chapter 16
At ten the following morning, Luca texted Charlotte to let her know he had a taxi—he didn’t own a car; he drove one of his
Vespas—waiting on the street below them. She’d been hoping Sloane and Julian would be awake and willing to help, but she hadn’t
specifically asked them, hadn’t wanted to make them get up early if they preferred to stay in bed. They were all having difficulty
adjusting to the time change. She hadn’t fallen asleep until it was nearly dawn.
But she was the only one up at the appropriate hour. She didn’t even have Lilly’s help. She’d knocked on her half sister’s
door and been surprised when Lilly said she didn’t want to come.
Just before she was about to step outside to go to the meeting place on her own, however, she heard footsteps. She assumed
it would be Lilly, relenting, but a second later, Julian came into the kitchen. He was unshaven and yawning—clearly, he’d
just rolled out of bed, hadn’t even brushed his hair—but he was dressed.
“Is Luca at the meeting point?” he asked.
Charlotte felt her eyebrows slide up. “You remembered he was coming? You got up to help me?”
“Yeah. You mentioned it last night,” he said. “But where’s Lilly? Doesn’t she want to be part of this?”
“Apparently she doesn’t.”
“Why not?”
“It would be hard for a girl who’s just lost her mother to deal with the boxes we’ll be carrying back. And Luca was pretty
eager to get rid of her. That had to hurt.” Charlotte didn’t get the impression that Luca and Lilly had been all that close,
but it would be difficult, anyway. They were so different. Luca was flexible and carefree; Lilly was serious and cautious
and probably a lot less flexible because she couldn’t seem to exert any control over her own situation. Because of those differences,
Charlotte could see why Luca would think Lilly was difficult. She was completely closed off, wouldn’t let anyone in, and once
she decided something, changing her mind was almost impossible.
But there were reasons for the way Lilly was behaving, and Luca didn’t seem to care enough to even try to understand. He just
wanted to move on with his life.
“She’s been through a lot, so I didn’t push her,” she added and, stepping back into the main room, craned her neck to see
as far as she could up the stairs. She’d been hoping Lilly would change her mind—that they could find some common ground in
taking responsibility for all that was left of Sabrina—but her half sister’s door remained closed. “I guess she’s really not
coming.”
“We can manage,” he said. “Let’s go.”
“Okay. Once we get the boxes here, she can go through them at her leisure. Or not at all. It’s up to her.”
They had to zigzag through several walkways with colorful ceramic sea creatures embedded in the cement walls on both sides and descend a flight of stairs before they came out onto the street where Luca was waiting.
It was down near the sea and a hotel. As the road bent to follow the coastline, Charlotte could make out an even bigger hotel on the opposite side of the street, right on the water.
This wasn’t the town center—with the cathedral and the square—that sat higher on the mountain.
But it was the highway leading west to Positano and east to Amalfi, so it was busy.
Luca was leaning against the taxi, which had pulled into a little drive to get out of traffic. When he heard them coming,
he glanced up, put his phone away and started handing boxes out of the back seat while the driver opened the trunk so they
could get the rest.
They piled everything at the walkway entrance. Then Luca told the driver he’d call when they were done and helped carry load
after load to the villa.
It took almost an hour and four separate trips. Charlotte could only imagine how much more difficult it would’ve been if Sabrina
had owned as much stuff as most people her age. “We’re lucky this is all of it,” Charlotte muttered to Julian as they stacked
the boxes in a storage room off to one side of the deck.
“You wouldn’t typically bring furniture or other big items across the ocean,” Julian pointed out. “She must’ve sold whatever
she had before leaving the States.”
Except Sabrina seemed to have been a rolling stone. Charlotte had the impression she’d never accumulated much. “Whatever the
reason, I’m glad.”
Luca came up behind them and heaved the final box on top of the rest. “There you go.”
“Grazie,” Charlotte said. “I appreciate your help.”
“Nessun problema.” He glanced up at the house. “How’s Lilly?”
Charlotte followed his gaze, but couldn’t see anything except a mirror image of the stunning view they had. “She’s going to
be okay,” she said and hoped she was right.
“Bene,” he responded and dusted off his hands as if he was releasing himself from all future responsibility.
Considering the situation, Charlotte couldn’t really hold that against him. They all said, “Ciao.” Then he was gone, and Charlotte wondered if they’d see him again while they were in Praiano. It wasn’t as if he’d expressed
any interest in staying in touch.
“Not a bad guy,” Julian commented.
“Because he helped carry a few boxes belonging to the woman he’d been with before she died?” Charlotte said. “He’s just relieved
to have Sabrina, her daughter and everything that belonged to them out of his house.”
Julian dropped into a seat at the outdoor dining table. “Yeah, I get the same impression. He hinted he shouldn’t have gotten
involved.”
She sat across from him. “I didn’t hear him say that.”
“It was on one of our trips to the house.”
“Thank you for getting up to help me. It would’ve taken so much more time without you.”
“It was nothing. It’s always fun to one-up my sister, who chose to sleep in,” he added for emphasis.
Charlotte chuckled. “Sloane probably had a hard time falling asleep last night just like I did.”
“Excuses, excuses,” he teased.
“Not everyone comes through the way you do,” she told him. “You’re like Ben—a really good guy.”
“I’m a hell of a lot better than Ben,” he said with a mock scowl.
Her mind immediately went to her own situation. “Well, if you’re better than Ben, Cliff must not be any competition whatsoever.”
“I thought that was a given.”
She rolled her eyes. “I guess I should’ve married you.”
He didn’t laugh like she’d expected. Her last comment hung awkwardly in the air, making her wish she could snatch it back.
There’d been moments when she had been attracted to Julian; maybe that was why. The joke had landed closer to the truth than she’d intended.
She felt her face heat up as he stood.
“You definitely don’t want to marry me,” he said, suddenly serious, and went inside.
Lilly stayed in her bed all morning, waiting to make sure that Charlotte and Luca had done whatever they were going to do
with her mother’s stuff before she so much as ventured from her room.
When she finally did come down, she was relieved not to see a single box.
“Did Luca show up this morning?” she asked Charlotte, who was sitting at the indoor dining table working on her laptop.
“He did,” she said rather absent-mindedly.
“He didn’t want to talk to me?”
Charlotte had been scowling at her screen, but at this, she looked up. “He asked about you, wanted to be sure you’re okay.”
“What’d you tell him?”
“I said you’re going to be fine, because I believe you will be fine.” She gestured toward the kitchen. “I made a caprese salad for breakfast if you’d like some. There’s also fruit and
granola with yogurt.”
“I’m not hungry.”
Charlotte checked her watch. “It’s nearly two,” she said in that way adults had of letting her know she’d given the wrong
answer. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Lilly thought Charlotte would press her to eat, but she didn’t. “Okay,” she said. “It’ll be there waiting for you when you’re ready.”
Lilly looked around, expecting to see Sloane and Julian, but Charlotte seemed to be alone. “Where is everyone?”
“Julian grabbed his camera and went out to take some pictures. Sloane’s not up yet. She’s still on California time. Sadly,
so am I, but I have to work so I can’t stay in bed. Would you like to start going through your mother’s belongings while I
take care of a few things here?”
Luca’s delivery had been on Lilly’s mind all night. She didn’t want there to be anything that made her look like someone who
shouldn’t be taken in, but even still, she couldn’t bring herself to touch her mother’s possessions.
“I don’t want to see any of it,” she said.
Charlotte scooted her chair back. “Because going through those boxes would make you too sad about your mom?”
“I guess,” she said. “I just don’t want to deal with it. Where are they, anyway?”
“The boxes? In the storage room outside.”
Lilly thought of her report cards. “Did you already look through everything?”
“No. It felt a little intrusive to just . . . dive right in. I wanted to wait for you.”
Lilly had never had an adult treat her as if her thoughts, feelings and opinions really mattered. “You care about that?”
“Of course I do.”
“What if I don’t want to see any of her stuff ever again?”
“That would be okay. Just let me know.”
“Why do you want to see it?” she asked.
“Because other than talking to you, it’s my only way of getting to know Sabrina. But there’s no rush. We can wait a few days, see how you feel. Maybe you’ll change your mind. I have a lot to do, anyway.”
Lilly threaded her fingers through the strings hanging from her cutoffs. “What do you have to do?”
“Start my next book.”
“Is that what you’re doing now?”
She sighed. “I wish. I’m answering emails. My editor is asking which narrator I’d prefer for the audio version, so I’ve been
checking out the options. She’s also looking for some input on the cover, but it’s hard to say what the cover should be like
when I don’t even know what the story’s going to be about.”
Lilly typically tried to keep her distance from Charlotte and Charlotte’s friends. She had to depend on them for everything,