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“Oh right,” I murmured as I reached for the large bowl of yogurt to spoon some into a smaller monkey dish at my setting.
“You will accompany us to mass?”
I glanced up from my yogurt. “No, sorry, I don’t do organized religion.”
I sort of suspected that reply would touch off a powder keg as this house and the gardens—heck, the entirety of the city—was really big on Catholicism. I’d peeled away from that scene when I’d been fourteen, queer, and made to feel as if I were some sort of evil entity by the local priest. My father, as with most things connected to me, gave me a talk and left me to do as I pleased.
Breakfast got ugly fast. I refused to go. Ginerva insisted I attend. And Señorina Cappello looked mortified. Finally, to put our guest out of her misery, I shot to my feet, stalked out, and retired to my room, where I spent the next four hours trying to take apart my lone trunk.
Once everyone had left—Alessio and Giada had Sunday afternoons off after they had fed and carted signora to church—I snuck downstairs in search of tools. My phone had been pinging steadily all morning with likes and replies to my latest post about my discovery in the attic. So many people were happy for me. Why the hell couldn’t my family be as well?
Finding nothing in the kitchen but fresh fruit, which I chunked up and dumped into a massive bowl of yogurt, I spooned what was now brunch into my mouth as I stepped outside to continue my search. Nothing had been found in the kitchen. Maria back home had a small toolbox that she hid under the kitchen sink, a ladies toolkit she called it, so that she could find a hammer or screwdriver when one was needed.
The sky was still overcast but some breaks could be seen. The rainfall had been negligible, barely enough to dampen the driveway, but the cool moist grass felt good between my toes. Moist. Yes, I had said it. Moist. How funny people were, getting upset over a perfectly good word. I personally had nothing against the word. I rather liked it in some instances. A moist cake was good. As was a moist man.
Sighing, I made my way to the dock, knowing that I’d not see Donvino today. That made me even sadder than I’d been earlier. Sitting on the edge of the pier, I finished my yogurt as my toes skimmed the Arno, tiny fish coming to investigate my piggies from time to time. Lying back after a bit, I watched the angry clouds leaving, taking any hope for moisture for the crops with it as it rolled east. Funny that I should be feeling the pangs of loneliness so sharply today. I’d spent most of my life alone. No, strike that. Once I’d grown up, I’d done my best to have people around me but none of them really gave two shits about me. Most were there for the money or the sex or the booze. So while I wasn’t alone, I was still lonely. Cripes it sucked to be me today.
Wiping at the sudden wetness on my face, I blinked at the sun now shining down on me. Right. No blaming that on the rain. I swiped the tears away, got to my feet, and toted my empty bowl into the silent villa as the sound of church bells far off in the distance floated past on a warm, lemon-scented wind.
Tomorrow would be a better day. It had to be. It couldn’t be much worse I decided as I returned to my room, sans tools but with all the yogurt and berries in the house, my mood giving into the call of a very sad brain day spent under the covers watching old Rat Pack movies. Night came and the only person that came to visit was Lucia. We shared some yogurt, and then she curled up under the duvet with me as Robin and the 7 Hoods looped around for a second viewing.
People always let you down, but cats never did. That was fact.
***
Monday morning. Ugh.
Today I was supposed to travel to our largest farm in Umbria to meet with the manager so I could begin to be the person that everyone but me wanted me to be. I poked around in my room for as long as I could and not miss breakfast, hoping to see Donvino, but he didn’t appear.
I was beginning to suspect something was majorly off with him and me as I made my way to the back garden where my aunt and my tutor awaited me.
“Buongiorno,” I said and got some chilly replies in kind. “Is Alessio driving me today?” I asked, nodding at Giada, setting a platter of poached eggs and fried tomatoes on the table next to a pitcher of pulpy orange juice.
“No, he is taking us to our medical appointments. Donvino will take you,” Ginerva replied over her toast and blackberry jam.
My spirits lifted immediately. “Ah okay.”
I ate, rushed upstairs to spiffy up, and then jogged downstairs to pace. I waited for about ten minutes when Donvino appeared in the back garden in dark jeans, a purple tee that had the wording ACF FIORENTINA across the front, and sunglasses that he’d tucked into the neck of his T-shirt.
“Buongiorno, Signor Arlo,” he said as I rose from my chair. I got no wide smile or sassy wink. He seemed to have suddenly switched off all his charm. “Are you ready?”
“Yeah,” I answered as we stood in the garden, huge pink blooms climbing ever so artfully up a white wooden trellis to his left. Great, so we are back to Signor Arlo.
“Then we should go. It is a long drive,” he said, his sight touching mine then darting to the mossy door. “I mean, if you are ready.”
“Okay,” I snapped as a fat dove landed in a bird bath resting by a rosebush with a thousand pink buds just waiting to pop open. “What exactly is going on here?”
His dark gaze flew from the garden gate to me. “Nothing is going on. Signora asks me to take you to Umbria for meeting Signor Piravino. This is what I am doing.”
“No, no, you’re not doing just that. You’re acting as if I personally did something to slight you in some way.”
He drew up to his full height, those expressive Timotheè Chalamet eyebrows knotting. “Forgive me for offending, Signor—”
“See right there!” I pointed at him. “We had moved past all of that classist stuff. I thought we were friends, or at least becoming friends, and then I show up at your job, which seems to have pissed you off for—”
“I am not pissed off. I am not anything. Can we please go? It is a long ride and we are already late for leaving.”
“What the hell ever,” I snarled, grabbed my backpack, which I’d stuffed full of papers from the binder, and stormed around the giant ass with my chin up. “We will get to the bottom of this, though,” I said over my shoulder.
