“Let’s just let her stretch out,” said Marco, moving over a couple of feet and motioning Lucie to move down the banquette, as well. She did so, then adjusted Ginger so she was lying down, her head in Lucie’s lap. Ginger fell asleep instantly.
“Thank you,” said Lucie. “I’m glad I get to stay.”
“I am happy you are here, as well,” said Marco. “The little girl reminds me of my own when she was younger. Allegra.”
“That’s my sister,” explained Roberto helpfully as Dakota nodded at this most illuminating piece of information. “She’s ten.”
“So you’re married, then?” asked Catherine, before reminding herself she was very much not interested.
“Yes, at one time,” said Marco. “My wife was a beautiful lady. Clever. But she passed away a few years ago in a car accident.”
“Let’s talk about something else, Papà,” implored Roberto.
“Of course, it’s a happy night,” said Marco. “We had a nice drive from the countryside, and then we get to meet all of you. Especially Miss Dakota, who let me kiss her hand.” He raised a glass and drank, having selected his own wine off the menu, of course.
“So where is your daughter now?” asked Lucie. “Is she in Rome with you?”
“No,” said Roberto. “She’s at the sea, with our grandmother.”
“That must be nice. Do you like the sea?” asked Dakota, with visions of Roberto in swimming trunks dancing in her head.
“I like all sorts of things,” he said. “Especially meeting new people and practicing my English.”
“You speak very well,” said Lucie. “I know only a few words of Italian from my mother.”
“Your mother was Italian?” asked Marco. “How fabulous. She must know how to cook, I believe.”
“Oh, yes,” said Lucie, regaling him with tales of her mother’s baked ziti and chicken parmigiana. “You know, a lot of Italian-American dishes, that kind of thing. My brothers and I liked it.”
“Of course,” said Marco. “Now, tell me about your brothers.”
“They’re all fairly mad at me,” said Lucie. “They think I should stay home and look after my mom. She’s getting . . . forgetful.”
“But you have important work to do,” said Marco.
For a moment, Lucie thought he might be mocking her. But then she could see that he was really, truly paying attention. Not something she ever anticipated happening when Catherine Anderson was in the room. But Catherine was practically morose, eating only a few bites of the food put in front of her, and hardly saying a word. It was nice, Lucie thought now, to have someone who was interested. She took a big sip of wine.
“This is delicious,” she said to Marco, which clearly pleased him. “Your family has great talent.”
“Yes,” said Marco, though it didn’t feel immodest when he said so. “Though this one here wants to be an airline pilot. No grapes for him, he says.”
Roberto shrugged and tilted his head shyly.
“How can you not want to work the land of your family?” asked Lucie. “I wish I had some sort of legacy.”
“Because maybe he wants to do his own stuff,” interjected Dakota. “There’s no obligation to do what your parents did.”
“What do you say, Catherine?” asked Marco. “You should join our debate. It’s a healthy discussion.”
“It’s not my place to have an opinion,” she said. “So I don’t. But don’t forget you’ve always got your Allegra. She just might take over Cara Mia if you give her the chance.”
The hour was late when they all returned to the V. But a pleasant message awaited them in their rooms: Anita and Marty had arrived! They hadn’t sent word that they’d even be coming to Rome, and Dakota was ecstatic.
“Let’s go see them now,” said Dakota, expecting Catherine to be the cooler head who would prevail.
“Totally,” said Catherine. She was very eager to see Anita, to put the awkwardness of the evening behind her, and to tell Anita about all the wedding shoes she’d been scouting out. Catherine had taken her bridesmaid duties even more seriously since the Nathan affair. She wanted very much to keep Anita’s favor.
Like two kids up too late, they got off the elevator and crept up toward Anita and Marty’s room, shhhhing each other all along the way. Instead of knocking, they scratched at the door, not wanting to awaken Anita if she was already sleeping.
“About time!” boomed Marty as he let them in. “Anita’s been microwaving the hot chocolate she got sent up from room service for the past half-hour. I was beginning to think I’d never get a chance to drink it.”
“Hi, Marty,” said Dakota, before going straight to Anita’s waiting arms for a big hug. Catherine wished she could do the same, but instead kissed Anita delicately on the cheek.
“So you want to hear all about what I’ve been doing?” said Dakota. “For one thing, my dad has been trying to turn me into an architect. Lots of information about drawing and stuff like that. But that’s okay, because I’ve also made friends with the chef in the kitchen. I go down there whenever I can. For another, we just had the most amazing dinner, and there was this guy named Roberto? And he’s staying in the city for a while because his grandmother’s got an apartment and his father said he could stand to practice his English and I said, ‘Okay,’ because he’s very, very cute.”
“You should breathe, dear,” said Anita, handing the cups of hot chocolate around as there was another knock at the door.
“This is exciting,” said Marty, running his fingers through his thick, white hair. “A real party.”
“Anyway, so this guy, Roberto . . .” began Dakota, trailing off as she saw her father at the door. “Later. Don’t say anything.”
James greeted Marty and Anita, then sat down on the sofa.
“Dakota, I’ve decided we should go on a field trip tomorrow,” he said now. “You and I will go to the Colosseum—I’ve arranged a great tour—and I can show you a bit about how it’s built. How does that sound?”
“I might have to look after Ginger,” she said dully. She’d had high hopes for spending the day with Roberto, who told her about the flower market in the Campo de’ Fiori and how he loved to wander through. And, even though he hadn’t come right out and said so, his words seemed to indicate to Dakota that he might just enjoy her company.
“No, I sent Lucie an e-mail earlier today and she BlackBerryed back that she doesn’t need you in the morning,” said James. “So we’re free and clear. And you’ve been really eager to go and you’ve been working so hard. I thought some father-daughter bonding was in order.” He laughed, obviously pleased with himself.
“Great idea!” said Anita, and Dakota knew she was sunk. She pretended to care about the nighttime view—which ordinarily she could watch for hours, the lights of Rome twinkling—in order to get away from everyone exclaiming about how wonderful the next day would be for her.
Besides being smart, funny, good-looking, and into the same music as she was, Roberto had another good quality, Dakota had noticed. He actually talked to her. And now she was going to have to miss the first day of the rest of her life simply because her dad felt lonely. Sometimes life just sucked.
At the very least, she’d expected Catherine to come to her rescue. But she was clearly preoccupied with catching up with Anita and hearing all the details of her travels.
“The trip across the Atlantic was fine,” Anita was saying. “Very pleasant.”
“The problem began when we arrived in the UK,” said Marty. “The investigator couldn’t have been nicer.”
“And he did so much research,” said Anita. “Took everything we gave him—her name, passport info, her profession as a bookkeeper—and he pieced together a pretty fair representation of my sister’s whereabouts in the late sixties.”
“We found a former coworker of hers,” said Marty. “Retired now, of course. But she remembered Sarah right as rain.”
“That was a very good day,” said Anita. “But there were
a lot of leads that didn’t amount to anything.”
“And let’s not forget the private eye had the postcards,” said Marty. “And they seem to track her movements, we think. They start out in England . . .”
“And go to Paris. Lots of Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower. But then there were multiple ones from southern Austria, from southern France, from Yugoslavia, and from Greece. And finally the PI looks through the entire pile and starts separating them out and looks up at us and says he thinks it is odd that he sees so many repeats and yet only one from Italy: the Colosseum. Years ago.”
James gave Dakota a meaningful jab hearing that, and she tried to force a pleasant expression on her face.
“I don’t get it,” said Catherine.
“What do all those other countries have in common?” said Anita.
“They border Italy,” mumbled Dakota, hoping to wrap things up so she could fire off a text to Roberto before it was too late.
“Exactly,” said Marty. “There’s only the one postcard from Rome. But all the other ones are sent from places you could get to by a train’s journey.”
“Just outside the Italian border,” added Anita.
“She gave away her location,” said Marty. “And maybe she got nervous. She wasn’t ready. But still, she kept it up with the postcards. Reaching out to her big sister. That’s a message unto itself.”
“Except for this year,” said Anita, her smile a little tight.
Catherine felt a growing unease in her stomach.
“The good news is that we’re confident about this theory,” said Anita. “I think she’s here. In Rome. And starting tomorrow, I am going to find Sarah. Finally. I am going to bring my baby sister home.”
twenty-six
Standing inside the Colosseum, listening to the tour guide explain the system of sails that provided roof cover for the Romans as they watched the gladiators battle animals and one another, was more fascinating than Dakota had expected. But even more surprising—and more than a wee bit disconcerting—was seeing just how excited her father was to be standing in an architectural marvel. She’d figured he’d be excited, but he was completely over the top, engaging the tour guide in a long and detailed discussion of the fact that the stadium could be filled or emptied of people in a matter of minutes, thanks to the numbering system of the doorways. And the arches. He could not stop talking about the math behind the arches.
Yep, he was that guy. The one on tour who puts up his hand every thirty seconds to either show off the guidebook he memorized and make his own point, or keep asking questions until long after you really needed a bathroom break.
Dakota didn’t mind as much as she might have, however, because she’d made contact with Roberto. And no, his interest wasn’t all in her imagination: he’d invited himself along when she told him that she was going to take Ginger to enjoy a picnic that afternoon. Every day she spent with Ginger, Dakota slathered her in sunscreen and a ball cap and together the two of them were tourist adventurers. They’d tossed coins over their shoulder at the Trevi Fountain, climbed down into the ruins of an ancient Mithraic temple under the Church of San Clemente, wandered around the Baths of Caracalla—Ginger was quite certain she preferred having a tub all to herself, she declared—and ate plates of pasta at tiny hole-in-the-wall cafés whenever the mood struck them. A week earlier, they’d spent twenty minutes watching a fascinating parade that shut down the street—there were flags, and lots of children tromping along in the road, and a marching group of police leading the way. They waved at folks, who waved back.
“When are the floats coming, Dakota?” Ginger had asked.
Uncertain, Dakota stopped an Italian passerby and inquired.
“That’s not a parade,” he said, in halting English. “It’s the Communists. A rally.”
“Oh,” said Dakota, before explaining to Ginger that there would be no clowns that afternoon.
But even the rally felt new and different—maybe even dangerous!—and therefore thrilling. The sounds, the smells, the lifestyle: Rome was such a change from New York. Dakota felt older and more sophisticated just by being here. But she also savored the freedom of not knowing what each day would bring: there was no shop to go to, no discussions to have with Peri, no focus on yarn. Funny thing was, she was doing more knitting now than she had in ages. She’d even found a tiny shop not too far from the hotel, and bought all the supplies she needed: if she didn’t have her own kitchen to bake in, she was going to knit herself a cupcake. And a muffin. And maybe even a loaf of pound cake. What was she going to do with all of these items? She didn’t know. Maybe give them to Ginger to play with. But ever since she saw that Roman woman knitting earlier in the summer, she felt a renewed sense of enjoyment when she sat down to it. Because she didn’t have to do it. She wanted to. Everything in Rome was better.
And now there was Roberto.
“Dakota?” James was peering at her and Dakota could see that she was standing alone, the tour guide and the rest of the people scurrying far ahead. “Are you feeling okay?”
“Just imagining mock navy battles in the amphitheater, Dad,” she said, feeling embarrassed. The last thing she wanted to do was tell her father she was going to spend time with Roberto. Without question, he’d come up with a reason why she needed to bring Ginger to the office and make her draw pictures while Dakota did some sort of computer research. And with Ginger around, it would be all but impossible to slip down to the kitchen and visit Andreas, the pastry chef, who often let her sample a new creation.
James never seemed to notice if she’d been gone awhile.
But even the thought of a fresh pastry—she could practically smell the raw dough!—was not as appealing as an afternoon walking through the park with Roberto. And Ginger, too, of course. She’d have to be careful not to get distracted and lose her, wondering, for a brief moment, about asking Lucie to buy one of those child leashes.
James put his arm around his daughter and looked down at her, though she wasn’t that much shorter anymore.
“What a great morning together, right?” he asked. James remembered well the early days of getting to know Dakota, when she was just entering her teens and a bundle of energy. She was a happy, happy kid, he thought now, one who’d grown progressively quieter and more inward as the years went on. Everyone missed Georgia. But he thought of himself when he was in college, eager to figure out who he was and who he wanted to be, away from the opinions and habits of his parents. There were girls, too. Girls he liked, girls who liked him, girls who he wished liked him more. Those had been exciting days, when everything new stretched before him. This was likely the beginning of it, then, the long period of not really knowing Dakota until, hopefully, she came back to him when she was older. She had already started keeping secrets. At least that’s what it felt like. But he supposed it was just part of her life that didn’t involve him. It didn’t seem fair, really: he wanted to know everything there was to know about Dakota, now and always. She was part of him. Not being able to connect with her felt like losing a part of his soul. It surprised him when she didn’t want what he desired for her. Couldn’t she see that he wanted to make his mistakes count for something and the only way to do that was to protect her from making any of her own? Stupid choices change the course of lives.
“Let’s grab a bite,” said James, leading Dakota across the street from the Colosseum to a small sidewalk café. “We can catch up.”
And then she knew: Her father wanted to “have a talk.”
They took their seats, ordered Cokes, and watched the traffic go by.
“So, Dad,” said Dakota. “What’s on your mind?”
“I thought I’d see how you were feeling about the work you’ve been doing this summer,” he began. “Like it?”
“It’s fine,” said Dakota. “But not really what I want to do with the rest of my life.”
“Well, no one is expecting you to take meeting notes for the rest of your life,” said James.
At the t
able next to them, two older women were arguing over a map. Dakota could not understand what they were saying—maybe it was German?—but she recognized the battle. One wanted to go in one direction, the other wanted to do something different. How easy it would be to tell her dad that she’d seen the light and she wanted to be an architect. Or a lawyer. Or that she was grateful for the knitting shop. His approval was right there, the smiles and hugs and happy dadness of it all, if only she gave the right answers to his unasked questions. Who are you going to be? What will you do?
Neither one of the tourist women was going to back down from her plan, that much was obvious. So why, thought Dakota, didn’t one of them just walk away? Do what she wanted anyway? What rule said she had to sit there and argue?
“It’s the office thing, Dad,” said Dakota finally, as James looked pained. “That’s not what I want.”
“You’re eighteen,” said James. “You don’t know what you want.”
“When does it all begin, then?” she asked. “The moment when I’m allowed to make my own decisions. Twenty-one? Twenty-five? When I get married? What if I never get married?”
“What are you on about?” asked James, leaning back so the waitress could bring him a plate of bruschetta that he’d ordered.
“I’m waiting,” said Dakota. “Holding on until the moment when I reveal my dreams. But I’m not so much a kid anymore.”
“You’re still very young,” said James. “You don’t know everything you think you do.”
“No, that’s just the thing,” said Dakota. “I’m starting to realize how much I don’t know. Every day in Rome is like a gift, waiting to be opened. New people, new ideas. New tastes.”
“Tastes?”
She thought about stopping, not saying it all. But then what was the point?
“I sneak down to the kitchen when I’m supposed to be filing,” Dakota said now. “Not all the time. But often enough that Andreas is pleased to see me. I even go there when Lucie’s home and I don’t have to watch Ginger.”