didn’t expect everything to be so . . . difficult.”
“It isn’t your fault.” A bus stopped on the corner below, its brakes squeaking. “But maybe we should think about adoption.”
“Of course, yes, we should,” I said, closing my eyes and feeling the snow on my cheeks. We kissed again, and I felt, suddenly, that I could be happy with the life I had then and there and could forget about the futures that might have been.
Back inside, we fell into bed together and made up for the months of separation. As I lay in Luca’s arms, I thought back to the moment I had opened the letter and the sharp feeling of foreboding that had fallen over me. If the letter had not arrived, we would never have had this time together. The premonition of danger had been wrong: the letter had brought me and Luca back together.
We showered and changed into the clothes Enzo had left. Luca put on a new shirt and the leather jacket, while I zipped into the silk dress. Everything fit except the black suede boots. This was no surprise. I had inherited my grandfather Giovanni’s feet, wide and flat, and it was never easy to find shoes that fit. I sat on the bed and looked at them, wiggling my long second toe. My ugly feet had caused me no small amount of embarrassment growing up. I never allowed anyone to touch them, and aside from Luca and my parents, no one had ever seen them. As a child, I had avoided swimming. In the summer, when I wore sandals, I always kept my socks on, something Tina, who knew how much I hated my feet, had teased me about. Luca always said I was too sensitive, that nobody would even notice, but I had never been able to feel good about them. I slipped on my boots from home, glad the dress was long enough to cover them.
“That dress is perfect,” Luca said. “You look beautiful.”
As we left, I paused before a full-length mirror. Luca was right: the clothes had the effect of transforming me. From the liquid reflection of the mirror, I saw someone else, the kind of person I’d always imagined I could be one day, after graduating and getting a job—tailored, elegant. Powerful. Alberta Montebianco. It wasn’t vanity, but recognition: I knew this woman. She had been waiting for me there, in that hotel room in Italy.
Six
Torino was not a primary destination for most tourists. It didn’t have the grand monuments of Rome or the cafés of Paris or the charming bars of Barcelona. But that night, as Luca and I walked hand in hand through the dark streets near the hotel, I had the impression that Turin, with its palazzos and small shops, was the most romantic city in the universe.
We wandered through the city without paying attention to street names, skirting the river Po before turning back in the direction of the hotel. We waded through a crowd standing before a theater and walked alongside a park, where wreaths of Christmas lights hung from lampposts, casting red and green and white halos over the sidewalk.
It was an hour or so before hunger drove us to look up one of the restaurants Enzo had programmed into the phone. We typed the address into Google Maps and five minutes later we walked into a rustic, dimly lit osteria on the Via Guiseppe Verdi. From the outside, the place appeared quiet, but when we went inside, the restaurant was nearly full. Wine racks lined the walls, bottles rising between framed photos of Alpine landscapes—deer and bear and snow-laden mountain huts. As we followed the host to a table in a back corner of the room, I saw plates of pasta, pots of fondue, and baskets of black bread on the tables. Hunger twisted through me. I hadn’t eaten for hours. I sank into my chair, in full anticipation of dinner.
When the waiter arrived, we ordered the nightly special from a handwritten card. As each dish appeared, the waiter explained the courses: antipasto, primo, secondo, and dolce. The fondue that I had spotted earlier was called bagna cauda, a bubbling bath of olive oil, anchovy paste, and garlic eaten with raw vegetables. Then came a creamy, fresh pasta called tajarin, served with a glass of white wine, a smooth, nutty Nascetta. This was followed by steak and Barolo. Then a dessert of hazelnut cake and a shot of espresso.