But there was still more to see: the grounds and villa at Cara Mia, and an afternoon in the kitchen. James had made special arrangements to bring out Chef Andreas from the V, and the chef was certainly eager to cook for the famous Isabella, and more than comfortable having Dakota function as his girl Friday.
“Thanks, Dad,” said Dakota when she found out.
“I always try, Dakota,” said James. “You may not realize it, but I do.”
By the late afternoon, the guests were streaming in: cast, crew, and all sorts of famous friends of Isabella’s, both American and European. But Dakota was far more interested in meeting Roberto’s family. She especially liked it when he called her his girlfriend in front of his grandfather.
“And this is Allegra,” said Marco, introducing his shy, brown-haired elementary-school-age daughter to Anita and Dakota. Allegra hid behind an older woman who stood beside her.
“And this is my grandmother,” said Roberto. Once again, a flurry of handshakes and head nods as Anita began a round of introductions to everyone in the New York group. Marco’s mother—Roberto’s grandmother—was a very petite woman with deep olive skin and wide-set dark eyes. Aha, thought Dakota, now I know where he gets those gorgeous eyes.
“Welcome,” said Paola Toscano. She, like Marco, seemed delighted to have a horde of guests descend upon their picturesque corner of the world. “Cara Mia has been in my family for generations, and I’m so delighted to share it with you.”
“Thank you,” said Anita. “You’re very kind to open up your home.”
She’d had a wonderful rest the night before, her bed plush and comfortable. Anita had cried for several days, in her suite with Marty, feeling at a loss: everyone had found something she was looking for in Italy this summer. Except for her.
Acceptance sounds more graceful than it is, Anita thought to herself. It was its own battle, the challenge to let go, to recognize when grasping onto a dream had become its own curse.
So how to say good-bye to a forty-year-old burden? Anita took the postcards she’d loved, and hated, and kept in her junk drawer, and kept in her heart, and she gave them to Marty and asked him to burn them. He promised he would, and, finally, she slept.
Catherine went back and forth on the idea. To wear or not to wear. The photo shoot was done, the proofs on their way to the creative director. But one look at Catherine in the Phoenix, and Isabella would know she’d been had. In the end, though, she wanted Marco to know. “Look at what my friend Georgia did for me,” she would say. “She showed me how to bring myself back to life. She made me this dress with her very own hands and stitched it together with enough power to kickstart me on my journey.”
“You are ethereal,” said Marco as he saw Catherine enter the garden, the golden dress on her body and her blond hair piled high on her head, tendrils spilling loose. “You are like a queen.”
“Thank you,” said Catherine. “I’ve always been prone to flattery.”
“Flattery is fake,” said Marco. “I tell you facts.”
And that’s what they discussed, strolling through the vineyard, as the rest of the group sampled the food and the beautiful wine and even tried to dance to Isabella’s DJ stylings.
“I came to Italy to run away from some mistakes,” admitted Catherine. “But rushing into a relationship could very well just be one more.”
“Then we should not do that,” he said.
“I do this thing,” said Catherine. “I bury myself in my relationships. I tend to lose who I really am, and I’m not sure I quite know how to stop doing that. But I’m learning.”
“I can wait,” said Marco. “I’m a winemaker, for God’s sake. I know enough to let possibility ripen in its own time.”
By midnight, Anita had grown tired of the party, and its loud Isabella music. She sampled all the pastries Dakota had participated in making, of course, and she kept an eye out for Ginger because Dakota was very busy charming Roberto’s family. But soon enough Ginger was put to bed and Anita had had enough of the hubbub.
“Buonasera,” she heard Marco’s voice boom just as she was sneaking away from the festivities. “Come and meet my wonderful American friends.”
“I’m going to bed before I have to meet any more people,” she whispered to Dakota. “Tell everyone that at seventy, I have to get my beauty sleep.”
“But you’re seventy-eight,” said Dakota.
“Never correct Anita when she’s lying about her age, Dakota,” said Catherine, coming up to them and looking more relaxed than Dakota had ever seen her. “And I thought you’d figured everything out this summer.”
“Good night, girls,” said Anita, before Catherine reached out and took her arm. “One last drink with us, Anita. A toast to the summer.”
“Yeah,” said Dakota. “Let’s get Lucie and Dad over here, as well. Where the heck are they?” She scanned the outside area.
“They’re on the dance floor,” said Roberto. “The two of them are doing that old-fashioned robot dance.”
“Oh, I’m horrified,” said Dakota, not in the least serious. “Why don’t we go and have an Isabella-style dance-off with them?”
“And then we’ll toast,” said Catherine. “Right, Anita?”
Just then, Marco finally caught up with their group, escorting an attractive older woman on his arm.
“Nona!” said Roberto with enthusiasm. “My girlfriend and I are going dancing.” Dakota turned, expecting to see Paola again. Instead, she saw a slim, silver-haired woman who looked vaguely familiar. Had she seen her at the party earlier in the evening? Catherine understood more quickly and immediately put both of her arms around Anita as the older woman began to shake and keen.
There, on Marco Toscano’s arm, stood the woman who’d once been a New Yorker named Sarah Schwartz.
Anita had finally found her sister.
“I can’t believe it,” said Marco moments later, looking from one woman to the other. They looked similar, but then again they were also women of a mature age. And men didn’t always pay enough attention past a certain point. “All this time looking for your sister, and she is my wife’s mother. It’s unbelievable. Now you are truly a part of our family!”
“It’s like that game,” said Dakota. “How if you know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody, then you all know each other.”
“Six degrees of separation,” said Catherine. “Because maybe what we look for is close to us all along.”
“Maybe I should have asked more questions,” said Anita, seeming at first to talk to the group but really meaning her words just for Sarah.
“You’re finally here,” said Sarah, a petite and beautiful silver-haired woman, as she hung on to Marco.
“Thank goodness Anita’s just my surrogate grandmother,” whispered Dakota to Roberto as they watched the two women hug and whisper to each other, forty years of conversation coming out all at once. “Or you and I would have some real problems!”
Back in New York, Darwin and Rosie had a beautiful day playing with Cady and Stanton. They looked through Darwin’s charity afghans, and Rosie knit several rows. They left the babies with Dan and lunched at Sarabeth’s, stocking up on some good marmalade to take home, and then they popped into Walker and Daughter to select even more yarn for Darwin. Her maternity leave was drawing to a close, she was deeply tired, and yet she’d made great notes for her new research project. And then there was her charity knitting quest, which was going spectacularly well. All in all, it was a fabulous summer, even if she hadn’t gone to another country and had endured an extended visit from Mrs. Leung.
Rosie, on the other hand, seemed tired, thought Darwin. She picked up coffees for the two of them and one for Peri, and walked upstairs to the shop, where Peri was just finishing up one of the lessons she taught on the weekends. She waved when she saw them come in.
“More yarn?” she asked, having already set aside a pile that Darwin had requested by phone.
“Yup,” said Darwin. “I think I m
ay officially retire once I win this year.”
“The greats never retire,” Peri observed, saying her good-byes to some of her students. “They just live in their glory forever.”
“Girls,” said Rosie. “Where did the bathroom go?”
“I took it out,” said Peri. “The entire back office went during the reno.”
“Knitting shops aren’t really using-the-restroom kind of places,” said Darwin. “It’s not a Starbucks.”
“Well, that’s all well and good,” said Rosie. “But I could use a little refreshing. Splash some cold water on my face.”
Peri pulled out her apartment key. “For Lucie’s mother, I couldn’t refuse,” she said. “The bathroom is the second door to the right. Don’t look at the sink in the kitchen—my breakfast dishes are in there!”
“Breakfast dishes?” said Darwin. “My kitchen sink is currently playing host to my breakfast, lunch, and dinner dishes from yesterday.”
“No more mothers, hey?”
“Just the one,” said Darwin. “And she is me. No one pays extra for prompt service so I do what I can when I can.”
Ten minutes later, Rosie returned the key to Peri, and Darwin picked up her week’s purchases. The shop telephone rang as they were about to leave.
Peri covered the handset with her mouth, a combination of excitement and surprise on her face. “Italian Vogue,” she mouthed. “Interview.”
Quickly, Darwin dragged over a chair to the corner and encouraged Peri to sit down. Then she took over trying to run the register—a job she’d never done before—to help the last remaining customers of the day. Rosie helped by tidying the bins and sorting colors.
“Wowee!” shrieked Peri when she hung up the phone half an hour later. “They’re doing a piece on me in the magazine. My bags are in the pages, and then a mini-profile, too.”
“Let’s celebrate,” said Darwin. “I’ve got to get home but let’s pick up a bottle of wine for you and go back to my apartment.”
“I’ll make a little sauce,” said Rosie. “We can have noodles.”
It was a date. They left as soon as the shop was empty. There was no need for jackets on a humid August evening in Manhattan, and so Peri didn’t go up to her apartment one floor above the shop. Which was unfortunate. Because Rosie had turned the faucet on and then forgotten why or how to turn it off. The water in Peri’s bathroom sink was filling faster than it could drain: Walker and Daughter was about to drown.
It was only a matter of time.
thirty-two
“Just because I wanted to sell the shop didn’t mean I wanted it gone!” Dakota had screamed as they packed; she didn’t bother to hide her tears on the plane. The lazy weekend of celebrations had ceased for Catherine, James, Dakota, and Marty upon receiving Peri’s call: an ocean of water had seeped from her apartment through the walls and the ceiling into the shop, leaking onto the yarn and the handbags.
“The floor is under a layer,” said Peri. “I think the faucet ran for at least six hours, possibly more.” It hardly seemed fair: she spent so much of her time babysitting the shop and then when she finally enjoys an evening off . . .
They barely had a moment to thank Roberto and Marco before the group was racing for the airport.
“It’s not gone, exactly,” said Catherine. “It’s just a little wet. A lot wet.” But of course she didn’t know what they’d find when they got back to their beloved little yarn shop at Seventy-seventh and Broadway.
“I don’t understand how Lucie’s mother could just leave a tap running,” said Dakota. “That makes no sense.”
“I know,” said Catherine, putting an arm around Dakota. “It seems there’s a lot more that’s broken than drywall and pipes.” She didn’t say anything further, knowing that Lucie’s brothers were taking Rosie to the doctor on Monday in New York. Lucie had been blown away to learn of the incident, forced to confront some hard truths about her mother.
They didn’t stop to go to their homes, but instead took two taxis—they couldn’t fit all Catherine’s luggage into one car—straight to the shop. From the outside, all looked fine: the sign was in the tall window, the hours clear. It was Monday, the store’s regular day to be closed. And closed it was.
Peri was wearing gum boots and gloves when they arrived, gliding through a layer of still water that looked dirty, a sump pump going in one corner. KC was trying to lay out yarn in single rows of skeins to dry them out, or take stock of what was ruined by writing it down on a clipboard, her feet also in boots. Darwin was busy calling the service people on the phone and trying to dry business papers with a hair dryer at the same time. All around the store, streaks of dark water stains decorated the walls, leaving behind brownish rings. The wall of handbags was damaged more than any other, the clear acrylic shelves popping out of the wall in several places and floating around in the low layer of water in others. Most of the bags themselves—especially the newest computer cases that Peri had made—appeared to be wet, stained, or otherwise bloated. They were piled on top of the center table, wrapped in between layers of striped towels, waiting.
“What are we going to do?” cried Peri, as James, Catherine, Marty, and Dakota clambered up the stairs two at a time and hesitated, mouths wide open, in the doorway. All her hard work, her redesign, her bags, her years of looking after Georgia’s shop, lay dripping. Coated in tap water, courtesy of Lucie’s mom, Rosie.
But no one had the answer.
“Oh, Dakota,” Peri whispered, the exhaustion and upset clearly visible in her puffy eyes. “What’s happened to our store?”
And even James and Catherine were speechless as Dakota, who had been unable to keep herself together for the entire plane trip from Rome, waded right into the now cold water and held Peri as she wept.
Anita called Marty every few hours to check on her beloved Georgia’s store. She couldn’t make the flight, of course, because of her phobia. And now was her time to sit with her sister and listen to all the details she’d missed for forty years. To commiserate with her on losing a daughter just like she’d lost Georgia, and to grieve for the niece she’d never had a chance to know. Roberto and Allegra’s mother. And to reacquaint herself with Roberto not just as Dakota’s pleasant boyfriend but as her own grandnephew. She had been looking only for Sarah but she found an entire family just waiting. Connected to her, waiting for her. Thanks to the Friday Night Knitting Club. It was a fluke, of course. But then again, thought Anita, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was a bit of guidance from Georgia. After all, from Lucie’s job to Catherine’s wine connection to James’s work at the hotel . . . everything had just fallen into place. Leading them here. To Italy and to each other.
“I went on to England initially,” Sarah explained. “I sent the postcard and I figured you’d come for me. But then you didn’t.”
Anita looked down and blushed. There would be a place for her to explain her actions and ask for understanding, but for now, it was Sarah’s opportunity to share.
“I changed my name a long time ago,” she said. “I figured if I’d been tossed aside, I might as well.”
“We didn’t find those records,” said Anita. “We looked all over Europe.”
Sarah looked thoughtfully at her older sister. “Anita,” she said. “I changed my name in New York.”
Anita was shocked. It had never occurred to her to look for records on her sister in her own backyard.
“Then I went to England after the name change,” said Sarah. “There were different countries over the years, and then I met a good-looking Italian man while I was waitressing,” said Sarah. “He was handsome, and sweet, and he gave me a home and a family.”
“Everything,” said Anita. “Everything I took away.”
“Our only daughter married Marco over twenty years ago, and those were such beautiful days,” said Sarah. “I’ve spent much of my time here at the villa ever since. Even after our daughter passed away and left us to worry along without her.”
“And your h
usband?” asked Anita.
“He’s at home, in fact,” said Sarah. “Probably asleep in his chair. Roberto could not convince him of the value of meeting the singer Isabella.”
“I am stunned,” said Anita. “But I just don’t understand why you always sent those blank postcards.”
“Why, Anita, isn’t it obvious? I simply felt better believing I was still connected to you,” said Sarah. “But we’re getting so much older. I sent the last one from the village—it’s practically a homing device. A picture of the famous camellia festival.”
Vaguely, Anita remembered Catherine mentioning something about flowers being on the postcard. All along, the clue had been there.
“Still, when I didn’t hear from you, I thought that was its own reply,” said Sarah. “Or worse.”
Anita leaned forward and giggled. “I know. I thought you were gone, too,” she said, her face a smile of relief for a few moments. Then she became serious.
“It doesn’t seem fair, you know, that people aren’t around forever. Because when it’s good, it’s great.”
“And when it’s bad . . .” Sarah let her voice drop off. “I missed out on Mother and Father, of course.”
“I know,” said Anita, wishing they’d never have to talk about the hard stuff. The people who weren’t there. “My hasty decision cut you out of everything.”
“And the boys,” said Sarah. “My daughter never knew her cousins. Nathan was always so stern!”
“He remains obstinate,” said Anita. “In that regard, he’s like me. He seems to think he’s got the weight of the world on his shoulders. That he has to referee for everyone.”
“Do you still knit?” asked Sarah.
“I do,” said Anita, smiling. “Maybe you could help me finish my wedding coat. That way Marty won’t have to wait forever for the ceremony.”