Chapter 4
Twenty-Seven Years Ago
Things in Lorelei’s piano career didn’t fully take off till she left the United States.
Despite her clear talent and future in the arts, back in Nantucket, she’d been locked into the White Oak Lodge, spending all her time that she wasn’t practicing the piano at the front desk, helping her parents.
But once she moved to Tuscany, she met the iconic classical music agent Raffaello Donatello, who told her, point-blank, “I will make you a star. But you must help me help you.”
It sounded easy. It was anything but.
Of course, Lorelei was connected to Raffaello through her grandfather, her mother’s famous director father, who knew just about everyone in the arts in Italy.
This was an advantage that she knew didn’t come to everyone.
But she also knew that Raffaello was cutthroat, that he wouldn’t have signed her on his label if he didn’t truly believe in her.
In the weeks that followed, she practiced piano with a new intensity, barely ever raising her head from the keys.
Sometimes Allegra could drag her out, maybe for a little dance or a half glass of wine.
But usually, Lorelei told herself, This is your only shot. Don’t mess it up.
Over the following months after signing with Raffaello, miraculously, things moved very quickly.
Lorelei performed piano concertos all over Europe.
She found herself in major concert halls in Paris, Athens, Rome, Berlin, and Brussels, after which she was introduced to film stars and politicians, people who’d been told about the “iconic Lorelei Whitmore, the Italian American piano prodigy.” She saw her mother less and less and eventually took an apartment in Rome, where she could work more closely with a piano teacher Raffaello had introduced her to.
Bit by bit, she became entirely absorbed in music and performance.
It was a relief to know she’d become something more than what she’d been in the United States.
More than anything, she found that this newfound career in the arts helped her to avoid thoughts of the White Oak Lodge and everything she’d lost. Her American heritage and identity felt further and further away as time passed.
She was only just beginning to come to terms with the fact that her father and brother were presumed dead, and that the hotel where she’d grown up and celebrated life and swam in the ocean was now charred-out and no longer available to her.
It was as though her entire childhood had been ripped out of time.
This was enough of a reason to begin again, she felt.
Late one night in her apartment in Rome, she called Allegra.
By that time, Allegra was still in Florence, dating a guy whom she was thinking of breaking up with and dealing with her own sense of loss in the wake of the fire.
Although they usually began their phone calls in Italian, Lorelei switched quickly to English, then burst into tears that surprised her.
It was as though the English language had reminded her too much of their father, Benjamin, the only non-Italian in their family—save for Nina.
She didn’t like to think about Nina, either.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about home a lot. I’ve been thinking about Nantucket, about that beach we used to swim at… the one we thought was a secret. I’ve been thinking about everything we lost. It’s like we never had it. It’s like we’ll never get it back.”
Allegra was soft-spoken when, in conversation, they returned to the past. “I miss it, too. I’ve been having dreams about it.
About the people, too. Like, randomly, that postal worker who always had candy for us?
You remember him? Sometimes I wonder what would have happened to us if we’d stayed in Nantucket.
Would we have married those silly high school boyfriends of ours?
Would we have become islanders forever? But I suppose, well.
I suppose you wouldn’t have had this career if we’d stayed. So maybe it’s for the best?”
Lorelei knew her sister was right. But still, it felt like an extraordinary price to pay: fame in exchange for her beloved childhood on Nantucket Island.
At the end of that first incredibly successful year, Raffaello took Lorelei out to a five-star restaurant in Rome.
Lorelei was exhausted, but she couldn’t let her face show it.
She smiled and laughed at everything Raffaello said, wanting to seem just as grateful as she was.
She was twenty-two years old, but her soul felt as though it was aging faster than it should have. It had been through too much.
At the restaurant, they joined two other music agents, plus the man who owned the Sydney Opera House in Australia, and a woman who sang in that opera.
After they sat, the opera singer left for the bathroom, and Raffaello leaned over to whisper into Lorelei’s ear.
He told her that the opera singer and the owner of the Sydney Opera House had been having an affair for more than ten years, and that soon the owner would fire the opera singer, his top star at the House, and start anew with someone else.
“It’s a cutthroat business,” Raffaello told Lorelei, whose heart shook with shock.
Of course, she knew better than to show her fear that someday, Raffaello would get rid of her the same way the Sydney Opera House guy would get rid of his opera singer. She knew that she wouldn’t be a young and beautiful prodigy forever. Her days were numbered.
She told herself not to think about that, not now.
The dinner was a six-course menu. The flavors were exquisite and precise, each bite launching Lorelei back through time to her mother’s dinner table.
She had to fight her instinct to call her mother to tell her about this restaurant.
She also had to fight her instinct to eat quickly.
She knew that she needed to be ladylike.
She picked up her white napkin and dotted it tentatively across her lips. She laughed at a joke the Sydney Opera House guy told, although a moment later she couldn’t remember what it had been about.
“I think it’s time we meet the chef,” the Sydney Opera House guy said to the opera singer, smiling grandly. It was clear he liked being the kind of guy who could snap his fingers and produce the chef at whatever restaurant he was at.
“I think you’re right about that,” Raffaello said. “This must be the best restaurant in Roma right now. Don’t you agree, Lorelei?”
Lorelei nodded and blushed. She wondered if she’d been eating quicker than she should have been. Maybe Raffaello had noticed. He noticed almost everything.
After learning they wanted to meet the chef, the server left and returned with a man in his mid-to-late twenties, a handsome and charming and slightly shy Italian man who introduced himself as Roberto Russo. Lorelei felt her stomach flip over, especially when Roberto reached for her hand.
“You must sit with us,” Raffaello said to Roberto.
“Yes,” said the Sydney Opera House owner. “I had no idea you’d be so young! We must learn everything about you.”
The opera singer smiled, but Lorelei felt it was false. She wondered if the opera singer knew that she was going to be let go—not only from her professional position but also from her romance.
“I suppose I can sit for a bit,” Roberto acquiesced.
“Bring a chair for him,” Raffaello ordered the server. “Set it up here, directly beside our beautiful piano prodigy.” He grinned, as though he were playing a prank on Lorelei.
Roberto sat beside Lorelei, and the server brought him a wineglass so that he could have some of the very expensive Primitivo red wine that he’d ordered earlier.
Roberto raised a glass. His movements were awkward, as though he was unaccustomed to sitting at a nice table in his own restaurant.
Lorelei sensed he would have preferred to be back in the kitchen with the kitchen crew.
“Thank you very much for your generosity,” Roberto said.
“And thank you for your exquisite talents,” the Sydney Opera House man said.
For a little while, Lorelei observed without speaking. She was nervous to say anything stupid, especially in front of Raffaello, so she sipped her wine and listened. Roberto explained that he’d begun working at this restaurant four months ago and had completely refurbished the menu himself.
“Last I was here, it was that other chef,” Raffaello said thoughtfully.
“I thought the menu seemed dried-out and dull. I told friends that we shouldn’t return here.
Oh, but you’ve breathed new life into it!
” Raffaello smiled over at Lorelei, then hesitated, as though something had just occurred to him.
Time seemed to stand still as his eyes clicked from Lorelei to Roberto, and back again.
“Look at these young people,” he said finally, breathily. “Look at how remarkable they look together. They’re the new generation of artists. Goodness, it’s like looking at the world’s future.”
Lorelei thought Raffaello was being sarcastic. Her cheeks were hot.
Roberto turned to look at her. Lorelei could hardly bring herself to meet his gaze for fear that he would make fun of her, too.
“I’ve been talking nonstop about myself,” Roberto said. “What about you? I have heard about your piano performances, but I admit, I haven’t seen any myself.”
“You absolutely must!” Raffaello said. “We’ll get you tickets the next time she performs in Rome. Front-row seats so that you can see the concentration in her eyes. It’s simply incredible. She’s unlike anyone else.”
Lorelei smiled nervously.
“What’s it like up there?” Roberto asked. “When I ‘perform,’ I’m hiding away in my kitchen and able to concentrate because nobody is watching me. I can’t imagine how terrifying it must be on stage.”
“Yes,” Lorelei said. “It’s scary. But I try to channel that energy into my performance. I try to let the nervousness become excitement, if that makes sense.”
Raffaello clapped his hands. “Look at them!” he cried. “They’re simply the most beautiful pair of twenty-something artists in all of Rome.”
“Let’s not get carried away, Raffaello,” the man who owned the opera house said, raising his glass.
Happily, the conversation soon shifted to something else beyond Lorelei’s talent and beauty, and she sat silently, waiting for the night to end. When Raffaello stood and said he was going to go home, Lorelei again felt Roberto’s eyes on her.
“Oh, dear me,” Raffaello said, sounding exhausted.
“I see what’s happening. Go on, Roberto.
Ask her if she’d like to go dancing with you, or whatever it is you young people do these days.
But please, I beg you, have her home at a decent hour.
Every day, she must practice eight to ten hours.
She must compete with the crème de la crème. ”
At first, Lorelei thought Roberto would say that he wasn’t planning on asking her.
Maybe Raffaello had already scared him away.
But Roberto seemed unafraid of Raffaello’s whole performance.
He tilted his head and said quietly to Lorelei, as Raffaello put on his leather coat, “What do you say? I know a wonderful place to dance.”
In the years that followed, Lorelei would call this the best night of her life.
Roberto went back to the kitchen, leaving Lorelei bubbly and excited.
She sipped more of her wine and said goodbye to the people she’d dined with, grateful to see the back of the Sydney Opera House owner’s head.
Then, just as she’d convinced herself that Roberto had forgotten about her, he returned wearing all black, his energy electric.
“Those people,” he said, shaking his head. “How do you stand them?”
Lorelei laughed. “They’ve given me my life,” she said.
“I think you should take it back from them,” he said.
Roberto and Lorelei stepped into the frigid night.
It was December, and a light snow was falling.
This was a rarity for Rome, but not for Nantucket, and Lorelei felt launched into the past, into her childhood.
She remembered making snowmen with Allegra and Alexander.
She remembered throwing snowballs against the White Oak Lodge and watching them explode.
“Are you all right, Lorelei?” Roberto asked.
“Of course,” Lorelei lied. “I’m always all right.”
And for the course of the night, Lorelei truly was.
For hours, they danced. Lorelei felt her body pulsing next to Roberto’s. She watched the flicker of his muscles in the light and the sweep of his hair as he brushed it from his face.
The truth was, she hadn’t dated anyone seriously since Nantucket Island. Her high school boyfriend Carter Johnson—a name that seemed taken from an American sitcom—was now deeply entrenched in her past, so much so that the tragic story of their love seemed to belong to someone else.
Could she start over with Roberto? Did she even have time, given her intense schedule?
The better question was whether he even had time, given his intense schedule.
But all of a sudden, they were kissing. Lorelei’s eyes were closed. She felt drawn into his warm embrace, his thick arms, his pillow-like lips.
They kissed for ages, so long that eventually, the club closed, and Roberto and Lorelei found themselves leaning against the antique wall outside.
Around them, Rome was black with night, and everyone had hurried inside to protect themselves from the cold.
All Lorelei and Roberto needed were one another.
Eventually, they found a little bar for a nightcap, one where only three other people sat alone, watching the snow.
Lorelei and Roberto couldn’t stop laughing and talking.
They couldn’t get enough of each other, nor of telling one another their plans for the future.
They were both endlessly driven and creative.
“I want to own restaurants all over the world,” Roberto said, spreading his fingers out. “I don’t just want to be the chef. I want to call all the shots. I want to plan every menu.”
“First Rome?” she asked.
“And then maybe Sicily,” he said. “I have family down there, and I’ve always loved it.”
“What about Sardinia?” Lorelei asked. She’d recently played a show in Cagliari and been fascinated by its beauty.
“If you say Sardinia, we’ll make Sardinia happen as well,” Roberto said, kissing the tip of her nose.
After that, Lorelei explained her plans, too.
She told him about wanting to play at every performance hall, from Carnegie to the Royal Albert Hall to the Elbphilharmonie.
She watched their future, glowing in his dark eyes.
She wondered, too, if in the midst of all this chaotic success they’d actually find a way to grow together.
She wondered if their dreams were too powerful for anything as “mundane” as love to come into the equation.
Then again, she already felt it—love or something like it, bubbling up from the depths of herself. She already felt that she would follow Roberto to the ends of the earth, if he let her.