To Tuscany with Love Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

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  48

  49

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Bella's Tastes from Tuscany

  To Tuscany with Love

  by Gail Mencini

  Copyright © 2014 by Gail Mencini

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published in the United States by

  an imprint of Capriole Group LLC, Centennial 80161

  www.CaprioleGroup.com

  For information regarding special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Capriole Group Corporate and Premium Sales at [email protected]

  Book and cover designed by Nick Zelinger, www.NZGraphics.com

  Editor: Patti Thorn, www.BlueInkReview.com

  Book consultant: Judith Briles, www.TheBookShepherd.com

  Author photograph by Ashlee Bratton, www.Ashography.com

  ISBN 978-1-938592-00-3 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-938592-01-0 (e-book)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2013907682

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

  Mencini, Gail

  To Tuscany with Love/Gail Mencini

  1. Italy—Fiction 2. Friends—Fiction 3. Reunions—Fiction

  First Edition

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, incidents, and events either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.

  To Ray, my forever love

  1

  Present Day

  Bella had bought her solid, rough-hewn table for David’s first meal at home after their dreadful argument. She shuddered, remembering his anger and how she had been afraid that she had lost him.

  Bella glanced at the stack of mail piled on the prized possession she had found at an estate auction. The previous owners had lived on Long Island and had shipped the table from the Italian countryside. They had discovered it in a vineyard estate undergoing renovation. It was a simple table, one that had silently shouldered decades of meals, conversations, laughter, arguments, and celebrations. Not stylish or valuable enough for their heirs, but perfect for Bella.

  For her, it would always be David’s table.

  A square of black caught Bella’s eye. It looked like sophisticated stationery stock, the expensive kind reserved for society party invitations. A swirl of silver calligraphy curled across it. She tugged on the black envelope, revealing an eight-by-eight-inch square with her name and address handwritten in a subdued yet elegant script. No return address.

  Curious, Bella opened the envelope and found a cream-colored engraved invitation.

  * * *

  You are invited to rekindle the flame in Firenze

  September 16-25

  First class airfare and all expenses paid

  No spouses, children, or friends allowed

  Flight and lodging information enclosed

  Regrets are for cowards

  * * *

  A photograph had slid out from the envelope along with the invitation. Bella knew the picture without looking. The eight of them had posed for only one picture together—the day they had left Florence at the end of that summer, thirty years before. When her copy had arrived in the mail, she had torn it into tiny pieces and flushed it down the toilet.

  Bella had deliberately avoided contact with her classmates from that college semester abroad. But it was definitely time to set the record straight. No more hiding for her, or anyone else. Bella was determined to unleash her long-dormant anger.

  2

  Thirty Years Before

  Who would have imagined that the punishment for a single night in the slammer would be spending the summer abroad?

  Certainly not Bella, who’d be a junior this fall at City College and still lived at home with her mother. Bella had chalked up the notion of going to Italy as an impossible, idle threat of her mother’s. Yet here she was, sitting in a tiny car in Florence, as in Florence, Italy. Even before she had climbed into the toy car, her stomach had tried to set a record for consecutive cartwheels.

  Her new group of friends back home had likely already forgotten she existed. They were busy planning another summer of protests against U.S. intervention in Nicaragua, which they swore was still happening, in spite of the Boland Amendment. Plans were in the works for a series of demonstrations like the one that had landed Bella in the overnight lockup.

  Even though she wouldn’t admit it to a soul, she knew that she had a bigger issue than missing a summer with her friends. Bella had never, not even once, been away from her mother for longer than a day.

  The woman driver of the miniature car braked to a sudden stop in front of a narrow, stone inn.

  Bella was thrilled to see the end of their frantic race through the tight, cobblestone streets. At any moment, Bella had honestly expected one of the car’s side-view mirrors to be clipped off as they squeezed past oncoming traffic. With her own brand of driver etiquette, the woman had leaned on the car’s horn and screamed Italian obscenities out the open window at the driver of every car they nearly hit.

  Bella released her grip on the seat and sucked in a gulp of air. The inn’s open door, weathered sign, and sagging shutters were at least twenty years older than the picture Bella’s mother had taped to their refrigerator. She sat motionless and stared.

  The whining, coughing engine nagged her out of her trance.

  Bella realized, with escalating panic, that her escort’s duty ended here. She turned to the woman, who was probably in her late thirties, the same age as Bella’s mother. Unlike her mother, though, whose tired eyes and pallid complexion had worried Bella as they parted, this woman was tanned, stylish, and oozed sexiness from her pores.

  With a fluid wave of her manicured hand, the driver dismissed Bella to the curb, the only suitcase her mother owned clutched in her sweaty hand.

  It served Bella right to be banished to summer school, albeit in Italy, for her transgressions. Bella had spent a sleepless spring night in the neighborhood lockup sitting on the cold, hard floor, shoulder-to-shoulder with her fellow protestors. And she had told her mother all about her plans to join the big demonstration in Washington, D.C., over the Fourth of July.

  Four weeks later, her mother had handed her a plane ticket to Italy and a brochure for a summer college course abroad. How on earth had her mother found the money for the airfare and tuition? She worked two jobs, and even with Bella living at home and working at the diner, it seemed they barely scraped b
y.

  Her mom insisted Bella go to Italy, as an early graduation present. But Bella knew the truth. This thinly disguised “gift” was her mother’s method of keeping her away from anti-government protests and out of jail.

  Bella tripped over the threshold of the tiny hotel that would be her home for the summer. Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” blared out of a portable cassette player resting on the narrow reception counter.

  On the left in the eight-by-eight-foot lounge area, four college men and a wholesome-looking girl Bella’s age rocked to the music. One tall, lean guy strutted around the tiny lobby and sang along with the music. He looked like a movie star with his auburn hair and matching auburn eyes.

  “Hey, babe,” the strutter said. “Welcome to U of Miami Art in Florence.” He belted out the chorus of “Billie Jean” with a Southern drawl and dipped his shoulders as he slid backwards in a passable moonwalk.

  The chocolate-haired girl waved and kept dancing. Her big-boned shape bobbed like a guy’s.

  The other three jutted their chins and chimed in on the chorus.

  If she could fly back home, this second, right now, Bella thought, she would. She would turn around, walk out the door, and do whatever it took to find her way back to the airport.

  Hearing footsteps behind her, Bella turned around. Two beautiful twins with matching long, wavy blond hair stood at the open door. Each wore a backpack and held a suitcase far nicer and years newer than Bella’s, and between them they carried a flattened jumbo rucksack.

  They were perfect—skin, hair, clothes, teeth, and penetrating green eyes. The “perfect” twins.

  “We’ve got company,” one of the guys called out. He scrambled to turn off the cassette player.

  Bella felt his arm drape over her shoulders.

  “I’m Rune.” His finger ruffled Bella’s long curls. “If you give me a chance, I’ll ruin you this summer.” His slicked-back pompadour made him look older than everyone else in the lobby.

  The twins giggled.

  “Lee.” A male voice piped up in self-introduction from the other side of Bella. Curly black hair surrounded his chinless face.

  “I’m Phillip.” One deep blue eye winked at Bella before he nodded to the twins. His sun-streaked brown hair fell in waves around his ears. Tanned, Phillip had the look—and muscled body to match—of a multisport athlete.

  As much as she longed to escape, Bella knew it wasn’t an option. She was stuck here. She sucked in a deep breath. At least these college kids acted friendly. Maybe she’d actually survive the long summer months ahead.

  The auburn-haired guy danced his way in front of Bella. He stopped in front of the twins. “Stillman Jackson.”

  Bella held in a chuckle. Stillman Jackson was a Southerner with auburn hair who liked to dance the moonwalk. Stillman was a far cry from Michael Jackson.

  “I’m Hope,” the large girl called out from the back of the group.

  Stillman turned around to face Bella. “You.” He pointed both index fingers at Bella. “You look Italian. Can you speak the lingo?”

  Bella tapped two fingers to her closed lips and shook her head.

  Stillman smirked at her. “I’ll bet you’re Italian. Surely you know the naughty words, don’t you?”

  Bella shrugged her shoulders. People speaking another language were commonplace in her New York City neighborhood. Of course she knew the naughty words.

  “Asshole,” Phillip said.

  Bella turned her head away from Stillman and winked at Phillip. He had come to her defense, after all.

  Phillip threw his head back with laughter. “She got you, man.” His palm slapped Stillman’s back.

  “Bella Rossini.” She smiled at Stillman. “I only speak English. My Oral Comm prof claims even that’s marginal. As far as Italian goes, I might know one or two nasty phrases, but that’s it.”

  Bella looked past him at the twins. Their perfectness made her feel plain. And how could they be so perky after the long flights? Bella motioned to the empty rucksack. “Did you lose stuff already?”

  She regretted her words and tone of voice as soon as they’d escaped from her mouth. Bella had promised her mother she’d give people a chance this summer and make new friends. Not much chance of that happening, if the first ten minutes were any indication.

  The twin on the left answered with a shake of her long tresses. “No. It’s for all the stuff we buy and want to bring back.” She set down her end of the handle carefully, as if the bag held fragile treasures. “I’m Karen, and this is Meghan.”

  “We’re from Chicago,” the second twin said.

  Rune’s head ticked like a pendulum between the twins. “Karen ... Meghan. Meghan ... Karen.” He rubbed his palms together in circles and leered at them. “I’m hoping there’s a birthmark placed in a strategic—normally hidden—spot that we can use to tell you two apart.”

  Lee spoke. “Their eyes. Meghan’s have flecks of brown.”

  Meghan’s grateful smile zeroed in on Lee.

  “I like my way of telling them apart better.” Rune peered out the door and craned his neck to view the street. “God, it’s hot in here. Let’s see if we can find a beer. I’d even take a glass of wine. Our assigned babysitter isn’t due back for a couple hours.” His eyes canvassed their faces. “How ’bout it?”

  They trotted out as a pack.

  Bella followed them out the door. It was hot, and she was thirsty. Her eyes swept the ancient buildings that lined the narrow street, even narrower than those in Manhattan’s Little Italy. She tried to soak in every detail—the pale-colored cornerstones, the window boxes of red geraniums, and the laundry that hung on line after line to dry in the hot shade of the five-story buildings.

  Bella half-listened to the chatter about music, movies, schools, majors, and hopes for the summer. What did she have in common with this group? They all had more money and were all more rad than she was.

  She thought of her mother. They had argued at the airport, and Bella had tried refusing to board the plane, but how could she do that after everything was paid for? Shipping her off to Italy was a major overreaction. Could Bella help it that the cops were on high alert after one of the stores near their protest had been looted and burned the night before? Her mother was acting as if she were a drug dealer or something.

  Bella recalled their goodbyes at the airport. Even though excitement lit her mother’s face, why had her eyes shied away?

  3

  After a stroll through the streets of Florence and a stop for beer and wine, the group returned to their hotel, dazed from the combination of alcohol and jet lag.

  A tall, thin Italian man stood reading a paperback book beside the luggage they had abandoned in the lobby. He introduced himself as Paolo and nodded at them with a skeptical look on his face. Following minimal discussion and room assignments, he dispatched them to their rooms with keys and an admonition to be in the building’s lower level for breakfast and coffee promptly at eight tomorrow morning.

  Bella trudged up the stairs with her suitcase behind Hope, her roommate for the summer. Paolo had matched up Stillman with Phillip and Rune with Lee, and put the two perfect twins, Karen and Meghan, together.

  Bella dropped her bag and backpack on the floor. Their tiny room held two single beds, a table barely large enough to hold the lamp on top of it between the beds, a wooden armoire, and a closet not much wider than Bella. The one window was closed, which made the room stifling.

  She crossed to the window and leaned over the coil of hot water pipes to pry it open. It was stuck. Hope must have had the same thought, because a minute later, she stood next to Bella and tugged at the window, too.

  “Damn, it’s hotter than Hades in here,” Hope said. She grunted and gave a ferocious pull on the window. The paint stuck around the frame made the upward progress a challenge. Sweat poured down the sides of the large girl’s face. Finally, they had raised it to its maximum level.

  Bella collapsed onto the closest bed,
biting back her frustration and realizing that this summer would have fewer creature comforts than she knew in her mother’s small apartment.

  Hope had left the window and peered under each bed, opened and closed the armoire and then the closet. “God does have mercy.” She held a small metal fan in her hand, which she had found on the upper shelf of the closet. Hope set the fan on the radiator in front of the opened window, plugged it in, and turned it on. She stood by the fan, letting the moving air wash over her.

  Bella took a position beside Hope in front of the fan. It was a far cry from air conditioning, but at least the movement broke the oppressive, stale air. “Thank you. I didn’t have the energy to think about, much less look for, a fan.”

  Rooming with Hope was off to a good start—the girl was a problem solver. “Do you want the bed next to the window?” It was the least Bella could do, since she was so exhausted she hadn’t been able to think past opening the window.

  “Do you mind?” Sweat still rolled down Hope’s face.

  “It’s yours.” Bella moved her belongings to the other bed. She opened her bag and stacked her clothes on her bed beside the suitcase. “I saw the bathroom at the end of the hall. I’m going to try to beat the crunch and go wash up. However you want to divvy up the storage space is fine with me. Go ahead and settle in.”

  “Will do.” Hope turned to the armoire with a stack of underwear in her hands. “Good thing I didn’t bring much clothes,” she chuckled, “since a big girl like me has jumbo-sized everything.”

  An hour later, Karen and Meghan joined Bella and Hope in their room. The twins sat cross-legged on Hope’s bed, in front of the fan. They already knew the basics about each other, from the group’s time in the café, where they had exchanged info on colleges, hometowns, and majors.

  Karen rubbed her palms together. “OK, girls, let’s get to the good stuff—boyfriends. I’ve been dating Ed for two years, and he’s jealous I’m here with other boys.”