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“I only ask for your best effort in this room,” Nancy reminded him. “Nothing more, nothing less.”
Stan saluted her. “Aye, aye, captain.”
Nancy was grateful that, over the course of the next hour, she was able to seamlessly fall into her “yoga teacher” persona— and avoid all thoughts of handsome Stan in the corner of the room. Once, as she walked through the rows of students, adjusting their yoga stances here and there, she caught herself wanting to touch Stan’s extended arm just to see what the muscle felt like. A shiver raced up and down her spine, and a voice echoed in her mind:Don’t be stupid, Nancy. You just fell for Kostos, and look how that turned out!
Even still, another voice splintered through that one to say:Stan is different. You know that.
After the yoga class finished, the women thanked Nancy, rolled up their yoga mats, and returned to the hallway, chatting as they went. Only Stan took his time, his forehead glistening as he rolled up his mat very slowly. It had clearly been a difficult workout for him.
Nancy waited at the front of the class, her heart thudding as he approached. When he did, his smell made her woozy, and she remembered reading once, in a women’s magazine, that you should like the way a man’s sweat smells. It meant you were compatible. She’d thought that was so strange at the time.
“Great workout, Nancy,” Stan said, stuttering slightly.
“Thanks for coming!”
“It was my pleasure. I’d heard you were in Italy for a while, and I was worried you weren’t coming back,” Stan said.
Nancy waved her hand. “I was just visiting my daughter and granddaughters. We all came back together.”
“They moved back into that big, old place with you? You aren’t all alone anymore?”
“No. Thank goodness. My granddaughters are getting more and more pregnant by the day, which means they need me all the more. That said, my daughter has been spending a great deal more time with her fiancé. I think they’re going to get married officially next spring and probably move in together. Oh, but listen to me! I’m blabbering. What’s new with you, Stan?”
“Nothing, as usual,” Stan said. “Just living out my days in my little shack.”
“I’m sure it’s no shack, especially now that you’ve refurbished it.” She knew Stan’s ex-stepson, Tommy Gasbarro, had had a huge hand in building it back up since the hurricane. And then, acting braver than she had in years, she heard herself say, “Maybe you could show it to me sometime?”
Stan looked taken aback. “Really?”
Nancy raised her shoulders. “You’re a good friend of mine, Stan. I’d love to see where you live.”
Stan wasn’t accustomed to the rest of the world looking at him as worthy, as anything but the man who’d killed Anna Sheridan. Nancy was bent on proving to him he was so much more than his mistakes— even if it took years of reminding him.
“What about tomorrow night?” Nancy heard herself ask.
Stan stuttered. “Tomorrow night works for me.”
“Great,” Nancy said. “You don’t need to worry about cooking.”
“I like to cook,” Stan said, his tone firm. “Don’t you worry about that.”
That night, when Nancy pulled the lasagna from the oven in the Remington House, she had a full kitchen. Maggie and David were at the kitchen table, with Maggie demanding David read several passages of a baby book she’d recently learned was the “best of the best in baby knowledge during the year 2023.”
“Does that mean everything they knew in 2022 is now deemed incorrect?” Nancy asked as she slid the very hot lasagna onto the stovetop and waved her oven mitt through the steam.
Maggie glowered. “They have researchers working around the clock to learn everything there is to know about babies! It’s up to new mothers to learn everything.”
Janine was at the kitchen counter with Henry, drinking a glass of Malbec as Henry showed her a recent edit of a documentary he was making with Quentin Copperfield. Janine laughed at something on the screen, and Henry said, “Yeah, we didn’t expect him to do that!” Nancy marveled at the ease with which they stood alongside one another, lost in their own world.
“Where’s Alyssa? Is Carmella still here?” Nancy asked.
Suddenly, Alyssa breezed into the kitchen, her phone raised as she video-chatted with Nico all the way across the Atlantic. Since they’d officially hired him to start the Teresa Cacciapaglia Museum, he’d been hard at work, going through the numerous unused documents at the Mauricio Gionnocaro House, discussing appropriate ways of curation with more experienced museum employees, and hiring other museum historians to ensure he did everything correctly. Alyssa had had a hand in every step of the process; her eyes were fiery as she asked questions, provided suggestions, and demanded photographs of almost every new artifact he discovered.
“Alyssa! Dinner’s ready,” Nancy reminded her.
“I have to run, Nico,” Alyssa said without missing a beat. “Isn’t it one in the morning there, anyway?” She burst into love-filled giggles, then showered him with “Ciao! Ciao, Nico!” until they hung up.
For a moment, everyone in the kitchen was quiet as Alyssa swam in her own lovey-dovey thoughts.
