Chapter 32
It’s a slow night, with everyone in town still exhausted from the Palio, so Gia insists I leave early.
I ride my scooter over to Nico’s, the start of sunset casting a golden glow over the scenery. Across every field I pass, giant wheels of hay are tied up and laid out, as though summer is being packed up and put in its place.
Nico’s not home when I arrive, and with Luce also being absent, I have a pretty good guess as to where they’ve gone.
I don’t even make it all the way up the hill before Luce comes running down to greet me, spinning in circles every few steps and barking cheerfully until he reaches my ankles and starts licking. He bounces alongside me as I make my way to the couch perched at the top.
Nico watches me as I approach, the angles of his face shadowed in the diminishing amber light.
He looks more serene than I would’ve expected.
But then again, he’s always been able to maintain his stillness while the rest of the world runs around like Luce, circling without ever taking a moment to stop.
“Thought I might find you here,” I say as I plop down next to him on the couch and lay my head on his shoulder.
He pulls out two little glass containers of Campari and soda, and I sigh with appreciation.
“You’ll never guess the mystery I solved today,” he says while he pops the tops off both, handing me one before taking a big swig of the other.
“What?”
“I figured out what happened to the fencing.”
At that I sit up, and the sheepish excitement to tell me is written all over his face. It makes him look boyish, like life hasn’t dealt him any knocks yet.
“Oh, this is going to be good,” I say, rubbing my hands together. “Did you catch Tommaso messing with it? Or someone else?”
He shakes his head, relishing the surprise. “I meant it when I said you’d never guess.”
“The cows are staging a coup and want to destroy any restrictions on their life?”
He chuckles. “Nope.”
“Gia was bored and wanted to mess with you?”
“That feels like something you could’ve guessed,” he points out, and now I’m the one giggling.
“All right, hit me with it then. I give up.”
“A previously-thought-to-be-extinct beaver has been chewing it.”
I stare at him, gobsmacked. “I’m sorry but . . . you’re joking, right?” He shakes his head. “How did you even find this out?”
“I saw them,” he says, raising his hands in defeat and taking another swig of his drink.
“There’s a stream that runs through Gia’s property, not far from where the cows are, since that’s where they drink.
And I guess in recent years there’s been sightings of these beavers across southern Tuscany for reasons no one seems to understand. ”
“Okay, but again, how do you get from ‘There’s some beavers here’ to ‘The beavers are hanging with the cows and eating the fence’?”
“When I went to check on the cows this morning, I saw them chewing the fence—”
“All right, I admit that’s pretty solid evidence—”
“—so I investigated a bit,” he continues, ignoring my nonsense.
“There’s a whole little den they’ve built on the stream.
And for some reason, they seem comfortable with the cows and the cows seem comfortable with them.
But apparently this isn’t unheard of—there’s actually this viral video from a few years ago of a beaver herding cows. ”
“This . . .” I put my hand over my eyes and rub my temples for a minute. “This cannot possibly end with a viral video of unlikely mammals bonding with each other.”
“Apparently it does,” he says, scrunching his nose and holding in a laugh.
“I was reading about it, and experts think they both find comfort in the safety of numbers, or something. But yeah. They’ve been here; they’ve been casually chewing on the fence when they’re stressed or bored. That’s the whole story.”
“No nefarious plots to screw with Gia.”
“Nope.”
“Just random repopulating beavers.”
“Well, ‘random’ is a bit dismissive. Technically it’s the Eurasian beaver, also known as Castor fiber.” At my raised eyebrows he mumbles, “I’ve been googling, and it’s interesting!” I shake my head, but he keeps going. “And it’s a nice story about nature healing!”
I laugh, doubling over, the whole thing so absurd. We’ve spent so long plotting and planning and trying to understand motives, and here it is, random all along. We might’ve had good reason to protect the cows from the hunters, but we were definitely off base about their involvement in the fence.
I guess it’s a perfect reminder that you can’t possibly guess at or plan for everything.
“Anyway,” he continues, “I went and bought some latex paint that they apparently hate and painted the fence. So that’s the end of that.”
His words sober me. It’s so final, so pat. He had a problem, he solved it. I wonder if he’ll find something similar to get back to normal after I leave.
“What?” he asks, clearly seeing my change in expression.
“I wanted to, um . . .”
I know what I need to say, but my words are failing me.
I take a deep breath and look out at the horizon as the sun sets.
It’s not hard to understand why Italians like to memorialize their poetry about sunsets and optimism and forevers when they have views like this.
When they have stories of extinct animals coming back.
When they have Campari sodas neatly stored in tiny, elegant glass bottles.
It’s all so romantic you could put it on a postcard.
And yet, for all the beauty of the Italian language, I’m maybe starting to understand that it holds a bit of melancholy in it too.
These bright, beautiful vistas can go from light to dark so quickly.
They can go up in flames. Nico may have spent his entire career perfecting a filter to keep out impurities, but even he can’t stop a fire or rogue animals or people from leaving.
“I do love you, Nico,” I finally breathe out. “I know it doesn’t change anything . . . but I needed you to know.”
He takes my hand in his and watches as our fingers dance around each other’s. He traces the lines on my palm, dipping into the grooves of every indent.
“It’s funny that you started with a fire and you’re ending with a fire,” he says quietly.
I snort. “Yeah, it’s great to bring destruction wherever you go.”
But Nico shakes his head, and I can see the start of tears glistening in his eyes. He doesn’t look at me; he’s watching our hands, watching as he keeps toying with mine, like he wants the pads of his fingers to brush across every inch of surface area.
“In a grove,” he continues, his voice still soft, “with a fire, as long as not too much burns down, once you clear away the rubble, the soil is often actually richer as a result.”
I squeeze my eyes, trying to blink back the wetness I can feel forming. Damn it, Nico. Stupid Italians and their stupid natural poetics. “You don’t have to—”
He lifts my hand and kisses it, stopping me from whatever discomfort I’m trying to wriggle out of. “Thank you for telling me,” he finally says. “Thank you for letting me see I can fall in love again. You’ve made my life richer, and I’m so grateful to love you, even if this part is going to hurt.”
He leans in to kiss me, the attempt to hold back the tears failing, small droplets making their way down his cheeks.
I kiss them all. I kiss the tears off his cheeks and on his eyes, and they mingle with mine. My heart somehow is both broken and full, knowing I got to love this man.
I’m trying to be grateful too. I’m trying to remember that I was broken in a different way when I got here—I’d always assumed I couldn’t love like this.
That I was too fierce, too bombastic, too work-focused, too unapologetic to also have real love.
I thought what John and I had was the ceiling for me.
And learning that I’m capable of so much more has been a gift.
I want to say We can make it work. I want to offer to stay. I want to ask him to come with me. I want there to be some pat solution like the paint for the fence.
But part of growth is also accepting the things that can’t change.
Maybe it was always meant to be like this.
And that’s okay. I know I would do it all over if I had the choice.
I’d knowingly burn it all down again for the chance to get a fresh perspective on who I can be.
We’ll be stronger because of each other, set aflame and reborn.
The sun flares in its final moments of setting. All the last licks of oranges and pinks in the sky are soon replaced with a dusky blue. The fire’s gone out, but a velvet canopy of stars has taken its place.
We’re lucky to have burned this bright.