about it. Used to get a tear in his eye. Even with me.”
“But eventually?”
“Oh, I’d heard the story before he told me. Everyone around here knew parts of it. Wiley and the boy’s mother met during a time in his life when he didn’t want anything to do with the inn. Like everyone else who grows up here, Wiley longed to escape. So he started backpacking through Europe and met a girl in Italy. Her name was Bruna. Tuscany. That was what Wiley told me. The two worked in a vineyard for a while. He said working in the vineyard was a little like working on the inn. It reminded him of it anyway. Made him long for home a little, that’s what he said.” She gestured at the Pabst can with her chin. “You’re not drinking your beer.”
“I have to drive.”
“Two beers? Come on, you’re not that big a girl.”
But he was. Ingrid could drink hard liquor for hours and show no signs of it. Simon had two beers and tried to French-kiss a light socket.
“So what happened?”
“They fell in love. Wiley and Bruna. Romantic, right? They had a boy. Aaron. A blissful story until, well, Bruna died.”
“She died?”
Enid kept still. Too still.
“How?” he asked.
“Car accident. Head-on collision on Autostrada A11, and yeah, Wiley always added that detail. Autostrada A11. I looked it up once. Don’t know why. It connects Pisa to Florence. Bruna was going to visit her family, he said. And he didn’t want to go. They had a fight about it before she left. See, Wiley was supposed to have been in the car with her. That’s what he said. So he blames himself. It’s very hard for him to talk about. He gets all choked up.”
She looked at him over her glass.
“You sound skeptical,” Simon said.
“Do I?”
“Yes.”
“Wiley tells the story with gusto. He’s quite theatrical, my husband. You’d believe every word.”
“You didn’t?”
“Oh, I believed it. But see, I also wondered why Bruna would go to visit her family and not bring her infant son. You’d do that, right? You’re a young mom, traveling the”—she made quote marks with her fingers—“‘autostrada’ to see your family. You’d take your baby.”
“Did you ask Wiley about that?”
“No, I never said anything. I mean, why would I? Who’d question a story like that?”
There was a chill in the stale-beer air. Simon wanted to ask a follow-up, but more than that, he wanted Enid to tell it. He kept silent.
“Wiley came back home after the accident. Here. The inn, I mean. He was afraid that maybe Bruna’s family would sue for custody or hold him up—they’d never been legally married or anything—so he flew to the States with the baby. They moved into the inn…”
Her voice faded out as she shrugged.
End of the story.
“So,” Simon said, “Aaron’s mother is dead.”
“That’s what Wiley says.”
“But when I asked you if she was alive, you said you didn’t know.”
“You’re a quick one, Mr. Greene.” She raised her glass and smiled. “Why the hell am I telling you any of this?”
She stared at him and waited for an answer.
“Because I have an honest face?” Simon tried.
“You look like my first husband.”
“Was he honest?”
“Shit no.” Then: “But oh, man, he was great in bed.”
“So we have something in common.”
Enid snorted. “I like you, Mr. Greene. And ah, what the hell. I can’t see how it will help you and yet…I’ve seen some strange shit. And bad stays. Bad doesn’t go away. You bury bad, it digs itself out. You throw bad in the middle of the ocean, it comes back at you like a tidal wave.”
Simon just waited.
“Do you keep your old passports?” she asked him. “I mean, after they’re expired?”
“Yes.”
In fact, Simon advised his clients to do the same, just in case they ever needed to prove they’d been someplace. He was big on saving any official paperwork, because you never knew.
“So does Wiley. Not where someone could easily find them. They’re boxed up in storage in the basement. But I found them. And you know what?”
“What?”
Enid put her hand to the side of her mouth and stage-whispered, “Wiley has never been to Italy.”
* * *
The office at Tattoos While U Wait was glass enclosed, so whoever sat in it could look out at the chairs and the artists and the waiting area and vice versa. The computer’s monitor faced a wall, however, so that while privacy was pretty much nonexistent, you couldn’t see what the person sitting at the desk may have been surfing