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Janine winced. “Listen. You’re both pregnant. If you want to take a few days to enjoy Venice, then fly home, that’s fine with me.”
“I really want to know Teresa’s secrets,” Alyssa said.
Francesca appeared with a platter of gorgeous croissants along with very tiny cups of espresso.
“That woman had plenty of secrets,” Francesca said.
Alyssa looked mischievous. “Will you help us with the first clue?”
Francesca shifted her weight from foot to foot, clearly unsure.
“She’s not here watching you,” Janine offered.
Francesca laughed to herself. “I know that. I do. It’s just that Teresa had a very particular way of living and now, of dying. I don’t want to mess up her system.”
“We just have no idea what it is,” Alyssa explained. “We just got here. We don’t know the city, and we—”
“Find me with the unburied woman who lost her son far too soon,” Maggie interrupted, reading the will again. “Does that mean anything to you?”
Francesca’s lips quivered into a smile. “Well, the Cacciapaglias have an enormous section of the cemetery near here. They are an incredibly noble family. It was a good bit of luck, being hired to work for them.”
“Are there any unburied women there?” Maggie asked, shivering, even though it was clear she wanted to tell a joke.
But at this, Alyssa jumped from her chair to grab a croissant. “Italians often bury their dead in mausoleums. Isn’t that right, Francesca?”
“It is, indeed,” Francesca said. “It’s where your grandmother was buried, after all. In a mausoleum her father purchased for her before she turned ten years old. In Italy, our culture is tremendously old— and we must face death in a different way than Americans.”
Over the table, Janine, Alyssa, and Maggie exchanged glances, alternating between feeling freaked out and excited. Finally, Janine shrugged and said, “We should pay your grandmother a visit, anyway. Don’t you think?”
ChapterFive
Around noon, Nancy got her first call from her girls in Venice. She answered it while seated on the back porch of the big, empty Remington House, her heart in her throat. A live video appeared on the screen of her phone, one that seemed impossible in its beauty. There Janine, Alyssa, and Maggie stood on a gorgeous bridge overlooking a canal in Venice. A gondola floated past, complete with an Italian rower onboard. If Nancy wasn’t mistaken, she thought she could hear him singing.
“Hi, Grandma! Buongiorno!” Alyssa cried.
Nancy laughed and placed her hand over her chest. “Goodness. You three look beautiful. What time is it there?”
“Six in the evening,” Janine explained. “We arrived at the villa earlier this afternoon and met with Teresa’s lawyer, which was…”
“Interesting, to say the least,” Maggie finished her mother’s sentence.
“Interesting how?”
Janine went on to explain Teresa’s “game,” along with their plans to head to the mausoleum tomorrow to investigate.
“But we decided we wanted to settle in today, go out to eat, and explore the city a bit,” Janine finished.
Nancy shook her head. Death was such a messy, complicated, heartbreaking thing. It boggled her mind that Teresa had wanted to make a game of hers. Then again, perhaps she’d been mostly alone during her old age. Perhaps this had allowed her space and time to concoct ideas like this.
On top of that, Nancy had a hunch Teresa had been resentful of Jack and his refusal to ever know her. Perhaps, had Janine never returned to Nancy’s life, Nancy would have felt the same way.
But despite Nancy and Janine’s closeness, when Janine asked Nancy what she was up to, Nancy heard herself tell a lie of omission.
“Not up to much. I’m going to do a bit of gardening later, then head up to the Lodge to teach two yoga classes, back-to-back. I’ll probably go to bed early tonight.”
Even as she said it, her stomach curdled. But she managed to get through the rest of the phone call before she keeled over on the back porch and stared at her shoes, gasping for breath.
“Pull yourself together, Nancy. You’re an old woman going on a date. You’ve been on hundreds of dates before.”Hundreds, of course, was probably an over-exaggeration. Still, back in her teens, twenties, and thirties, there had been many men— all of them egotistical, ready to take her for all she was worth emotionally. “You aren’t that person anymore,” Nancy continued to whisper to herself. “You’ve grown so much! Act like it.”
