Chapter 3
Rome, Italy
Rachelle’s grand opening was supposed to be today.
Yet instead of opening Coleman's doors for a luxurious multi-hour dining experience to some of Rome’s top foodies, Rachelle was wearing a pair of leggings and a big leather jacket, arms crossed as she spoke with an arrogant-seeming Italian police officer about what had happened last night during the soft opening.
She’d never started smoking despite most Italians loving the poisonous activity.
But the stress of it made her itch for a cigarette, if only for something to do with her hands.
The police officer was slightly older than Rachelle, with a thick mustache and bulging biceps.
Apparently, he’d been on the scene last night after the fire had gone out, after Rachelle and Riccardo had gone home so that Rachelle could sob herself to sleep.
Now, Rachelle was back to answer the cop’s questions about what had happened last night.
The cops had called her and told her to meet him there.
Riccardo had offered to come with her, but she’d said no.
“I don’t understand any of it,” Rachelle was saying now.
“My staff are highly trained individuals. They couldn’t have done anything wrong with any of the ovens.
All the electricity was double- and triple-checked.
The restaurant was safer than safe. What exploded? Why did my restaurant catch on fire?”
The cop hadn’t expected Rachelle to be so good at Italian, nor had he expected her to be so aggressive. Rage steamed out of her.
“Rome is a very old city,” the cop told her. “It’s entirely possible that something went amiss with the electricity. But as we dig deeper into all that, we have to ask you. Is there anyone in your life out to get you?”
Rachelle gaped at him. “Out to get me?”
“Is there someone who would want to get revenge on you in some way?” the cop asked.
Rachelle raised her eyebrows higher still. “Revenge?”
Rachelle couldn’t fathom that. All her life, she’d been kind-hearted and open.
She’d never gone out of her way to hurt people—although of course she’d hurt many people along the way (her family, most of all, perhaps).
But this kind of violent act, this sort of “Godfather-esque” situation had nothing to do with her.
“Nobody would do this to me,” she said.
“Think harder,” the cop urged. “Have you made any enemies here in Rome? Sometimes it’s hard to admit it, but we Italians don’t always love it when an American storms in and takes up space. Your opening a restaurant like this might have made someone angry.”
Rachelle was miffed. “No?” And then she asked, “Did you find proof of arson?”
The cop shook his head. “Not yet.”
“Not yet? Which means it probably isn’t arson?”
“We don’t know anything yet,” the cop said.
Rachelle felt enraged. She wondered if he was a sad excuse for a cop. She wondered why in the world this had happened to her, after she’d worked so tirelessly to pull this all together. It felt like the worst kind of comeuppance.
“Rachelle?”
Rachelle twisted around to find Diana March weaving through the crowd of onlookers.
Upon seeing her, Rachelle immediately melted with sorrow.
Diana had taken on a sort of motherly role in Rachelle’s life, especially now that Rachelle no longer spoke to her own.
Rachelle had followed Diana to Italy, after all.
She’d modeled her entire life off Diana’s.
It meant something. Rachelle fell into Diana’s arms, but bit her tongue to keep from sobbing.
The cop went over to his other cronies to talk, leaving Diana and Rachelle alone.
“What happened?” Diana breathed into Rachelle’s ear.
Rachelle hiccuped, then pulled herself together. “I have no idea!”
Diana furrowed her brow. Her eyes traced a line across the awful sight before them: the burned-out windows, the charred doorway, the black interior. The Coleman sign that hung above the windows was now crooked and dark.
“Let’s get out of here,” Diana said. “They’ll call you if they need anything else.”
Rachelle followed Diana through the snaking alleyways to a beautiful piazza that glowed in Italian sunlight.
They sat at a table and ordered a carafe of white wine.
Diana continued to look at Rachelle, worried.
Rachelle remembered how, months ago, she’d quit working in Diana’s kitchen, telling Diana that it was finally time for her to strike out on her own.
“I don’t know what to do,” Rachelle told her ex-boss now.
Diana shook her head. “There’s no rule book for this.”
“I mean, I have insurance, I guess.” Rachelle sighed.
“But it’s not enough for me to completely refurbish the restaurant and make it into what it was.
I was already dipping into my savings, trying to make everything work.
I was counting on summer revenue. I knew that we wouldn’t be in the black till autumn, but I trusted myself.
I trusted what we could create. And now? ” Her head rang.
Diana squeezed her hand over the table. Rachelle sensed that she didn’t know what to say. Diana herself had opened many restaurants over the years. She’d been a world-renowned chef for longer than Rachelle had been conscious, it seemed.
“You know you can come back to work for me if you want to,” Diana offered. “You’re my number-one priority. My number-one sous chef. I can make space in the schedule.”
Rachelle felt it like a stone on her chest. To return to Diana’s kitchen was to take four hundred steps backward.
“I know it doesn’t sound appealing after creating your own place,” Diana said.
Rachelle squeezed her eyes shut, thinking about the rent she had to pay not only for her restaurant, but also for her apartment.
She thought of groceries and the vacations that she and Riccardo wanted to plan.
She thought of everything she’d accounted for, all the spreadsheets she’d made. She needed a job. She knew that.
“You’re probably my only hope right now,” Rachelle said, forcing herself to open her eyes.
“It’s not forever,” Diana assured her. “You’re going to reopen your place. You’re going to make it everything you dreamed of. This is an enormous setback and completely unfair. But you’re going to get through this.”
Rachelle wasn’t entirely sure she believed Diana. But she knew, too, that she was in such a grim headspace that any sense of optimism felt like a foreign language.
Diana insisted on taking Rachelle for food after their glass of wine.
They ducked into a cab and went to the opposite side of the city, where one of Diana’s longtime chef friends had recently opened a tapas place.
Rachelle felt every eye on her as she entered, as though every foodie in the city had learned about her hardship and felt pity for her.
Diana and Rachelle grabbed seats at a long table, where they fell into conversation with a few of Diana’s friends. One of them, a woman from Paris who’d opened a number of restaurants across Italy and Switzerland, furrowed her brow at Rachelle and said, “Tell me they know who did it.”
Rachelle was taken aback. “It was an accident,” she said. “It must have been.”
“But you did everything you were meant to do,” the woman said. “I’m sure you passed every safety code. I’m sure your people did everything right.”
“They did,” Rachelle affirmed. “They did everything right.”
A strange look passed between Diana and the Parisian woman, one that Rachelle couldn’t translate.
She filled her mouth with wine. She hated that she was pretending to fit in with these people—people who’d founded so many restaurants, who’d manned so many kitchens, who’d been written up in countless magazines.
Rachelle had imagined herself a part of their world, had envisioned that they’d welcome her soon.
Now, they welcomed her with pity, which was the same as not including her in their ranks at all.
“She’s going to rise again,” Diana said.
“But if someone is after her,” the Parisian woman said. “If someone doesn’t want her to succeed, what happens then?”
“Aude, you’re always on about your conspiracy theories.” Diana laughed. “Rachelle and I are American. We’re realistic. We know that accidents happen, no matter how much you fight against them. That’s why there’s insurance.”
“But the insurance is never good enough,” Rachelle muttered into her cocktail.
“Not unless you’re wealthy,” Aude affirmed with an ironic laugh.
Rachelle knew that Aude wasn’t raised wealthy, that she’d had to climb the ranks into the wealthy in order to be who she was now. She knew that because Aude had a chip on her shoulder.
Rachelle hadn’t been raised wealthy, either—not even on Nantucket Island, where it seemed that nearly everyone had money.
Growing up, her mother hadn’t spoken to her own mother and father, and hadn’t indulged herself in their wealth at all.
Later, when Rachelle was in her early twenties, her mother had begun a relationship with Estelle, Roland, and the rest of the Colemans.
She’d also inherited Great-Aunt Jessabelle’s iconic mansion on the water.
It meant there was money, now—but not necessarily money in the bank.
And Rachelle didn’t talk to any of them, anyway.
It meant there was no lifesaver. No quick fix.
It was true, too, that Rachelle hadn’t opted for the very best insurance.
She’d gotten the basic version, the version meant to protect her employees before herself and her place.
It meant that if her employees had been injured in the accident, everything would have been okay.
Nobody had been injured, thank goodness.
But Rachelle would take the monetary hit.
“I don’t want to give up the place,” Rachelle said, although nobody had asked her outright. “I’m going to keep paying the rent. I’m going to find a way to reopen.”
Diana offered a polite, if nervous, smile. “She’s coming back to work with me.”
“The dynamic duo is at it again,” Aude said. There was slight irony in her voice.
Rachelle wanted to curl up into a ball and never look at anyone again.
After dinner, Rachelle took a cab back to Trastevere, where she planned to put on pajamas, eat snacks, watch television, and feel bad for herself.
She couldn’t believe this had been her “big, opening night.” She went up the stairs and entered her apartment, where she heard immediately the sounds of Riccardo, cackling on the balcony.
He was with someone; he had someone over.
Rachelle’s heart dropped. She didn’t want to deal with any of Riccardo’s friends.
As Rachelle approached the kitchen to pour herself some wine and get some snacks, she tried and failed to understand what Riccardo and his friend were saying.
She was pretty sure the friend was Arturo, his longtime best friend, with whom he’d grown up.
But their conversation was too rapid, too raucous. They cackled again.
When Rachelle stepped over the floorboard that always squeaked, their laughter died in an instant.
“Baby?” Riccardo ducked off the balcony to find her in the kitchen. There was still joy in his eyes, although it was clear he was trying to fix that on his face. “Where were you? I tried to call.”
Rachelle let her shoulders drop. “I was out,” she said. “With Diana. She offered me my job back.” With that, she burst into tears.
Rachelle felt like a stupid child, like someone who couldn’t control their emotions.
Riccardo wrapped his arms around her and kissed a line across her forehead.
She felt him guide her to the sofa, where she wrapped up in a blanket and closed her eyes, listening as Arturo made his way out the door and left them alone.
Riccardo returned to the sofa with wine, cheese, and chocolate. Rachelle burrowed her face in his shoulder until she willed herself to sip her wine and nibble the chocolate. Riccardo looked nervous but kind, as though he was aware he needed to say the right thing.
“You’re going to get through this,” he told her.
Rachelle sighed. She was too tired to believe that just now. “I don’t know.”
Riccardo kissed her cheek. “We’re going to work together in a kitchen one day,” he said. “Maybe not today. But soon. You’re a genius both in the kitchen and without.”
Rachelle took another bite of chocolate. She didn’t know what to say.
“Listen,” Riccardo said, after too much time had passed in silence. “I wanted to ask you something.”
Rachelle raised her eyes to his. “Okay.”
“Do you remember what I asked you last night? Before everything happened?”
Rachelle gaped at him. She couldn’t believe she’d forgotten.
Last night, he’d asked her to marry him. Last night, in front of everyone, on what was meant to be the greatest night of her life, he’d asked her. And she’d said, what?
Had she had a chance to answer?
“I’m still waiting,” Riccardo said, removing the velvet box from his pocket. He popped it open to reveal the iconic diamond ring.
Now, Rachelle had more time to look at it, to see it for what it was—vintage, obviously, with an old-world charm that made her think of old Italian romance films. Was Riccardo’s and her love good enough for a ring like this?
Oh, but it must be. She and Riccardo had been together for three years at this point—ages twenty-seven to thirty—which felt like the right time for something like this.
For the sort of romance that set the stage for the rest of her life.
“Of course I’ll marry you,” she said, watching as he slipped the ring over her finger.
But as Riccardo kissed her, Rachelle felt a strange tug of alarm in her stomach. Again, she wished she could call Darcy about this, to weigh up the pros and cons and figure out a way through. But she’d been sister-less for years at this point. It felt as though she’d lost a part of her heart.