heads are bent together like they’re sharing a secret. Or perhaps it’s the passive-aggressive email from my father reminding me that choosing a firm is one of the most important steps in a law career, and that he has twenty-five years of experience to help guide me. Maybe it’s the white side of my mother’s postcard demanding that I put a pen to it—fill it with what I’m supposed to be discovering here in Urbino. But all I’m finding is confusion.

Most likely the tension Nina senses is from dancing around the professor of the art history class I help teach each morning, being careful not to make eye contact at the wrong moment or inadvertently recall what his lips felt like on mine when he happens to be close enough to see me flush.

“Forse, you should do some exercise—to release whatever it is that is built up in there?” she suggests, waving her hand up into the air. “A swim?”

I squeeze another rich red San Marzano, and it feels just soft enough for picking. My thumb leaves a small indent on the side, the skin wrinkly and printed. Thank Dio for Nina. Gardening with her each evening has been the highlight of my shitty week, followed closely by the cooking lessons she’s been patiently enduring. Time with her has been the antidote to the anxious energy coursing through me.

“Maybe after dinner,” I muse. “I want pasta duty tonight. I think I’ve got it down.”

“Brava! The only thing left is milking the sheep,” she says, turning and pointing the eggplant my way.

I start to shake my head and she laughs.

“Sì. It is part of the experience,” she tells me. “You must milk the sheep or you cannot leave Italy.”

I run my thumb over another bright red pomodoro. Leave Italy. Of course I’ll be leaving Italy. But time has been racing by and I feel like I’ve only just arrived. “The tip of the iceberg,” as James told me. Just over a week and then life can resume the way that it was always meant to. With whom it was always meant to.

The calm of the garden is suddenly eluding me.

“He’s coming to dinner tonight, cara,” Nina says from beside me.

I turn to find her studying my expression.

“Who?” I ask, knowing there’s no use pretending.

She laughs and plucks the tomatoes from my hand and drops them into her basket.

“Maybe he could help you with whatever this pent up—”

“Nina!”

She widens her eyes, the picture of innocence. Terrifying woman.

“Cara, you should know that Gi is very cautious—particolarmente con il suo cuore,” she says softly, switching her basket to the other arm.

Cuore. Sounds like cor in Latin. Heart.

He’s cautious with his heart.

“Aren’t we all?” I ask the oregano beside the fence, remembering the flash of hurt I saw on his face when I pulled away from that kiss. Then the cold acknowledgment of what it meant. I can’t give him what he wants—what he deserves.

“Vero, the two of you share that. What it feels like to lose someone, buonanima.”

She places her free hand on my shoulder and I meet her gaze. Her eyes are the exact color of James’s, caramel centers with a layer of dark chocolate.

“My sister was many things, cara—but a good mother? No. She chose her dreams and left Italy, something that I admired at the time,” she says. “She was young and beautiful and brave. Urbino was too small for her spirit. But when James was born, she did the same to him as she did to our family. And that was—imperdonabile—unforgivable.”

She presses her lips together and looks out over the hills. I can see the pain etched into the set of her jaw, and I know it’s not just for James. She was abandoned by her sister, too.

“Ad un certo punto nella vita, sarai consapevole del fatto che alcune persone possono stare nel tuo cuore ma non nella tua vita,” she continues, and I’m mesmerized by the words. I do my best with the translation, but Latin isn’t helping this time.

I lift a brow and shake my head and Nina translates. “At some point in life, you will know that some people can stay in your heart but not in your life.”

Ah. I nod once and look out toward the hills.

“That point in my life has come and gone,” I tell her, my voice thick and dry.

I hear Nina let out a breath.

“Certo. It has,” she agrees. She lifts her wide-brimmed straw hat from the bench beside her and places it on top of her head. “Which means that you should understand more than most not to waste un momento with those who are still here.”

She wipes her hands together and then holds them up. Italian hand gesture for all done here. I watch her stroll back toward the villa, still reeling from the motherly verbal smackdown. I haven’t had one of those in a long while.

Just one of the many things I’ve been missing in my life.

I let out a slow breath and turn my face toward the sun. I’m not wasting time. I’m making sure that life doesn’t get any messier than it already is. It would be insane to get involved in anything with the timer ticking away in the back of my head. And in my defense, he seems to be perfectly fine avoiding me right now. Maybe he’s the one who needs the smackdown.

Soft fur rubs against my thigh and a wet nose finds my palm at my side.

“I’m not wasting time, right?” I ask the horse-dog.

Verga yawns loudly, then plops onto my bare feet like he’s been plowing the fields all day rather than lounging indulgently. I lie down beside him and rest my head on his flank and stare up at the sky. My wrist flicks an imaginary paintbrush around the edges of the clouds. My mother lay beneath this sky—painted it over and over.

“Where do I go from here, Mom? What should I do?”

Silence.

I shut my eyes, but the image of that Italian sky stays imprinted on the back of my lids.