Chapter 35
Nicolo is quiet for a long moment. “Her name was Natalie,” he says at last.
“Natalie.” I taste the name and grimace. “What did she do?”
He smiles humorlessly. “She held my heart too carelessly,” he replies.
Then with a sigh he explains. “After law school I got a job with an international company. I had no desire to stay in Italy. To tell you the truth, I wanted to be as far away from Violetta and Alberto and this place as I could get. So I took a job in Australia. A couple of years later I met Natalie. She was an attorney too, from Sydney.”
“I bet she’s pretty,” I blurt out. It’s the limoncello loosening my lips.
He smiles ruefully. “She is, and such a sharp legal mind. I felt like the luckiest guy in the world. We fell in love, got engaged…I thought I was finally going to have the life I wanted.” He pauses, tipping the shot glass to his lips and sipping the last drop. “And then it all fell apart.”
“What happened?” I ask, still trying to picture him with the lovely Natalie. I hate the mental image. I bet she has shiny hair and endless confidence and a mind like a mousetrap.
He shrugs. “She left me. She fell out of love and I didn’t.
Or maybe it’s more accurate to say she fell in love, just not with me.
She broke our engagement a month before we were planning to fly home so she could meet my family and see the farm.
Last I heard she’s living with the guy somewhere on the Gold Coast. He’s a professional surfer. ”
“Ouch.” I wince. “I’m sorry. That’s awful.” Stupid Natalie. How could she not see what she had in Nicolo?
He shrugs philosophically. “I don’t regret that we are not together anymore.
I only regret that I entrusted my heart to someone who cared for it so poorly.
Maybe it’s for the best, though. I came home without her.
I already had the ticket. And I discovered what bad shape the farm and business were really in.
My grandfather had already been gone for several years when I returned, and I suspect things had been let go for a long time before he died.
Everything was a mess. Nonna V. was trying her best. She’s a strong woman, but it was too much for her.
So I stayed…” He toys with the empty shot glass, his arms resting casually on his knees.
He’s gazing out at the lake, his profile pensive.
“Are you glad you stayed?”
“Sometimes,” he says frankly. “I told you how it is with her. I’m trying to save the farm from ruin, trying to modernize all the systems, trying to get us online so we can sell to more than just tourists passing through.
But my grandmother is stubborn and set in her ways.
Everything is a struggle between us, and she still sees me as a little boy, not a capable man.
” He runs his hands through his curls in a gesture of exasperation, making them spring up.
“Sometimes I’m not sure I’m making any progress at all,” he admits.
“That sounds incredibly frustrating.”
He rolls his eyes. “You have no idea.”
“But you’re still here,” I observe.
He shrugs. “Of course. How could I do otherwise? It is my home and this is my family legacy. I have a responsibility to preserve it if I can.”
It’s an honorable sentiment, and I think of our olive farm with a pang of guilt. I’m not the right person to help, but if I do nothing, what will happen to it? It’s a puzzle I can’t seem to solve, and it gnaws at me constantly.
“Are you happy here?” I ask suddenly. “Do you feel you made the right choice?”
Nicolo thinks for a minute. “If you ask if I am happy, the honest answer is not really. My life is not as I once dreamed it would be.” He shifts restlessly.
“I’m stuck in a very frustrating situation trying to save my family’s farm.
I always dreamed of a family, of someone to share my life with, and yet I am still alone.
” He turns and looks at me seriously. “So no, I would not say that I am happy. But I know I am doing the right thing, and I am content with that.” He gives a small, noncommittal shrug.
“Sometimes life is hard and often we don’t get what we thought we wanted, but then I ask myself, is happiness the only measure of a good life?
” There’s a note of challenge in his voice.
“There is also duty and honor, sacrifice, commitment. Those are important too, maybe more important than happiness. I am trying to make a difference for my family, for this community, and I hope I am making the right choices. I hope happiness will come again for me, but there is no guarantee, and I have to be okay with what I have. This is enough for me.”
I admire his dedication, his sacrifice, but that sentiment is incredibly sad. He deserves to be loved, to have a family, to be happy. He’s wonderful.
“I wish there was a way to see what would make us happy,” I muse, then freeze as a thought strikes me.
What if there is?
“Nicolo, has your grandmother ever talked about Orange Blossom Cake?”
He looks puzzled by my abrupt change of topic. “Not that I remember. Why?”
I blink and try to focus my thoughts. I’ve always been a lightweight when it comes to liquor. The taste of lemons is thick and sweet on my tongue, and the alcohol slowly seeps into my bloodstream. I feel more than a little lightheaded.
“Because I think that’s why Nonna Bruna and Violetta hate each other.”
I quickly explain about Nonna Bruna’s cookbook and its purported magical properties. As it turns out, Nicolo knows already.
“Bruna is a local legend,” he tells me. “People come to her from all over the area for advice and to consult the cookbook to help them sort out their troubles or desires.”
I think of the young women making a recipe at the crack of dawn, seeking Nonna’s help in love.
This morning Nonna showed me a text she received, just a single word.
Grazie. And a photo of the girl with the jet-black bob.
Her smile is luminous as she shows off an engagement ring while a young man with a dark beard gazes adoringly at her.
“I had no idea about the cookbook,” I admit. “Nonna never told us about it. She said she was waiting until we were older to explain everything to us, but then when my dad died, we never came back to Italy. I’m only learning about it now. But there’s still something that’s a mystery.”
I tell him about the Orange Blossom Cake and its ability to show you the happiest moment of your life.
I explain about the torn half of the recipe that shows up every time Nonna touches the cookbook, and about what Nonna told me about Violetta and their history with the cake recipe. Nicolo listens intently.
“I’ve always wondered what happened between them,” he admits.
“My grandmother has never mentioned the cake, though that doesn’t surprise me.
She’s a very private woman. She could have the other half of the recipe hidden away somewhere, although I’ve never seen it.
” He picks up a pebble and throws it overhand into the lake.
It sinks soundlessly, the dark water shimmering away in widening circles.
The mountains on the far shore jut up against the dark purple sky, and the night air smells of lake water, sunbaked rocks, and the mouthwatering aroma of grilled fish drifting from a restaurant somewhere upwind.
“Would you do it?” Nicolo asks curiously. “If you had the whole recipe, would you want to eat the first bite of this cake and see your future happiness?”
I exhale and think about it for a moment, shivering a little in the coolness of the evening.
My dress is still damp on the front, and I’m getting a little chilled.
“I think so,” I admit finally. “It would be nice to know that something good is coming. Right now my life feels like such a shamble. Maybe if I saw the happiest moment, I’d get some guidance on what choices I should make to get me there. ”
“Then let’s go find it,” Nicolo announces suddenly, jumping to his feet and holding out his hand to me.
I sit up straight, my head spinning a little. “Go find what?”
“The other half of the recipe.” He grabs his shirt and pants and shimmies into them deftly.
“I thought you said you’d never seen it.” My mind is ever so slightly fuzzy. It’s been a long day, and after at least three shots of limoncello, I’m feeling a little slow and sleepy.
“I haven’t, but I know where Violetta keeps everything she treasures.
In an old safe in her office. If she has the other half of the recipe, I’ll bet you it’s there.
” He grins, his expression lit with excitement.
Right now, he looks like the boy I first knew.
I take his hand and he pulls me easily to my feet, steadying me.
“And you know the code for the safe?” I ask, intrigued by the possibility.
What if we could get the lost half of the recipe back and reunite it with the other half in the cookbook?
Could we make the recipe and take that fabled first bite?
Suddenly, I want very badly to see if we can make this happen.
Nicolo shrugs. “Only Violetta knows the code for the safe, but I bet I can crack it.” He looks at me in the faint light from the streetlamp on the road behind us, and I can see him as he was all those years ago, dimpled and daring, the glint of mischief in his eye.
“Five euros says I can get into that safe in less than ten minutes.”
His mom taught him how to pick locks when he was five years old, he told me once. He stole his first bottle of wine for her when he was not much older. He probably can get into the safe.
“You’re on,” I tell him, excited by the adventure and the possibility.
He jams the cork back in the bottle of limoncello. “What are we waiting for?” he asks, holding out his hand to me. “Let’s go find that recipe.”