He shakes his head, his hands dropping to his sides. “No. I couldn’t. I don’t possess the talent. I don’t even think my father does. Besides, he would color you all wrong. He would capture your softness, but he wouldn’t do justice to the rest of your colors. You are too vivid, too real.”
I feel the heat creeping up onto my chest, my cheeks. The tension between us keeps winding and winding, and I don’t know how to be free of it. I don’t know what to say.
“You are very beautiful,” he adds, and my stomach flips again. “You know that.”
I want to laugh, but his eyes are burning with sincerity. “I don’t know what I know.”
“This makes you uncomfortable?”
I shrug, my eyes focusing on the tops of his shoes.
“Is it the compliment?” His shoes start to move as he walks toward me. Stops just a couple of feet away. “Or is it because I said it?”
“Because I don’t believe it,” I admit, looking up at him. Actually, it’s both. It’s all of it.
“How can you think that?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I have a face like a lemon.” I grab my chin. “There’s too much of this.”
He bursts into laughter. “A lemon? Well, then you are lucky you are in Italy. We love lemons here.” He gestures with his head toward the villa. “Come on, we’ll have lemons with our dinner.”
He turns and starts walking, and it’s only then that I notice my legs are shaking, my knees feeling like water. What is this man doing to me? Does he even know?
Dinner is as intimate as you would imagine, just the two of us sitting on the patio. But Claudio switches from being enigmatic and intense to easy and charming, putting me at ease. At least, as much as I can be at ease when I’m in such close proximity to him.
When we’re done with the food, we linger over panna cotta with fresh plump raspberries, the perfect mix of creamy, sweet, and tart, and enjoy a glass of brandy-colored Amaro. Actually, Claudio seems to enjoy the Amaro—I find it horribly bitter and medicinal, but I have to admit I appreciate the buzz.
“So tell me,” Claudio says, leaning back in his chair, hands behind his head, facing the lawn, the sunset reflecting on his face. “I need some good news. What did you manage to write today?”
I sip the Amaro and make a face at the taste. “I finished a chapter. I should have started the next one but … I’m stalling.”
“Why are you stalling?”
I rub my finger around the rim of the glass, watching it, gathering my thoughts. “I don’t know,” I eventually say.
When I glance up, he’s staring at me calmly. “You do.”
He’s right.
“I guess … I have to access some emotions that I don’t want to face today.”
“Which emotions?”
I briefly suck my lip into my mouth. “Grief.”
“Grief.” He surveys me, his eyes roaming my face. “Tell me about Robyn.”
Just the sound of her name, and I feel the bottom drop out of my chest, my heart plunging into something cold. “What is there to say?” There is too much to say.
“How did she die?”
I think Claudio knows it makes me uncomfortable to talk about her, that it’s too raw, and yet he’s pressing the question anyway.
When I don’t say anything, he gives me a small smile. “You can talk to me, Grace.”
“Why do you want to talk about her?”
“Because she is important to you. And if she’s important to you, she’s important to me.”
I can’t help it. Tears start pricking my eyes. Ever since she died, I’ve had no one to talk to about her, no one who cared. My own mother tried but she didn’t understand. I think she may have thought we were lovers, but that wasn’t the case at all. We were just close in so many ways. People thought I needed to get over it.
“She was hit by a drunk driver on Christmas Eve,” I manage to say, my breath shaky but my tears under control. “They hit her and took off and she … she was left on the side of the road for hours until Jack found her. They had been fighting, something stupid, like what to make for Christmas dinner, and she had gone for a walk to clear her head and … Jack told me that he thought she went to see me. He called me, asking if she was there. When I told him I hadn’t heard from her, he went out on foot to look and…”
I take in a deep breath, trying so hard to hold it together.
“It’s okay to cry,” Claudio says softly.
I pinch my lips together, my chin quivering, and nod. I know it’s okay.
But I don’t want to cry now.
I gulp in another breath, and my heart slows. I swallow. “I just can’t stop thinking about her on the side of the road, for that long, all alone. People must have driven past her, the police said that she was in a snowbank and wouldn’t have been seen. She died there alone. Jack found her, called the ambulance, but there was nothing they could do. Her internal injuries were too much. And still I think … I think how could anything have been too much for her? She was so strong and bold and brash, she took on the world. Life was a ride to her, and she brought me along. And yet she died. It still doesn’t seem real.” I blink, looking down at my drink but not really seeing it. “How could this be real? How can this world go on without her? And how could she leave me here all alone?”
I’ve never admitted that last part. The feeling that she left me here. That she moved on without me. It feels selfish and wrong to grieve someone’s death and yet be angry that they left.
A moment of silence passes between us, the only sound the soft chirp of the evening crickets.
Eventually, Claudio sits up straighter and lets out a melancholic sigh. “I can’t pretend to know what you’re going through, but I understand how you must feel. She sounded like a pretty special person. You were lucky to have had her in your life.”
“And unlucky now that she’s gone.” I exhale noisily, feeling like I can’t get enough air out of my lungs. “I don’t know what I’m going to do without her. She saw something in me that no one else did. You know, my parents … my mom tried her best as a single parent but she didn’t know what to do with me half the time. My father, he never even cared to make the time. But Robyn … sh-she cared. She gave me confidence, she made me a good writer, made me a better person.”
“You didn’t need Robyn to become more confident, to become more talented. Robyn was merely the artist and you were the work.”
I bite my lip, trying to understand. “What do you mean?”
“You were already those things. You were like … when I have an idea for my sculpture. You know how I said it’s sometimes already formed, already existing. You already exist, Grace, you just had Robyn bring it out of you. She was an archeologist and you were the dream.” A flash of intensity comes across his eyes and he looks away. “Robyn helped you realize these things about yourself, but she didn’t make you. She only helped.”
It feels like I have a lump of bread stuck in my throat. “But what if…” My voice sounds weak and shaky and I hate it. “What if I’ll remain buried now? Without her?”