“She does not,” Darius said, “and she has strong feelings about people who do.”
The woman laughed again. “She and I would get along famously. All right. Does your friend like spicy?”
“Mild to medium,” Darius said. “She’s adventurous about flavors but not heat.”
The woman nodded, thinking as she looked at the menu. “Then I’d say a margherita for your sister, simple and gentle. A classic pepperoni for your great-niece. And for your friend, the caramelized onion and goat cheese, which is the family’s signature, and which I’d put up against any pizza on the island.”
“Sold,” Darius said.
“And one for you?” she asked.
“I’ll just take a slice of whatever’s in the window,” Darius said. “I’ll eat in the car on the way back.”
She smiled at him, a slow, amused smile. “Mr. Carlucci does a very good slice of plain cheese.”
“Then a slice of plain cheese it is,” Darius said.
He turned to the counter and placed the order. The old man, Mr. Carlucci, took it with the unhurried efficiency of a man who had been making pizzas for fifty years. He told Darius it would be twenty minutes, and asked if he’d like to wait inside or in his car.
“Inside,” Darius said. “Thank you.”
The woman placed her own order, a large pizza to take home, exchanged a few warm words with Mr. Carlucci that suggested she had known him for a long time, and stepped back to wait near the front beside Darius.
There was a small bench by the window. They sat, leaving a polite gap between them.
“Are you here for the summer?” she asked, after a moment of comfortable quiet.
“I am,” Darius told her. “We arrived an hour ago. We’re staying at Bay View Beach House, at the end of Bay View Drive.”
Her face lit up with recognition.
“Oh, what a lovely place,” she said warmly. “The family who owns it is wonderful. I went to high school with their daughter years ago. I know they started renting it out for the summer, and it’s usually fully booked. You must have been very lucky to get it for the summer.”
Darius opened his mouth to answer.
He hesitated.
He could have told her in that moment. He could have said that he hadn’t rented the house, that he had purchased it, that the family she remembered was no longer the family that owned it. He could have told her, gently, that the father had passed last year and the daughter had let it go. He could have done the small, kind thing of being honest with this small, kind woman in the small, warm pizza place.
He didn’t.
“It’s a beautiful house,” Darius said instead. “I’m grateful to be there.”
The lie of omission caught somewhere in his throat as he said it. He covered it with a small, polite smile.
She didn’t notice. She had no reason to. She just nodded warmly, the way kind strangers nodded, and turned slightly on the bench to look at him a little more directly.
“Have you and your family been to Sanibel before?” she asked.
“A few times,” Darius told her. “I haven’t been here in a couple of years. This is the first proper vacation I’ve taken in a long time.”
“Good for you,” she said softly. “Sweet Blossom Bay has a way of being good for people who need it.”
Her name was called from the counter then. Her pizza was ready. Linda. It was only then that he realized she hadn’t introduced herself to him.
She rose. Darius rose too, in a polite, gentlemanly gesture. She picked up the warm box from the counter, tucked her wallet under her arm, and turned to him with another of those warm smiles that for some reason made his pulse jump.
“Enjoy your stay,” she told him. “And welcome to Sweet Blossom Bay for the summer.”
