Chapter Nineteen Rory

I’m still seething as I head out in my ludicrous, ill-fitting dress from the station at La Spezia, where the Orient Express has parked for the day. A porter guides me in the direction of town, and I follow a walkway wedged between the sea and idyllic pastel-colored facades—my mind rolling over the insanity of seeing the book and of Caro denying it to my face, zero shame.

The sun torches my already-crisp shoulders. I reapply sunscreen, walking fast, my anger swirling at Caro, obviously, but also at myself for not forcing my way in, for not telling her I know exactly what she’s done, that I know all about the embezzlement. I’m orating in my head, giving the speech I’m going to issue when I’m back on the train. How I’m going to demand my book back, demand that Caro own up to everything to Max, when I pass a little girl singing like an angel beside an upturned straw hat into which people are plopping coins. She’s crooning some Italian love ballad in a way that is super heartfelt, a thick Romeo and Juliet vibe. I pause, my spiraling outrage losing a bit of charge at the wholesome, sweet scene. It’s kind of comical, after all, to see a child acting like a heartsick—

Wait a minute. My head executes a near-complete swivel. That’s not any little girl. It’s Chiara, Gabriele’s daughter. I glance around but don’t spot Gabriele anywhere.

I stay until the end of the song, still peering around for Gabriele. Italy is safer than America, probably, but surely you don’t permit your nine-year-old to roam around aimlessly? Despite my uncertainty, I find myself sinking into the song—Chiara is brilliant, a radiant talent. She’s small, with toothpick limbs that belie her big voice, clad in pink shorts and a red top that clashes with her red hair. It’s a gorgeous rich red—the type of hair you admire as an adult but probably wouldn’t choose to be saddled with as a child, especially in Italy, where the majority of girls have dark hair. I can tell Chiara is self-conscious of hers, because she keeps smoothing the frizzy parts as she sings. Gabriele’s ex-wife disappeared from their lives, so Chiara doesn’t have a mother to show her what a good pump of smoothing serum can do.

My heart swells as I watch this brave little girl, belting her heart out.

“Bravo,” I shout when Chiara ends on a lingering note, stretching it out, pandering to her fans. “Bravo! Bravo!”

Her eyes flutter open. They register me.

“Oh,” she says. “It’s you.”

“I’m Rory.” I wave. “I’m friends with your father.”

Chiara smirks. Her green eyes survey me with surprising accusation and subtext.

I blush. “Hey, where’s your dad?”

“Oh.” She gives a glittery smile to a few fans who drop more euros into her hat. Then she scoops up all the change and deposits it into her purse. “I ran away,” she says blithely.

“You ran away?” I repeat. “Like… from your father.”

Chiara shrugs. “Yeah.” Then she turns and abruptly takes off, down the route toward the castle where I was planning to head. “You can come if you want,” she tosses over her shoulder.

I stare after her for a few beats, disbelieving. Then I trot ahead. “Wait, yeah! I’m coming!”

“So, why did you run away?” I ask her.

“Oh, Papa is irritante. Very, very irritante. And I’ve had enough. Basta!”

Irritante. I get that gist easy enough. I digest her complaint, summon back being nine, and all I can remember is how much I idolized my father. But I suppose he did annoy me a good deal, too—like how he insisted I wear a hat to cover my ears when I went to meet my friends in the winter, even in the fall, and even though hats were decidedly uncool. He hadn’t had a hat in the Soviet Union. Still, back then, I didn’t see how it tracked. Fitting in was the important thing.

“Does your dad know you ran away?” I ask Chiara.

She shoots me a death stare. “No, obviously. And if you tell him, I’ll run away from you!”

At that, I slip my phone back in my bag that I’d been trying to clandestinely pull out to text Gabriele. I’ll have to do it when she’s preoccupied.

“Is this your first time running away?”

“No.” As we walk, Chiara ticks off on her fingers. “I’ve run away one time, two, three, four…” When she gets to eleven, she stops. “Eleven times.”

I choke back a giggle. Poor Gabriele.

“Wow, well… eleven, gosh. That’s a lot of times.”

Chiara crosses her arms over her chest. “Well, Papa’s done a lot of irritante stuff. Cioè, today, he told me he made plans with the boy across the street for me when we get back. Like I’m a baby! Like a playdate or something. Tommaso doesn’t even like me! He barely looks at me at school. Allora, Papa talked to his mother, and now Tommaso will be forced to hang out with me. And he plays the stupidest games! Like, with toys and stuff.”

“Hmm, well, toys can be fun?” I venture.

Chiara shoots me a withering glare. “Mozart conducted his first symphony when he was eight. I’m nine.”

“Really? Mozart? At age eight?”

“Yes. He wasn’t playing with squirt guns and yo-yos.” The intonation she gives to “yo-yos” makes them sound equivalent to baby rattles.

“Right. Mozart.” What a kid. I squelch a smile. Gabriele has his hands full, for sure, but she’s such a personality. So clearly special. I just need to talk her down. Get her back on the train somehow.

“You know, I was raised by a single dad, too,” I finally say. “So I get it.”

“You don’t get it.” Chiara blows her bangs off her forehead. “There’s no way you do. Because you were born in the olden days.”

“The olden days, huh? You’re right. I was knee-deep in cow poop, milking them at dawn. All the Tommasos of my generation were heading off to war.”

No smile. Tough audience.

“How about gelato?” I finally venture.

“I like gelato.” She smiles—looks like such a kid when she does.

“Great, gelato it is, then! Hey, that’s the castle. From the sixteenth century, I think.” I point to the large crumbly building with moss clinging in patches to the side.

Chiara gives it about a second’s worth of her eyeballs’ time before rolling them. “Cooooool,” she says, her tone conveying aggressive unexcitement. “Adults get so excited about old stuff.”

“What do you get excited about?”

Her face lights up. “Experiments. I love doing science experiments! Like, I did this one where you add things to water and it explodes!” Her face darkens. “Papa didn’t like it. It ran all over his papers on the table. That was seriously irritante.”

She shakes her head, and I think she’s saying that it was seriously irritante that her dad had the gall to put his papers there. Not seriously irritante for him! I bite my lip. Poor Gabriele. But also lucky Gabriele. What a spirited, sassy kid.

“My brother is a scientist,” I tell Chiara as we join the gelato line. “He’s on the train actually, too. So I can introduce you, if you want to ask questions. He has a pretty big company.”

“If I go back to the train.”

“If,” I agree. “It’s probably not fun, though, to be homeless.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.”

“How would you get ice cream, though?”

“Easy.” Chiara jingles the coins in her purse. “People love to give money to a kid who’s singing.”

Oh. She’s right, I suppose. “But after a while, you won’t be exciting anymore. People will have seen you often and already given you their money.”

She considers it. “Well, if that happens, it’s not a big deal. It’s different when you’re a kid. I could just stand here, and someone will buy me ice cream and give me money. People feel sorry for a kid.” She puckers her lips, then affects a sob. “I lost my papa, and I haven’t eaten all afternoon.I want some ice cream.” It’s an Academy Award performance. Then her face brightens. “Like that!”

She’s got a point, this kid. We advance to the front and Chiara surveys the ice creams. While she isn’t paying attention to me, I quickly text Gabriele. I send him our location and tell him Chiara is fine. That I’m getting her gelato.

Chiara is already talking to the boy scooping out cones, speaking to him in a stream of Italian. I watch him smile, then shake his head and respond in a flurry of Italian.

“Oh.” Chiara turns to me. “They don’t have the flavor I want.”

“What’s that?” I ask.

“Earl Grey lavender.”

I squelch a laugh. “That sounds highly specific. And not exactly Italian.”

Chiara shrugs. “Papa and I have an ice cream maker and we experiment with different flavors. That was our best experiment. Papa suggested the combination, and I said che schifo! But it wasn’t gross, it was actually delicious.”

“Well, maybe try something else this time.”

“Yeah.” She ends up ordering gelato alle mandorle and gives me a taste.

“Yum!” It’s almondy, with crushed almonds sprinkled atop.

I consider getting pistachio, my favorite, but then I opt for something more Italian. I order bacio—chocolate and hazelnut.

We move to the side as I dole out euros to the ice cream guy. Of course, Chiara doesn’t offer to pay with the coins she collected for singing, which makes me smile. The glory of childhood, that coins can be hoarded and feel much like Monopoly money.

But then my smile fades at the memory of bills collecting on our dining room table, scary words embossed in red on the envelopes. Overdue. Last Notice. Collections.

Papa was wonderful, but mastery of our finances was never his top skill. Or maybe he was just always stretched. Being a diner chef wasn’t exactly lucrative. And he certainly didn’t make a living off his violin playing. Still, whatever his financial stress, he never let it show. He would want to take us to get new skis when we’d outgrown our old ones, and I would say, like it had only now occurred to me, “I don’t love skiing. Maybe we don’t need to ski this year.”

He always pinned me down with his piercing eyes. “You are a child, Rory. You don’t have to worry about if we can afford it. I am handling it.”

And I would bite my lip and nod. But I did worry about it. A lot. Papa did admittedly pull things off, paying for field trips and clothes and any excursions and extracurriculars Max and I desired, but the bills weighed on me. And Papa certainly didn’t have the salary of a lawyer, like Mr. Robinson next door, or of a businessperson, like other kids’ parents I knew. He was a cook at a diner, where the seat cushions were yellow pleather and torn in places, with stuffing poking through. Papa gave me money often, insistently, for ice cream, for the Doc Martens I coveted—but instead of spending it like he wanted me to, I would save it. I used to babysit the Robinson kids and I would save my babysitting money, too, and mail it all to the address in the bills, stuffing in my crinkled dollars and coins. I don’t think Papa ever knew.

Papa believed God took care of things. God. Me. He was right, wasn’t he? We always skated by—other than his credit score, perhaps, the fears that kept me up at night were the only real casualty of my childhood.

Chiara and I sit on a bench, and I steal a glance at my phone. Gabriele has texted me back that he was working and didn’t even realize Chiara had run away, with a face-palm emoji. Followed by the fact that he’s leaving immediately and will be here in ten minutes. And he’s added a grazie mille followed by three prayer-hand emojis.

“Your brother is a scientist?” Chiara asks, slurping up a trail of ice cream fleeing down her wrist.

I nod. “He created an Alzheimer’s vaccine. To prevent the disease, and also cure it. It’s going to be really huge when it finally comes out. Do you know what Alzheimer’s is?”

“Of course,” Chiara says. “Like Nino, who’s losing his mind. That’s what happens when you’re old. You know, old old. Like, you’re just old. But you’re not old old, not yet.”

“Thank you for that.” I smile.

“Is your brother the blond guy? The one who doesn’t smile?”

I blurt with a laugh. “No, that’s Nate. He’s—he’s had a lot going on lately.” I was about to tell her about how Nate wants me back and all that, because I’ve started to feel like Chiara is a miniature adult, but I stop myself, thank goodness. She’s nine, I remind myself. And I’ve dated her father. I can’t go to her for romantic advice, no matter how much I’d like to hear what she’d say, which would probably be hilarious and even useful.

Chiara nods. “So Nate… he’s with that other girl?”

“Other girl?” I shake my head. “You mean Caroline?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know her name.”

“The blond girl?” I ask. “She’s really pretty.”

“She’s really pretty,” Chiara confirms. “Sort of like a Barbie girl.”

I smile. “Yeah. That’s Caroline. No, she’s not with Nate.”

“Oh. I thought she was.”

I feel a crackle in my chest. “Nope,” I say cheerfully, but then add, “Why did you think they were together?”

“Oh, maybe they’re not. I just heard them arguing in a cabin doorway when I left the train. They didn’t see me.”

My heart twists as I remember that I caught Caro and Nate in that weird tense conversation when Max and I reunited with them on the hike. It struck me as weird because Caro and Nate don’t have a relationship. Max and Nate—yes. Me and Nate—obviously. But Caro and Nate—nothing. I mean they’re friendly, know each other well, but not friends. Never hung out independently of me. I rationalized what I saw as Caro telling him to give me time. Berating him for the breakup, maybe?

“Did you hear what they were arguing about?” I ask.

“Yeah, of course I did.” She nods. “No one pays attention to kids. They didn’t even notice me. They were talking about Dubai. My classmate went to Dubai last year.”

Dubai? Suddenly it clicks, that Nate has been in Dubai often the past half year because of business and trying to get Rima and Youmna out of the country. And that Caro went there on business, too, a couple of months back. My heart sinks right down to my toes.

“Yeah, he said, Rory can’t find out.” She looks at me.

I nod, not able to speak.

“I shouldn’t have repeated that.”

“No, it’s okay,” I manage. “I’m glad you told me. What else did you hear?”

“Well, the girl—Barbie—said, I have to tell her. And the man said, You can’t. And the girl was quiet. And the man said, What if it’s in the book? And the girl said, Well, the books are gone now. And then she said, But…”

“But…?” I hear the word slice the air but hardly feel my lips eject it.

Chiara shrugs. “I got sort of bored. I kept walking after that. I shouldn’t have listened, huh? Papa always says, Non ascoltare le conversazioni private.” She does an excellent imitation of a stern Gabriele that would make me laugh, if I didn’t feel like crying. “That means, Don’t listen to people’s private conversations. But I can’t help it. Because sometimes they’re really interesting.”

It can’t be. Caro and Nate? No. It can’t be. There has to be another explanation other than the horrible, obvious one my mind has conjured up.

“Did they—” I venture, but stop when I see Chiara’s face scrunched up. She’s put her unfinished gelato on the bench and is rubbing her chest.

“I think—I think there’s something wrong with me!” She peers under her shirt, scratching her skin raw.

“Yeah?” I peer too, even though I’m far more absorbed in my head, in the facts my brain is trying to make sense of. “Like a mosquito bite?”

“No, I feel like my chest is going to explode!”

I wonder if it’s a bit, an act, but then I see her face, which is suddenly immensely childlike and contorted in pain.

“Explode?” I say uncertainly. “What do you mean?”

“Like fireworks.” She bolts to a stand. “I need to—I don’t know—there’s something wrong! Do you ever feel like your whole body is going to explode?”

Now I feel a bit panicked, at this babysitting job I didn’t sign up for, that has suddenly confronted me with Chiara’s life in peril. “Your dad is almost here,” I tell her. “He’ll—”

“You texted him?” She isn’t in too much pain that she doesn’t say it quite accusatorily.

I blush. “I’m sorry. Grown-up rules. I had to.”

“Well, whatever, but we can’t wait around for him! Look at me!” She points, and suddenly I see them—red welts spackling her chest. What the hell? I’m afraid that something is seriously wrong. And that I’ve been a catalyst to it, as Chiara’s unwitting babysitter.

“We have to go now!” she shouts.

Before I can think, before I can come up with a reasonable plan, Chiara takes off—sprinting, really—back toward the train.