Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Over dinner that night, in near-perfect Italian, Francesca’s partner of twenty years, Jefferson Albright, made a toast to Francesca.
“She is my greatest love and my greatest treasure. I never thought I’d fall in love, but she came into my life and changed my opinion about everything.
Cheers to you, my darling.” Jefferson kissed Francesca on the cheek as her friends and family cheered.
After dinner and before dessert, Francesca and her mother watched as Jefferson played card games with her grandchildren, Pino, Aurora, Nadia, Tatiana, and Teresa.
He cracked jokes with them easily and laughed at theirs, throwing his head back.
They called him “grandfather,” because in every sense of the word, that was what he was. Francesca’s heart was full.
“He’s a good man,” Francesca’s mother said, touching Francesca’s shoulder. “I’m so glad he came back into your life when the time was right.”
“I don’t know if the time is ever right,” Francesca said.
Her mother sat on the nearest sofa and rubbed lotion into her veiny hands. “It is so wonderful to get old next to someone else,” she said. “It is remarkable to watch yourself and your relationship change. It is so nice to feel the coziness that exists only with one other person.”
Francesca sat beside her mother and followed her gaze to her famous director father, a man who told stories to Allegra and Lorelei in the opposite corner.
She was overwhelmed with love for the people around her, for Jefferson, for the Italian countryside, for the plentiful food.
But as ever on her birthday, she felt that something was missing.
Alexander, Charlotte, Jack. Even Nina came into her mind from time to time, little Nina who seemed always underfoot.
“It is strange to regret so many parts of my life,” Francesca told her mother now.
“You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t,” her mother said.
“What do you regret?” Francesca asked.
Her mother closed her eyes and let her head shift from side to side.
For a moment, Francesca thought her mother was going to faint.
But then she opened her eyes. “I don’t know that I gave your brother all the love he needed.
I don’t know that I stood up for him when your father put so much pressure on him to succeed.
Sometimes I stay awake at night, playing over the events of Angelo’s childhood and wondering what about it was my fault. ”
Francesca’s chest seized with sorrow. As far as they knew, Angelo had died in the fire at the White Oak Lodge.
What she hadn’t told her mother was her suspicions about what Angelo had been up to prior to the fire, how he might have wronged her family and tainted her life.
She didn’t need to put that on her mother’s conscience.
That night after everyone left, Jefferson and Francesca held one another on the sofa and watched as a soft snow fell on the hills. It was a rarity to see snow in Italy. Francesca felt it was a beautiful gift from beyond—perhaps from a husband who’d left her behind and gone to heaven.
It was less than a month later that the pandemic broke out.
Nobody knew quite what to make of it. Francesca and Jefferson drove down empty roads and shopped in grocery stores with empty shelves.
They watched the news and held hands and promised one another they’d be safe.
They were getting up there in age, after all.
Francesca’s parents remained in their house for months, until summer finally came and brought them outside.
Francesca and Jefferson often sat drinking wine on their veranda, waving to her parents on theirs.
It was a pleasant time, if you ignored the chaos coming from the rest of the world.
She and Jefferson often said that this was one of the calmest times of their lives, that they finally had time to read everything they’d always wanted to, to think about the grand stories of their lives and feel grateful.
It wasn’t till December that Jefferson got sick.
It started as a haggard cough. Jefferson was in the kitchen, pounding his chest, as though he couldn’t get a breath. Francesca heard him from the hallway. Fear paralyzed her. When she poked her head around the corner, Jefferson gave her a look of panic.
Francesca donned two masks and threw a couple over to Jefferson.
After that, they drove to the nearest clinic so that Jefferson could get tested.
While they waited for the results, Francesca reminded him that they knew exactly what to do and how to handle this.
He was and always had been healthy. “You’ll be fine,” she said.
“Some people say they’re only sick for two or three days. I’m sure that’s how it will be.”
But Jefferson seemed only to get worse. Back at home, he slept in the guest room and coughed and coughed.
Francesca was so overwhelmed that she often forgot to eat, which was a rarity for her.
She cooked soups, stews, and broths for Jefferson and took them into his room, wearing a mask the entire time.
His color had changed. He looked pallid and worn.
Often she had to help him eat and watched, stricken, as he coughed so much of it up.
These were tremendously lonely days, days that reminded her of the months after Ronald drowned.
Back then, she’d been a mother to young children.
She’d had a purpose beyond herself. But now, she had to limit her exposure to her love.
She couldn’t touch him. She couldn’t kiss him.
She could hardly talk to him. Often at night, she sat on the sofa and stared at the television without knowing what she was watching.
A few times, her mother or father or Rosa or Barbara called, but nobody knew what to say.
So many Italians had died of COVID-19 that year.
It felt likely that Jefferson would die too.
When she finally called for an ambulance, she held Jefferson’s hand as they waited and tried not to show him how much she was crying.
“I love you so much,” she said, because she knew that once they took him to the hospital, it would be hard for her to see him, hard to let him know what she was thinking.
“You’ve been one of the greatest gifts of my life.
You saved me during one terrible time after another.
I will always be grateful to you, and I will always love you. ”
Jefferson couldn’t respond properly. His eyes searched hers, translating as much as they could. And then, the front door opened, and the healthcare workers came in, ready to take him away.
Jefferson died three days later.
After that, Francesca plunged into a horrible depression. The world felt needlessly cruel and impossible to fathom. She dreamed nightly of Jefferson, of Jack, of Angelo, of Benjamin. She felt sure that she’d been the reason they’d all died, that she’d been the poison that had stripped them of life.
A few times, Allegra and Lorelei visited her.
They tested themselves with at-home COVID tests and made sure they were healthy, then sat with her on the veranda with a bottle of wine, watching winter transform into spring.
It was 2021, a full year after the pandemic began, and the earth was much less populated than it had been.
“Have you heard from any of your other siblings?” Francesca asked, wondering if anyone else in her family had passed away. Wouldn’t she be able to sense it if one of her other children had died?
Allegra and Lorelei shook their heads but checked their phones for social media profiles of Alexander, Charlotte, and even Nina, who was an anthropologist married to another anthropologist, a fact that thrilled Francesca.
“She was always a little smarty-pants,” Allegra said, using English for the first time in ages.
Lorelei laughed. “I remember she learned to read really early. We couldn’t believe it.”
“She used to read to Jack, remember?” Allegra said, her eyes shining.
“She chased Jack everywhere,” Francesca remembered, her heart thumping.
“Anthropology is a fascinating career choice,” Allegra said. “I wonder if it has anything to do with how little we understand what happened all those years ago.”
“A way of analyzing the past without analyzing your own past?” Lorelei suggested.
“Yes. It’s a way of getting answers when answers seem beyond you,” Allegra said.
Francesca squeezed her eyes shut, thinking, None of the answers in the world will bring the people we love back from the grave.
But she understood what they meant. It was awful to live in the darkness.
It was horrible not to know what your life had meant, especially at the end.
Maybe one day she’d be brave enough to look into what happened at the White Oak Lodge.
Maybe one day she’d take Jefferson’s treasure map and chart a course through the tunnels—for his memory, for her children’s.