The Roman Holiday Rule

Chapter 1

One

Lexi

When the executor of your mother’s will hands you four sealed envelopes to open ONLY in Rome, you hop on the next plane to Europe.

Except that’s not how this played out.

All things considered, it’s impressive that it only took a year to get to this point: the check-in line at Boston Logan airport, ready to go, every single detail in place.

It all started with a sticky note on one of Mom’s paintings that said, Marked for Rome.

So now, not only was I flying to Rome for myself and Mom, I would be dedicating her artwork to the people of Italy while there.

That’s when things escalated.

And look, we’re both to blame here, Rome and I.

Rome (or more specifically, Gia Castelli, the head of the Department of Cultural Activities) decided a discreet handover in a stuffy museum wouldn’t do for a Reena Brooke original.

Gia insisted a citywide art festival would be the appropriate setting for the unveiling.

With a dedication speech given by Reena Brooke’s daughter, yours truly.

Gia then hired my marketing and event agency to co-plan the two-day event, and there was no way my business partner Julie and I could refuse the chance to expand internationally.

For my part, I took my usual Lexi approach to everything: over-research, over-plan, and perfectly execute.

Brushing up on my Italian. Reading articles on Italy every spare evening. Emails and phone calls, charts and schedules. Poring over city maps.

To make matters even more intense, this work trip is also a bucket list trip Mom and I wanted to take together. I haven’t peeked at the letters, as tempted as I’ve been, but on the cusp of embarking, I’m a very brittle combination of nerves, stress, and excited anticipation.

I think that pretty much sums it up.

So it’s not overkill that I’m reaching into my pocket-organized travel purse again to feel for the stiff passport nestled against Mom’s envelopes.

The passport that was supposed to be for our mother-daughter trip years ago is finally getting its moment of glory.

We should have a party, the little blue book and I.

During the flight, I’ll raise a plastic cup of ginger ale in its honor.

Julie—my best friend since the day I traded my role in the fifth-grade play for her assignment as backstage director—pulls my suitcase inches forward in the check-in line, groaning at its supposed heaviness.

I laugh and reclaim the luggage handle from her. Her overblown drama never fails to entertain my literal tendencies. “It’s exactly at the weight limit.”

“Try twenty pounds over.” She’s an intensifier, and live big is her motto. I mean, one look at the massive fuchsia flowers on her fifties-style vintage dress and hoop earrings so wide they eclipse her layered blonde bob should tell you that.

She sweeps her curtain bangs to one side and sighs at the gathering crowds. “It’s getting busy. I’ll snag us a table at the coffee shop while you finish checking in.”

“My treat,” I call after her. It’s the least I can do to compensate for this past year, for putting her through what she terms my “obsession.” I call it thoroughness, but potato, po-tah-to.

It was necessary, though. Mom’s fans are rabid about the mysterious painting that’s been in our private family collection and never publicly shown. They’ll demand to know the location in Rome that inspired it and what significance it held for her.

Believe me, I’ve tried to figure that out. The draft of my dedication speech has some pretty big blanks. I’m hoping the letters in the envelopes tell me. If not, I have a week in Rome to solve that mystery.

The stakes are Alps-high. So while I envy the curly-haired guy in the back of the line relaxed and absorbed in his Asimov paperback, I have no capacity for focusing on anything but Italy, my mom, and the task before me.

Behind the counter, the petite, frazzled employee wrestles to keep her duty-smile in place while an irate traveler argues that he’s flown with his e-bike battery in his checked baggage on other airlines and should be allowed to do so now.

Her cheeks are flushed and her hair is already springing free from her tidy airline bun by the time he demands to talk to a representative “with more authority.”

When it’s my turn at the counter, she doesn’t look up from her computer screen. “Passport.”

I set the little book in her outstretched hand. “Thank you for keeping us safe.”

She glances at me, eyes wide. “Exactly,” she says, her voice a dark shade of justified ferocity.

She jabs buttons on her keyboard. That computer system will really know my information.

With a side-eye peek at the biker stomping toward the customer service office, she adds, “How hard is it to understand that the rules to keep people alive are more important than his sport?”

“You were amazing. If it had been me dealing with him, I would have pulled a lithium battery move.”

She pauses her violent typing and looks up at me quizzically.

“I’d have overheated.”

She giggles, a bit on the hysteric side, but I can work with that. Her shoulders loosen.

By the time she’s tagged, weighed, and sent off my suitcase, her pleasant goodbye is genuine.

I join Julie at Dunkin’. Over iced caramel swirl lattes at the tiny table, we tweak the designs for our social media blast that will drop throughout this week leading up to the Roma Festival: L’arte della vita.

A half hour later, we’re as done as we can be. I slide my laptop and journal back into my purse and pull out one of the soft, worn envelopes I’ve been waiting for a year to open.

Mom’s handwriting, long loops and swift strokes so familiar I can almost hear her voice just by looking at it, graces the front. Trevi Fountain.

Around the letters, she’s painted a different watercolor scene on each envelope. This one has a striped hot air balloon drifting above a river where a rowboat floats, a bouquet of flowers laid on its empty seat. It’s bright and whimsical and feels like lazy breezes and all the magic of childhood.

I trace the border of clouds around the Trevi envelope.

Mom was supposed to show me all her favorite haunts on our girls’ trip—those magical spots that ended up changing her life.

Instead, I have four unopened letters she composed in the months before chemo made her so weak she couldn’t lift a pen or paintbrush, each numbered and labeled with the exact place in Italy where I’m to open them.

Decorated with the last art Mom created, they spark nostalgia, love, and grief every time I look at them.

I’ve been both longing for and putting off this trip, searching for the right timing and avoiding the closure I fear will be too final.

But the painting reveal on the first day of the festival is a deadline I can’t ignore.

I need to see Italy. To love Italy through my mom’s eyes and find the location of the temple in her painting, not only for my own sake, but to honor her legacy for those who admire her work. This trip has to be perfect.

Except for the gaping hole Mom’s death left in my life. There’s nothing I can do about that, but the rest I can control.

“Trevi Fountain. That reminds me.” Julie fishes a shiny nickel from her overstuffed wallet and waves it in front of my face. “Make a wish when you get there. It’s a fun tradition.”

“Fun for me, maybe, but what about for the nickel? No coin’s dream job is to carry a halfhearted wish into recycled aqueduct water.”

“Better than sitting in a gumball machine knowing you might have helped give some kid a cavity.” Julie pushes it into my palm and whispers, “Do it for the nickel.”

I grin and drop the coin into my zippered wallet. “Fine, but it makes no cents.”

She groans. “Please, Lexi. Anything but the puns.”

Someday I’m going to find a pun she can’t resist and get her to join the Dark Side.

I reach for my bag, but it’s tipped over, thanks to the lopsided laptop weight distribution.

My favorite green gel pen is dangerously close to rolling out onto the floor.

Yikes. I pull the bag onto my lap, slide the envelope in with the others, then zip everything closed. “I should get in line at security.”

She glances at her gold-strapped Fitbit. “You have gobs of time.”

Exaggeration is a subcategory of her intensifying. In this case, gobs means forty-five minutes until boarding, half the time buffer I’d prefer.

We gather our things and head to the security area. Over the line’s belt barrier, Julie squeezes me tight in a last goodbye. Dramatic best friends give dynamite hugs.

“Thanks for driving me in.”

When she pulls back to look at me, her expression is intense and compassionate.

“Wouldn’t have missed it for the world. I know you have to do this alone, but I still expect a check-in every day.

Pictures. FaceTime. Texts. I want to experience it all.

” If anyone could live vicariously through the intense power of communication, questions, and imagination, it’s Julie.

She clasps her hands to her chest. “I’m telling you, Lexi, you’re going to meet the man of your dreams in Italy, just like your mom met your dad. ”

“No, I won’t. This trip is about my mom’s art and falling in love with the places she loved. We’ve been over this.”

Nothing will take my focus from Italy.

Julie starts her enthusiastic waving as the line inches forward.

I reach for my passport to show the officer at the last checkpoint before the X-ray machines.

My fingers brush past the colored pens, my underlined-on-every-page copy of Sense and Sensibility, the envelopes, my laptop, and charging wires until they graze the bottom.

Julie stops waving. “What’s wrong?”

“My passport. It’s gone.” I just had it an hour ago. I scan the floor around me, but carry-ons and shoes cover the space. My throat decides to help by tightening into Panic Mode.