chapter 17
Sloane was beginning to get the feeling that something was bothering her brother, something much bigger than jet lag. Julian
wasn’t quite present, not in the way he normally was. But Sloane couldn’t even begin to guess why. He smiled and joked like
his usual self, and yet, when he didn’t think she was watching, the smile slid from his face and he seemed to get lost in
his own thoughts.
She and Lilly sat on a stone bench at a right angle to the seat he’d taken a few feet from them while listening to two men,
one on a flute and the other on a tuba, play classical music in the courtyard of the Convent of San Domenico—a concert they
hadn’t known about but chanced upon when she and Lilly arrived to meet Julian. She watched him stare at the grass as the wind
stirred it at his feet and got the impression he wasn’t even hearing the music.
Lilly leaned toward her. “Is something wrong?” she murmured, keeping her voice low so she wouldn’t bother a smattering of
other tourists and locals who’d made the trek up the mountain to hear the concert—or just to see the area, like they’d done.
Sloane quickly masked her concern. “Nothing. I’m just tired. Aren’t you? We climbed so many stairs.”
“One thousand,” she said proudly.
Sloane shifted to get more comfortable on the hard surface. “Exactly a thousand?”
“I think so. I don’t know for sure. I’ve just heard that the convent is a thousand steps above Praiano. The locals say it
all the time. But the climb’s worth it, don’t you think?” Lilly stretched tall to look out over the sea. The convent had a
spectacular view of the deep blue water below them, Positano and even the Island of Capri, much farther away.
“For this view? Absolutely. Although…if we climb anymore, I might need a sherpa,” she said with a laugh. “How often did your
mother bring you up here?”
As they were walking, Lilly had mentioned that she and Sabrina had done the same hike. “Only once. We brought a picnic.”
Sloane set the program a woman had given her listing the various pieces to be performed to one side. “Did Luca come with you?”
She shook her head. “He had to work.”
“Must’ve been a fun mother-daughter outing,” Sloane said, watching for her reaction. Lilly was obviously bottling up a lot
of emotions, and if Sloane had her guess, most of them were negative. Sloane wished she could let them out, believed she’d
be better off if she could, but she was far too wary—and, Sloan suspected, too loyal to her mother.
“We always had fun when it was just the two of us,” she said wistfully.
“How often did you get away alone together?”
Closing her eyes, she tilted her face up toward the sun. “Not very often once we came to Italy. She was with Luca most of
the time. But we had a few months together after we left Steve and the farm in Iowa and moved to California.”
Was that what Lilly clung to? The memories of what her mother was like during the rare times Sabrina wasn’t with a man who took all of her time and attention?
Sloane wanted to put an arm around the girl’s shoulders, but she knew Lilly would only pull away. Lilly wasn’t comfortable
with physical contact, dodged it whenever she could.
“Sometimes mothers are so busy trying to fulfill their own needs they can’t see beyond them,” Sloane said softly, hoping that
by understanding, Lilly could also find forgiveness and healing.
“My mom didn’t do anything wrong,” she said. “I wasn’t saying that. She was a good mom.”
Lilly came to her mother’s defense so often. Sloane wanted to say, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” but she was
fairly certain Lilly had never read Hamlet and wouldn’t understand such an allusion. “Of course she was,” she said instead. “But being a mother is a hard job, and no
one’s perfect, right?”
Lilly seemed to relax. Then she leaned over to whisper again. “What’s Penny like?”
“The woman who raised Charlotte? She’s a very nice person—but also not perfect,” Sloane added with a grin.
Several people who’d paused to listen for a few minutes slipped away from the small gathering and continued the trek up Monte
Sant’Angelo a Tre Pizzi, which was the name of the mountain. Before the concert started, Sloane had seen knots of people moving
above them on the famous hike called Path of the Gods (Sentiero degli Dei). Julian wanted to try it, but Sloane wasn’t ready
for that—not today. They’d gotten too late a start, for one. And they’d already climbed nearly four hundred feet.
“Is she upset that Charlotte had to come to Italy?” Lilly asked.
“Charlotte didn’t have to come to Italy,” Sloane replied with a smile. “She came because she wanted to—to meet you.”
Julian left his camera on the bench near them as he got up and walked over to the two-foot stone wall enclosing the grounds, closer to the cliff.
He’d bought coffee from the man who sat at the entrance with a sign listing prices, in euros, for a few limited refreshments, and carried his cup, sipping from it as he stood facing the sea.
“Excuse me for a moment,” Sloane said to Lilly and walked over to stand next to him.
When he noticed her presence, he turned slightly but didn’t react.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Sloane whispered.
He lowered his coffee cup. “Not sure what you mean.”
“I’m your twin sister, Jules. And, yes, I’ve been absorbed with my new business and my own problems for the past year or more,
but you’ve been absorbed, too—and happy, as far as what you’ve told me. But something’s wrong. I can always tell. At first,
I chalked it up to jet lag, but now . . .”
“It’s nothing,” he insisted.
She glanced over her shoulder to make sure they weren’t bothering anyone by talking, but they were far enough away from the
group and the performers that no one seemed to be paying any attention to them.
“Bullshit,” she said, turning back. “You volunteered to help Mom and Dad through two minor surgeries.”
“So? I’m a nice guy,” he said with a grin.
She couldn’t argue with that. But that grin didn’t reach his eyes. It’d been manufactured for her benefit. “True, but normally
it would be me.”
He put his cup in his other hand. “Consider yourself lucky, then.”
“The problem is that you don’t seem to be in any rush to get back to your job. Have you grown bored with it?”
“No, I love my job.”
That was what she’d thought. “So . . . is it the gallery? Was it a mistake to take that on? Tell me, Jules. If you need money,
I’ll come up with it somehow—help you get a loan, sell anything I own. Don’t box me out.”
“I love you, too,” he said, “but I’m not ready to talk about it.”
Her stomach plummeted. There was something wrong. “But . . . it’s nothing serious, right?” she said imploringly. “There’s some stupid woman who’s broken your
heart or something like that. You’ll get over it in time, right?”
“It’s nothing serious,” he echoed, but something about his words didn’t ring true. Maybe it was that he was staring out at
the sea instead of meeting her gaze and really trying to convince her.
The panic inside her notched a bit higher. “Then why won’t you tell me?”
“Because I need time to deal with it on my own.”
She looped her arm through his. They’d both been busy leading their separate lives over the past several years, but he was
her rock, her foundation. Nothing could happen to him or her whole world would fall apart. It’d been the two of them—always
on the same side—since the womb.
“Whatever it is, we’ll take it on together,” she whispered fiercely.
A sad smile curved his lips. “I appreciate that, but this is one battle I’m going to have to fight alone.”
She leaned her head on his shoulder. “You’re scaring me. It’s not cancer, is it?”
“No, it’s not cancer.”
“Something just as bad?” She searched his face for some indication of just how worried she should be.
His jaw tightened. “Stop,” he snapped, and that was probably the most terrifying thing of all because there was nothing playful about it, and he was almost always playful. “I need more time.”
She gripped his arm tighter. “Okay, I’ll back off. But—”
“No, you won’t back off. I shouldn’t have said anything,” he broke in and pulled away from her to stride over to where he’d
been sitting before, close to Lilly, who’d been watching them as if they’d disappear if she so much as blinked. No doubt she
could read the tension in their bodies and was so used to the adults around her not being completely reliable that what she
saw alarmed her.
“Everything’s okay,” Sloane murmured as she returned to her seat and patted the girl’s knee, and Lilly was so busy watching
them for any telltale sign that everything wasn’t okay that she didn’t even bother to slide out of reach.
Ben was just leaving work when his phone went off. Surprised to see that it was from his wife—it was one in the morning on
the Amalfi Coast—he answered on Bluetooth as he backed out of his space. “Hey, you’re still up?” he said.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep,” she replied.
“The time change is brutal.”
“It’s not the time change.”
He stepped on the brake. “Then what is it?”
“It’s Julian, Ben. Something’s wrong with him.”
He pulled back into his space and shifted into Park so he could concentrate on the call instead of rush hour traffic. “Can
you be more specific?”
“He won’t tell me what it is. But he’s not himself. He’s quiet, takes off on his own as if he needs time to himself, seems
a bit listless and won’t really engage because he doesn’t want me to badger him.”
“Then don’t badger him,” he said. “Give him time.”
“That’s easier said than done when I’m this worried.”
He’d known when he married a twin that he’d have to share more of his wife than he would have otherwise. Fortunately, he loved Julian—had never resented his presence or his close relationship with Sloane because Julian had been an incredible brother-in-law. “What do you think it could be?”
“I asked him if it was cancer.”
Ben gripped the steering wheel tighter. “Cancer! Oh, God. Tell me it’s not that. Does he look like he has cancer?”