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She is silent as I swallow the knot in my throat. “I don’t know how to cut out what has formed around him in my heart. I don’t know how to treat it. How to cure myself of it. And I wouldn’t want to.”

Diana studies me through the steam for a long moment. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that. I’m not sure.

Then her voice rises to the surface, like she has to force the words out. “Stir. Bottom of the pot, always moving. It sticks the minute you stop.”

So I stir.

“My mother made this sauce during the war,” she says, back to chopping basil, conversational again. “The recipe survives generations. It is stronger than all of us.”

Guess we’re moving on. “And your husband? Nine days.”

“Nine days.” The chopping slows, and something younger enters her voice. She points her knife at the pot. “The sauce did half the courting.”

“By the smell, I don’t doubt that one bit.”

We work until noon. She shows me how to make the focaccia, corrects my basil tearing twice, and adjusts my posture. When Sarah comes in to steal a crust, Diana catches her with a floury handprint on her shoulder, and the three of us stand in a row by the pot for the official taste test.

Heaven in a pot, and it’s not even finished yet.

My phone starts buzzing from texts on the counter after lunch, while the sauce settles into its long afternoon simmer.

Adeline: Call me when you’re alone. Actually no. Read first.

A man called the department on Thursday for you. He claimed to be from a physician credentialing service and requested details like your employment dates, leave status, and CV.

Meredith responded with the usual denial. The next day, a different man approached the main desk in person. Rosa reported that he took a photo of the directory with your name and then left without providing his own contact information.

People are asking questions about you that I can’t answer. I don’t know what to say. I tried to respond with HR-speak, but everyone is suspicious. I will cover for you forever, you know that, but I don’t know what lie to tell. What’s happening?

I read the texts three times. It makes no sense. I’m a doctor on vacation. Why are people snooping?

A credentialing service that keeps pushing. A man with a camera at the desk where I used to pick up my mail. Is this Lupo’s world—checking his wife’s story—or someone else monitoring me? Either could be bad news.

So I type out: Probably routine verification, I did just get married abroad, HR gets weird.

Deleting it takes one second, because Adeline is smarter than that. I can’t insult her intelligence. It would be disrespectful to give her that bullshit.

I settle on: I’m on vacation, and everyone’s acting weird about it. Log whoever bothers you, get pics if you can. I’ll sort it out when I get back.

I stand at the window over the sink. Two of Lupo’s men walk the same fence line as always, rifles casually slung, boots tracing the familiar worn path. It’s just scenery. All of it. Even the guns bother me less now.

Dinner takes up the evening. The sauce is a success—Nick even goes for thirds and kisses Diana’s hand to thank her—and Diana welcomes the praise, telling the table that her new assistant looks promising. And all the while, I’m wondering who the hell is bugging my co-workers back in Boston.

After, in the golden hour, Sarah requests the walk.

Down the cypress drive to the gate and back, her rules. We count lizards, we do not hurry, and the gravel crunch must be maximized by dragging our feet without tripping.

The guards at the gate have learned to report the lizard count from their end, gravely, on Sarah’s clipboard posted at the gatehouse. Tonight’s forecast from Beppe is seven.

“Nah,” Sarah says. “We can beat that.”

Tonight, she’s narrating a saga about Pip’s ongoing feud with the seagull, and partway through the lizard census, her small fingers thread through mine. They settle in without making a big deal about it, and she keeps narrating without a hitch.

“…and when we get back to our house, Pip gets to sit on the piano.”

Our house.

She says it and keeps walking, dragging her feet, counting lizard number six, while the pronoun clangs through me. Not the house. Not Nonna’s house.