Chapter Eighteen
EIGHTEEN
CHARLIE
After exiting the train in Perugia, which is the capital city of the province with the same name, Charlie boards a mini metro.
It is a single, silver, futuristic-looking car.
As he glides along a high track, the city tunnels past him at an exciting speed, with its yellow, orange and rust-colored roofs.
Used to being alone, Charlie is unbothered by the prospect of exploring the city by himself. What does bother him is the thought of Michelle cozying up to Dario on the couch all day while they watch a show and craft inside jokes.
The green monster of jealousy must be conducting this mini metro, because the higher the car climbs, the harder Charlie finds it to shake the image of Michelle and Dario making out.
Charlie has slept with his fair share of men and never has he spent the whole next morning obsessing over their possible feelings for him.
Granted, he has never been in a five-way competition for the hand of the heir to a chocolate empire before either—who has?
—so he supposes he should not be so surprised to find himself in uncharted territory.
He is in Italy, for God’s sake. An unfamiliar country where the customs delight him and the language evades him and the world feels both beautiful and scary.
Scary because maybe, despite telling himself not to, he has developed a genuine liking for the cloistered chocolate maker with a tender heart and knack for business.
Now not only might he lose his family home should Dario choose Michelle or neither of them, but he might win a broken heart to boot.
Taking a moment, he searches for a positive spin.
This solo trip to Perugia might be super well-timed, at least. Several years ago, his parents went through a rough patch.
His father lost his job, and his mother felt the strain.
One day, she came home from work and set her bonus check down in front of his father and said, “Take a fishing trip to the cabin.”
His father looked up from the online job application he was filling out, disbelief running all through his features. “No way. Not with your hard-earned bonus.”
“I’ve thought about it. I want you to go to the cabin,” she said.
When his father left—duffel bag and fishing rod in hand—Charlie squared with his mother. “Why’d you do that?”
His mother smiled. “Because, Charlie, sometimes you need to give the people you love a chance to miss you.”
He scoffed. “If you wanted him to miss you, wouldn’t you be the one going on a trip?”
“No, Charlie. That would be a punishment. I love your father. This is a treat that will go much farther,” she said, pulling the car keys off the hook by the door. “My treat is taking you to the movies, so go on and grab your shoes.”
A day with Michelle is a weekend at the cabin for Dario.
The trickling sounds of Fontana Maggiore lure Charlie into the main piazza.
Life throws itself all around him. Fashionable people sit at café tables nursing midday coffees and cigarettes.
Tour groups traverse into the looming, Gothic palazzo with cameras around their necks.
Sea green statues of a lion and a Pegasus guard the door with open mouths.
Birds waddle and squawk at his feet, searching for food scraps to feast on.
Sweat starts in the small of his back as he weaves through cobbled alleys and summits the city’s many medieval steps. Flowers burst from hanging boxes out second-story windows. Their fragrance floats down around him. He snaps a million pictures he will show to his family.
Stopping for lunch, Charlie devours a buffalo mozzarella pizza while people-watching. In two days’ time, he will be on a plane back to Pennsylvania. He needs to soak up as much culture as possible before then. Who knows if he’ll ever leave Slatington again after this?
To walk off the pizza, Charlie ventures into the National Gallery and gets lost in the art and frescos.
He stops before statues and sketches them in his notebook with pithy speech bubbles hanging over their heads.
He imagines what these models might think about modern times.
Some of them end up being good enough to consider getting tattooed, even if he is slowly running out of pages in his sketchbook and prime real estate on his body.
So enraptured, he wanders there until closing, wishing his family was there to share in the beauty. Exiting into a gorgeous sunset, he goes in search of a café with internet where he can post up and call his family to fill them in on all that has happened.
Well, maybe not all.
He will keep last night to himself.
A half an hour later, the faces of the four people he cares about most in the world pop up on his phone screen. Unbothered by the grainy quality of the video, he chats excitedly about all the sights he’s seen and facts he’s learned since arriving.
“Why are you still on the phone with us?” Grandpa asks no more than fifteen minutes later. “You should be out exploring. When in Rome!”
“I’m in Perugia,” Charlie says with a laugh.
“Make a new saying then. Don’t be a lose-a in Perugia!”
Mom and Dad barely let out a chuckle. “Is everything okay?” Charlie asks. You don’t spend twenty-eight years under the same roof with people and not catch on to their moods.
A grim energy seeps through the screen. “Of course,” Dad says, but Charlie pings the lie right away.
“Mmm-hmm,” Mom agrees.
“What aren’t you telling me?” Charlie asks.
“It’s nothing to bother about,” Grandpa says with a huff directed at Charlie’s parents. “They’re worried. We had a visitor yesterday. Someone from the bank. He said we failed to respond to a letter they sent. We told him we didn’t get any sorta letter and that shut him right up.”
Charlie swallows hard. “A letter about what?” he asks, unsure why he is playing ignorant. The letter in question is tucked inside his duffel bag back at the villa—a pointy, paper time bomb that’s nearing explosion.
“It was about the mortgage,” Dad says, notes of embarrassment mixed into his words.
Charlie wishes he could reach through the screen and hug him. From what he read online about timelines, there should not have been any follow-up from the bank until he returned. He had meant to shield his family from the burden of this. “What about it?”
“Don’t worry about it, kiddo,” Dad says. “We will handle it. We always do.”
“I know, but maybe I can help,” Charlie says, still running with this act. Dario’s wealth is a slow-knitting safety net beneath them.
“You can help by enjoying yourself,” says Grandma.
Mom stays silent even though she’s usually a chatterbox.
A pang of guilt for not being home while this is happening weaves through him. Eviction hangs over the house on Cemetery Street, and here he is carbo-loaded and wine-flushed in a European city.
Sure, he’s chasing a chocolate heir who might be the key to keeping their lives status quo, but he can’t say that to them to ring a bell of false hope.
At this point, he has no engagement ring, no insurance policy, no nothing.
“Okay, if you’re sure,” Charlie says, bulldozing over his one moment to come clean. Because there is far too much to say, and he knows he will mess it up. “Miss you all. Be back soon.”
“But not too soon,” Grandma says. “Plenty of time to make more memories!”
And secure a wealthy husband, Charlie thinks.
“Leave us old farts be. Buon giorno!” Grandpa says.
“That’s good morning,” Charlie informs. “Say, ciao!”
“Ciao,” they all say before the call concludes.
Frustrated, Charlie follows the remains of the Roman aqueducts back toward the metro station. Trotting alongside the structure, he contemplates how they carried so much water uphill without motorization. If the Etruscans could innovate and do the impossible, so can he!
He stumbles upon a sign for Pozzo Etrusco—an old well. He has just enough time before his train to make a pit stop if he’s quick about it.
Down, down, down, he descends into an ancient water reservoir.
The steps are narrow, and the walls are close.
He presses his hands into the cool, rough stone to keep from losing his balance.
When he reaches the rectangular window that looks down upon the well, he surges with a sense of adventure, feeling like a poor man’s Indiana Jones.
Leaning over the ledge, the darkness seems to go on and on. His breath gets taken away by how much history can be hidden in a place like this. He only wishes he were sharing this experience with someone. Dario’s face bounces through his mind.
A little farther down, a plexiglass bridge connects one side of the well to the other. There are signs posted written in red lettering. He can’t read the Italian words, so he shrugs and steps out.
On the bridge, he records a video on his phone. Awe and gratitude catch in his chest.
What he doesn’t catch, however, is his phone slipping out from between his oily, sweaty fingers. The iPhone bangs on the side of the plexiglass, hits the stone wall of the well and—plop!—falls into the water burbling way down below.
“Fuck!” Charlie cries. “No, no, no. What am I supposed to do now?”
The question echoes back at him like several slaps to the face.
There goes a thousand dollars and any chance of getting back to the villa. His digital train ticket was on there. Dario’s phone number was on there. Any sort of translator app he might need to communicate what just happened is on there.
For the first and only time since arriving, he wishes he’d never left the dreary safety of Slatington.
DARIO
Dario’s temper cools off with the summer day.
As the sun sinks, so too does Dario’s ire toward his imposing brother. While he can choose a spouse, he has no choice in his blood relations. Emilio is and always has been a pebble stuck in his proverbial shoe.
His mother appears while he sits in solitude out on the veranda, watching the full reflection of the moon shimmering on the still lake water.
“You didn’t eat dinner,” April says. She holds a small plate out to him.