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“Scusa.”
“Matthew!”
We turned to find Nonna and Nina ambling down the dock together, though Nina looked like she was moving slowly out of respect for Nonna while her gray eyes flew wildly to Matthew’s sopping wet form.
My grandmother, on the other hand, was taking her sweet time, carrying her wineglass and a cigarette, though her dark eyes were no less sharp than they had been hours before. She wore a pretty beaded black dress befitting a grandmother of the groom, dainty gold earrings swinging from her earlobes, and a sash tied through her teased black hair that took her straight back to the nineteen-sixties. She was obviously having fun, but as she took us all in, her gaze was sharp as ever as it drifted between Matthew in the water and the row of Zola sisters standing like attendants in their dresses. Then to a dripping Xavier on one knee, one of my hands still clasped in his, while tears ran down my face.
“Huh,” was all she said. “Oh, my.”
“Oh, Matthew,” Nina said again in a voice that made my brother flush bright red.
And while I happened to know Matthew had a special talent for torturing himself with guilt, I had a feeling no one else made him feel as embarrassed as his name when Nina said it like that.
He held his hands out, though water still dripped loudly from his shirtsleeves. “I had to, duchess.”
At the nickname, both Xavier and I straightened. It didn’t mean anything. Nina was no more a duchess than I was.
But after the events of the summer, my heart ached with something akin to jealousy. Hearing it now, with that sweet tone of voice, I wondered for the first time ifthatlove and kindness wasn’t what the prospective title had been missing all along.
Then, in her brisk way, Nonna clicked her tongue and started giving everyone directions.
“Matthew, your wife needs you,” she said to my brother in the Neapolitan accent that had grown considerably thicker on this trip. “Nina, take him back to change his clothes, okay? And Lea, the babies need you, too. Michael, he wants help with the children.”
Shooting twin arrows of disgust toward Xavier, Matthew and Lea both nodded, then obediently left to tend to matters more important than their little sister’s melodrama.
As it should be.
“Katie, Joni, Marie, go help with the party. Not enough people are dancing yet. Ask your cousins.”
“But, Nonna, I can’t dance—” Joni started to argue as she held out a crutch.
“Go,” Nonna ordered, gesturing with her wineglass.
Not a peep was uttered as the three of them left, Kate with a squeeze to my elbow.
Nonna approached Xavier and me, taking in our compromising positions. She sighed and shook her head, muttering, “Mammàma” under her breath. “You. Get up. You’re gonna ruin your pants.”
Eyes wary, Xavier did as he was told, though he didn’t let go of my hand.
Nonna muttered something more to herself in Italian that I didn’t understand, but I would have bet translated roughly to “these idiot kids.”
“Frankie, you take him back to the house,” she ordered. “Dry his clothes. I will watch Sofia for the night.”
“Oh, Nonna, that’s all right. I can come back—”
“No,” she said brusquely. “You have a family, Francesca.” Her penetrating gaze dropped to my stomach, then back to my face, revealing she had noticed a lot more than I realized. “You take care of them now.”
FOUR
Icould hear the drip of Xavier’s clothing on Vernazza’s cobbled streets all the way back to the three-story house where I was staying with my family. It was one of uncountable, slightly crooked, pastel-colored buildings carved into the rocky cliffs of the Ligurian coast, draped now with the shadows of night, a sopping gargoyle, and my own personal dread.
He was here. Xavier was here.
Wet. Angry. And still probably shell-shocked by my recent disclosure, but more importantly, also still as reeling from our last conversation as I was.
I didn’t know what to make of his insistence that he had not kissed Imogene Douglas. It was so at odds with the scene that had played on repeat in my mind for the last six weeks. I had seen them kiss. I hadseenit. Which meant she had kissed him, and then he had kissed her back.
Didn’t it?
