Page 85 of When Lemons Give You Life

The pasta’s ready. I lift it straight from the pot into the pan, still dripping, hissing as it hits the pancetta oil. I add a splash of the cooking water, just enough to loosen the fat and starch into silk. That’s the trick most people miss. The secret. The glue.

With the pan off the flame, it’s time to add the yolk mixture. The residual warmth kisses it to life. I move fast but gently, coaxing the sauce to gloss and glide, never scramble. It clings, a perfect slip of velvet over every strand.

Scotty stares. Mouth open. “That’s . . . that’s obscene,” he breathes.

“That,” I say, plating it with care, “is how you respect a dish. Just timing, heat, and the restraint to know when to stop.”

We plate up with a generous sprinkle of grated pecorino and head to Silvia’s room.

“Please, please, I want to go home. Via Giovanni Devoti, Roma.” Her Italian accent trembles with desperation as we approach. She clutches Scotty’s hand, her deeply lined fingers stark against his young skin.

A carer walks past. “Good luck with that. Silvia barely eats now. We’ve been giving her Sustagen most days.”

Scotty sets the plate down, and the air fills with the warmth of melting cheese.

She doesn’t look at it right away. Her gaze is fixed on some point beyond, as if she’s watching something the rest of us can’t see, past the room, the hallway, the years.

Silvia blinks, slow and unfocused, then sniffs, her fingers twitching. Her right hand reaches for the fork. The moment the food hits her tongue, her spine straightens, her eyes becoming clearer now.

Then she chuckles with a dry, rusty joy, like a hinge easing open after years of stillness. “Bellissimo.” Her smile wobbles, but it holds. “I’m a good cook, aren’t I! That’s why my husband married me, you know.” She laughs, and the sound is contagious. “Grazie.” She clasps Scotty’s hand again—not in panic now but with the taste pulling her back to a past long gone. “Thank you for bringing me here.”

He tilts his head. “To your room?”

“No. For bringing me home.”

He glances at me and gives the smallest nod. He’s in.

The scent of pancetta clings to my hands as I strip off my uniform and leave the kitchen. I can still see the way the old woman’s eyes lit up, as if we’d handed her back a piece of herself.

Beau would’ve liked that. Liked the care, the thought. Liked that I’d done it without expecting anything in return. The thought snags in my chest, and I wonder if he’d be proud of me now despite my charade.

I’m halfway down the corridor when I hear it: a warm, honeyed thread of music curling through the air. My skin prickles. It’s an obscure Italian piece Beau picked up on our travels there, something we only ever heard played once, in a tiny piazza cafe in Siena, the night the rain drove us in. He loved it so much he learned it by ear and transcribed it on the flight home, and it became part of his repertoire.

Before my brain knows what I’m doing, I follow it to the lounge. It’s not Beau; it can’t be.

Frank sits in a pool of afternoon light, fingers moving over the guitar frets with easy precision. The song is the same, right down to the pause before the chorus, and it hits me like a clean shot to the ribs.

Frank looks up at me and beams.

I stay weak-kneed in the doorway, a lump gathering in my throat, wondering where he learned it, and whether this is Beau’s answer to my question.

52

Lisa

Nothing says Valentine’s Day like a full bladder and a waiting room packed with strangers. No number of trashy magazines in the nephrologist’s office can distract me from what I know is ahead.

Ursula sits in the empty seat next to me where Frank should be. Told you you’d be alone on Valentine’s, she sneers.

Only because I chose to be, I reply silently.

Frank wanted to come, but I refused. He’s seen and heard enough. I blink until Ursula disappears and, for a moment, Beau is there instead, his golden-brown eyes filled with calm reassurance.

Guilt nips at my heels. I haven’t been to visit Griff for a while. Will he even register my absence?

“Lisa? The doctor is ready for you now.”

I stand, moving between the two rows of plastic chairs like a bride walking down the aisle. These ten steps from the waiting room to the specialist’s office are my last as a free woman. Yet rather than a loving husband, I am to be wed to my disease.