“Sweet Bay Pizza on Shell Street,” Marlene said without hesitation. “It’s been there for as long as I’ve lived on Sanibel. The Carlucci family owns it. The pizzas are wonderful, and the sit-down service is just as warm. You can’t go wrong.”
“Sweet Bay Pizza,” Darius repeated. “Thank you.”
Isabel looked tired but content. Emma was already running up the porch steps to peer in through the front windows. Penny was stretching her back with her hands on her hips.
“Go on, Darius,” Isabel told him. “We’ll get settled in. Bring back something good.”
“Pepperoni,” Emma called over her shoulder.
“Pepperoni,” Darius agreed.
“And ice cream, please, Uncle Darius,” Emma turned and grinned. “We need to celebrate the start of our summer vacation.”
“Ice cream it is,” Darius said, with a laugh.
After he finished unloading the trunk, Darius climbed back into the SUV and pulled out of the drive, leaving the women to walkinto the house together. The sun had begun to drop in earnest now, the sky going pink and orange and a deep, tender lavender at the edges. Darius drove slowly back along Bay View Drive, past Hearts Hotel still glowing on its rise, past the small cluster of shops at the end of Bay View Drive, and turned onto Shell Street.
Sweet Bay Pizza sat about halfway down the small business street, its windows lit warm and yellow against the bluing evening. Darius parked along the curb outside, climbed out of the SUV, and walked up to the door.
He reached for the door handle just as a woman approached from the other direction.
He stopped, took a step back, and pulled the door open for her instead.
The woman paused, looked up at him, and a small, surprised smile broke across her face.
“Thank you,” she said softly.
She stepped inside ahead of him.
Darius followed her in. The pizza place was small and warm and family-run in the particular way that only a place that had been there for forty years could be. Red and white checked tablecloths. A glass case of pizza slices in the front window. An old man behind the counter in a flour-dusted white apron, talking quietly to a teenage girl at the register who looked enough like him to be his granddaughter.
The woman ahead of Darius walked to the menu board on the back wall and stopped to read it. She had her car keys loopedaround one finger of her left hand and a small soft leather wallet held against her side with her elbow.
Darius walked up beside her and let his eyes travel up the menu board, too. He read it through twice without really seeing any of it.
She was tired. He could tell that without looking directly at her. She was tired in a particular way he had noticed before, in women who’d had a long day and were still somehow standing graceful inside it. There was a small line between her brows that looked like it had been put there earlier in the afternoon and hadn’t quite gone away.
He turned slightly toward her.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” Darius said quietly, “but you look like a local. Could I ask you for a recommendation?”
She turned. Her eyes were warm and a soft brown, tired like the rest of her face, but they smiled at him with an immediate, easy kindness that caught him a little off guard.
“Of course,” she said. “Who’s it for?”
“My sister, my great-niece, an old family friend, and myself,” Darius answered. “My sister doesn’t eat much these days. My great-niece is eleven and would eat pizza every meal of every day if we let her. My friend will want something a little more grown-up. I’m easy.”
She laughed gently. The sound of it landed somewhere in his chest in a way he didn’t quite know what to do with.
“All right,” she said. “A few questions. Anchovies or no?”
“No anchovies,” Darius said firmly.
“Good answer,” she said. “Anyone a vegetarian?”
“No.”
“Does your great-niece eat pineapple on pizza?”
