Chapter 7
W ith dawn comes renewed purpose and the bitch-slap of jet lag. Although I managed to put it off until now, adjusting here will be harder in more ways than one. Someone wakes me up with a quick rap on the door. A note slides under the gap, and I drag my ass out of bed with a sigh. My sleep patterns have never been the best. But there’s a huge difference in forcing myself to try and sleep because it’s nighttime in Italy, and waking up at what would be my normal bedtime.
Still, I promised myself I would see this through. It won’t do any good to quit on day one. I have reconnaissance to do and a trade to learn. Somehow, I have to try and intercept the real volunteer at some point too or my cover will be blown and I can kiss my future goodbye.
I slap a new nicotine patch on my arm and pull clothes out of my bag. Dressing in the early morning light peeking into the room, my linen shirt is as rumpled as I feel. I have the presence of mind to remove the contract from my backpack. Crap, it looks so rough from my constant rolling and unrolling. Foresight would have been good—foresight would have meant a folder to place it in to keep it pristine. But that’s another one of my shortfalls.
One of many.
And so, the magic of being in Italy can no longer contend with the relentlessness of my inner voice.
As if a shiny new location would change anything.
But it does. I will make sure it does. This is my opportunity to get out from under what’s been suffocating me in New York for the summer. New York leaves me listless, aimless… apathetic about life. All I needed was a purpose, and now I have it. Someday soon I’ll stop thinking these things because I’ll have something to show for myself, something to console myself with when my thoughts take a turn toward darkness.
I tuck the contract between two large books sitting on the desk, and slide them into the desk drawer. My insides contract, curling in on themselves. A sick sort of lurch swoops through my stomach at the physical proof of my deception—the continued attempt to hide my intentions.
No risk, no reward .
I haven’t gotten anywhere so far by skating by. Thomas got shit done, even though his methods had been less than stellar. I’ll have more success in life if I take a page out of the Palmer playbook.
A dry swallow grates down my throat as I stuff down the uneasiness rising in my esophagus. I’ll worry about the morality of it later.
I bend to retrieve the folded note, fingertips stroking over the sure indentation on the paper. The handwriting is hard and confident, sloping as if written in a hurry.
It’s fucking foolish to think she means it the way I want her to mean it. Because I am ready. I’m halfway to distraction thinking about her and the possibilities her desk provides. But she made it clear it will never happen again—it was a mistake.
Just like you.
“Fuck off,” I whisper to myself and leave the room behind, creeping through quiet hallways to find the office again.
Giuliana leans her ass against her desk, watching the door when I eventually find my way through the house. The sun pinkens the sky behind her into pastel flames, illuminating the sprawling grove.
“I appreciate your discretion yesterday. It’s been a hard shift for the workers and I don’t want anything to jeopardize the trust I’m building. Some of the men in particular might have a problem with it.”
Some of the men you’re involved with?
Shut up. What a fucked-up thing to think. What she does with her time away from work is not my concern. But my curiosity is a hard thing to ignore.
“The man I bumped into on my way in?”
I shouldn’t be asking. It’s none of my damn business. All I need to worry about is getting the information I came for.
“It’s complicated.”
“Despite appearances, I’m sure I can keep up.” My smirk has the intended effect and I can tell she’s fighting the urge to roll her eyes. Instead, she closes them for a moment and a shuddering breath leaves her chest.
“We worked together, yes. Umberto was my father’s foreman and we had a sort of… relationship.”
Ah .
“So, the no dating the volunteer rule?—”
Only applies to me .
“Came about because he didn’t care for ‘his woman’ telling him how to do his job. Umberto assumed we would marry and the grove would be his to run after my father’s death. I didn’t take kindly to him deciding our lives before asking me what I wanted. He left with half of my workforce and decided to show his face yesterday to throw around some new threats.”
“Threats?”
Warring sides of me pipe up. Giuliana is understaffed and Umberto’s threats could prove useful—I should reach out to him to gather proof. But the other part of me is strangely angry that someone would threaten her at all.
“It’s handled. Or it will be. As long as this harvest goes well the threats won’t matter. That’s why I need this volunteer program to work… so if another man decides to undercut me, I won’t be on the brink of ruin because of it.” Giuliana’s expression is dark with resolve and I feel a frisson of fear. Heaven help me when I’m on her bad side. The only way to do what is required of me for now is to be nice.
“I didn’t mean to cause trouble for you. From here on out I will be a model volunteer. You say jump, I’ll scrounge up a trampoline.” I try to inject some levity into my response, a half-smile curling up my face despite the guilt slithering around inside of me.
Whether I mean to cause trouble or not, it comes regardless.
And you have no plans of stopping it now.
“Do you have experience with farming of any kind?”
“No, uh… I’m a city boy, trying out a new adventure to get away from the suffocating vibe in New York.”
Giuliana reaches around to grab a notepad off her desk, scribbling in that sure handwriting of hers.
“This is perfect. It will give me a chance to gauge how intensive we need to make the program in order for a newcomer to understand the process.”
Something about the way she phrases it has my breath catching in my chest. Newcomer—not a stranger, not an outsider. It feels open. She’s welcoming me—a freaking Trojan horse—into her home and showing me the family business. All I can do now is play my part.
“We have less than three months until the harvest. Future volunteers won’t stay as long, if anything they’ll likely only help out with the harvest itself….” Giuliana carries on almost as if she’s talking to herself and not me. She bites the back of her pen as she considers things, then goes back to the scratch of ink to paper. Sunlight crawls deeper into the room, shafts of light in window shapes reaching in to heat the floor, and casting specks of dust into glitter in the air.
“But if I teach you—give you a crash course—we can figure out what the most important things to know are and I can model the program around that!”
Giuliana pushes off from the table to pace in front of the desk and I fight the laugh sitting on my throat. Seeing her talk herself through the process, watching her mind turn in real-time is strangely entertaining.
Stay focused, asshole. Stop thinking about how cute she is when you’re going to fuck up her life.
“We’ll go over the cultivars, explain how they impact taste and what we use each for.”
She ticks it off on her index finger. So much like our first meeting. Hurt blooms inside me for a split second as the memory of her skin flits through my mind. Giuliana plans out the next three months of my life and I watch her—hungry and exhilarated. I’ll have to figure out how to set the bits of shame I feel aside. No room for that now. Which means I’ll have to keep her off my scent and lean into the image of the useless playboy I am.
“And will I get a final grade for all this? How do I know if I pass?” It’s meant to be a joke but Giuliana takes me seriously.
“You raise a good point. I’ll give some thought to incentives. Perhaps each volunteer could get their own personalized bottle of olive oil at the end?”
One with the Palmer logo on the front?
It’s a traitorous thought and I know it’ll be a long few weeks dealing with the discord inside of me.
“Anyway, let’s get some food in you before we start the day. Nonna will never forgive me if I deprive her of getting to feed you.”
My rudimentary Italian knowledge helps me with that one.
“Your grandmother?”
“Yes, on my father’s side.” It’s a little abrupt, as if she’s done enough talking about her personal life for today.
Giuliana stalks ahead of me down the corridor, expecting me to follow. Once again, I’m rushed through the house, toward an eat-in kitchen. The tantalizing scent of strong coffee hits me first (thank god), followed by the homey feeling of a kitchen abuzz with activity.
An old woman with more salt-than-pepper in her hair is trying to wrangle a girl—no older than seven or eight—who’s hurling rapid-fire questions while bouncing on the balls of her feet. I don’t need to understand Italian to read the tired frustration on the old woman’s face, or to sense this is a regular occurrence in the household.
Giuliana’s entrance breaks the spell, the sudden quiet in the room leaving me uneasy.
I glance around at the arches over the doorway and windows. The warm walls suck up the early summer sun and radiate it around the room. Handmade tiles serve as a backsplash behind the stove, and they glisten with teal accents.
“ Nonna, Chiara… Questo è Matteo .” Giuliana gestures toward me and I give an awkward little wave. “Matteo, this is my grandmother, Isabella, and my sister, Chiara.”
“Nice to meet you,” I say, a little shy I can’t say it in Italian. But they don’t mind.
Chiara chatters at me in English. “Why are you here? Are you Giuliana’s boyfriend? Why aren’t you speaking Italian?”
My mouth is agape as I consider each question. “I—I’m from America and I’m here to work for the summer.”
I’m not going to touch the question about being Giuliana’s boyfriend. Best to move right past that.
Isabella urges me to sit, placing a plate of fresh bread and a pot of some kind of jam. “ Pane, burro e marmellata. ” Isabella confirms and sets a steaming cup of cappuccino in front of me.
“Chiara…” Giuliana warns but I’m not paying attention because I’m caught up in the breakfast in front of me and the woman who served it.
Isabella gives me a scrutinizing look and I fight the urge to squirm under her gaze. The older woman only breaks her perusal to look at Giuliana but settles back on me, as if something in my face gives away more than it should. But it melts into a small, guarded smile after a moment.
Taking the seat beside me, Giuliana leans over to whisper conspiratorially, “I apologize for their enthusiasm. We don’t get many new faces, especially not young men.”
“I don’t mind. It’s kind of nice.” It’s the truth. I should keep it guarded. But having someone fuss over me is poignant in a way I hadn’t expected.
Wow. The bar is on the fucking ground. An old lady gave you toast and you’re ready to weep over it? Pathetic.
“Yeah?” Giuliana asks, pulling me from my thoughts, her smile bashful. Her professionalism drops for a second, her eyes softer than they’ve been since I showed up at the grove.
“Yeah. I don’t have any siblings.”
That you know of.
Ugh. SHUT UP.
“My family isn’t super domestic,” I say, “so this is a welcome change.”
We turn back to the scene, and Chiara jumps into our conversation.
“Did you have to fly to get here?” Her brown eyes are large with curiosity and I wonder if she’s had the opportunity to fly anywhere.
“Yep! From New York and it took hours and hours. I even slept a little bit on the plane.”
“All just to be here? How long are you going to stay?”
I open my mouth to try and answer but realize too late I’m not too sure, imposter that I am.
Thankfully Giuliana intercedes. “He’s going to be here until the harvest—at the latest the first week in October. And we’re going to help him settle in. And we’re not going to bother him with all our questions. Sì?” She gives the little girl a pointed look until Chiara grumbles her agreement.
Harvest could continue into October, but for the purposes of the program I don’t need to stay longer than then. It’ll be plenty of time to get a feel for the process.
Chiara’s questions are stilled by Giuliana’s hand, an unspoken command to quiet herself and eat. Chiara pouts a little but perks up when Nonna tells us she’s going to make torta colonne for dessert tonight. And then all is forgiven, and we turn to simple sustenance to provide us with the energy we’ll need for what lies ahead.
Despite it being early in the day at the start of July, the sun pelts us with heat. Summer is well underway, and I have three months to make this happen—whatever this is. It’s hard to think about what I came here to do surrounded by her family, with the sweet tartness of homemade jam dancing on my tongue.
Once we're sated and ready for the day, Nonna shoos us away. Even though I don’t understand the words, the sentiment comes through: you’re wasting time, get a move on.
“Your family is great.” It hurts to think about—to consider if I carry through with my plan, I’ll be leaving them out in the cold.
They’re not merely a name on a contract or some intangible thing. Giuliana, Chiara, and Isabella are lovely ladies who are forging out a life despite loss and grief.
“They are. I’m lucky to have them even though they drive me up the wall most days.” Giuliana chuckles to herself and her smile does something to me, my mouth stretching in response even though I’ll never be in on the joke.
I have no grandparents I’ve met. No younger sibling to pester me. Loneliness was a construct to me before, something which felt less acute in New York with all my vices to distract me. Here, faced with the real thing, it’s sharper.
I’m tempted to ask her about some of those instances, to hear about what it was like. Giuliana looks up at me with an open expression on her face. It’s like she’s relaxed incrementally back into the woman I first met—the one unhindered by expectation and duty. But then it’s gone as quick as it came.
“We’ll walk some of the property today so I can give you a feel for things and explain more about the cultivars we use.” Professional Giuliana is back.
Good. Makes it easier to screw her over when it’s business and not personal.
Still, I can’t help but think back to our first meeting and consider all the ways I’d like to unravel her careful exterior to peer back at the woman who knocked me on my ass. It’s going to be a long three months.