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Kostos raised his shoulders. “It sounds like he changed. That, or you were just better suited to one another. Or a mix of both.”
Nancy blinked back tears. She hadn’t expected such compassion from a stranger.
“I’m sure if you’d met me when I was a younger man, you would have thought I was very arrogant,” Kostos continued, his grin crooked.
“Would I?” Nancy crossed her arms over her chest. Was she flirting?
“I can almost guarantee it,” Kostos said.
The server came soon with their dinner, and Nancy fell quiet, listening to the rushing ocean along the docks, the conversation of the couples around them, and the soft scrape of Kostos’ fork and knife against his plate. When she raised her eyes to look at him, she caught his, and they held one another’s gaze for a long moment. It felt like magic.
After dinner, Kostos and Nancy walked along the boardwalk, their hands swinging very close to one another. Nancy was telling him about how big and empty her house felt, especially now that her girls were in Venice.
“Oh, I just love Venice.” Kostos stopped walking for a moment as though the memory of that city had taken him outside of himself.
“They seem to love it,” Nancy said. “My daughter’s mother-in-law is from there, but she recently passed away and left everything to my grandchildren, Alyssa and Maggie. But apparently, it’s not as simple as that. She’s set up some sort of scavenger hunt. If they win the hunt, they get what’s theirs.”
“And if they don’t?” Kostos asked.
Nancy shrugged. “I don’t know!”
“It sounds like something from a film,” Kostos offered.
Nancy laughed. “It’s bizarre, isn’t it? But my granddaughters are both about to have babies, and I think it’s a nice distraction before everything changes forever.”
Kostos’ eyes twinkled. “You’re going to be a great-grandmother?”
Nancy’s cheeks burned. “I didn’t even think about that. That sounds ancient, doesn’t it?”
“It sounds like a blessing,” Kostos corrected her, finally taking her hand in his. “It sounds like a brilliant next era of your life.”
Nearly swooning, Nancy breathed deeply, knowing he was right.
ChapterSix
Jet lag kept Alyssa, Maggie, and Janine in bed far too late. Janine burst up around one in the afternoon the day after their arrival, groggy, her hair in a wild mess, then slowly made her way to the window to peer out at the canal below. Italy had awoken many, many hours ago. People were going to lunch.
“Girls! Hello!” Janine knocked on first Alyssa’s bedroom door, then Maggie’s, before she opened Alyssa’s and peered in. The thick, black curtains drawn over the windows brought in no light, and the room was cool and comfortable. According to Francesca, the rooms they slept in had all been used as guest bedrooms during Teresa’s life there, as she hadn’t had children outside of Jack. Nobody had dared go into Teresa’s bedroom yet, perhaps due to fear of her, of where she’d died. Or perhaps out of respect.
“Mom?” Alyssa groaned and stretched her arms over her head. “What time is it?”
“You don’t want to know,” Janine said with a laugh.
Suddenly, Maggie’s bedroom door burst open, and Maggie stumbled into the hallway, rubbing her eyes, just as she’d done when she’d been a child. “I could not get to sleep until really late,” she said. “And just when I started to, the baby woke me up.”
“I had the same problem!” Alyssa cried. “What is up with your baby, Maggie? She or he hates me.”
Maggie rolled her eyes, laughing as Alyssa joined them in the hallway. It was true, of course, that Alyssa was carrying Maggie and Rex’s baby— that she’d offered when Maggie couldn’t get pregnant. Maggie’s pregnancy a couple of months later had come as a thunderous surprise.
Janine hadn’t asked the girls their plans for after they delivered. She assumed Alyssa would want to be a part of the babies’ lives and would want to help raise them. But in truth, both babies were Maggie’s— and Maggie, being Maggie, would want the most control over the children.
Downstairs, they found a note from Francesca on the table. In it, she explained how to work the espresso machine and that she’d brought more croissants. Beneath that, she’d written the address of the cemetery where Teresa had been buried.
“Good luck on your scavenger hunt,” she finished.
At the breakfast table, Maggie and Alyssa sipped tea as Janine made herself an espresso and passed out the croissants. When she opened the kitchen curtains, the light was blistering, so she closed them again shortly thereafter. She wasn’t sure how they would make it to the cemetery that day.
But by the time four rolled around, they began to kick into gear. Showered, dressed in summer dresses and sandals, they left the villa and headed straight for the nearest water taxi station. As the boat floated toward them, laden with a mix of tourists and locals, Janine turned back to gaze up at the villa. It seemed impossible that it served as their current “home,” although right now, they accepted it easily, sliding into their Italian lives.
