Page 37 of Gelato at the Villa (Suitcase Sisters #2)

L’amicizia è come un fiore, ha bisogno di cure e attenzioni per crescere.

Friendship is like a flower ; it needs care and attention to grow.

Italian saying

That night I couldn’t sleep. I pretended I was for a long while and then finally got up as quietly as I could.

“Grace?”

“Sorry, Claire. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t. I haven’t been able to fall asleep. Do you want some gelato?”

I chuckled softly. “You know I’m never going to turn down that offer. Do you think Amelia would mind?”

“No, not at all. Come on. Let’s see if any strawberry is left.”

We put on our shoes and pulled sweaters over our pj’s.

Before we tiptoed out of the room like two little girls in a boarding school trying to sneak out, I grabbed the extra blankets at the end of our beds just in case Claire liked the idea formulating in my head.

I wanted to cozy up in one of the lounge chairs by the swimming pool and gaze at the reflection of the moon in the still water.

Claire had a different vision, and we went with hers.

We carried our bowls of strawberry gelato down the steps to the table under the wisteria.

I turned on the café lights that lined the pergola, and with the blankets around our shoulders, we sat side by side, letting each spoonful slowly melt on our tongues.

The night felt alive with the muffled concert of insects in the garden and the chortling chirp and trill of a nearby bird.

It sounded like a nightingale. Subtle fragrances of sweet flowers blended with the scent of rich earth recently watered.

I felt at home and, at the same time, transported to a haven where I was an outsider, an observer, trying to absorb the elements that were familiar yet outside my scope of experience.

I didn’t know if I would be able to say anything. My heart and mind were still trying to meld not only the experience of that evening in Florence but also all the moments in this journey that had led to the dinner being such a defining moment.

Claire finished her gelato and was the first to share her thoughts. “I don’t understand.”

“Hmm?”

“How could Gio forgive the man who ruined his life? Why? That man should pay for what he did.”

“He will,” I said.

“How? When?” Claire caught herself. “Oh, you mean at the end of all things, when justice prevails, like you said.”

“When did I say that?”

“When we were in St. Mark’s Basilica and saw the painting of Christ on a throne. Remember? I said He had a nice journal, and you said that’s where He keeps an account. In His book.”

I had forgotten about that. It was one of many short conversations, but it had stayed with Claire. Why?

Part of me wanted to answer her and say that yes, the Bible describes the final judgment, when the deeds of all will come to light.

But I paused. Of all the things we had seen, heard, and experienced today, Claire was focused on Gio’s extraordinary forgiveness.

I decided to ask her a question I had tried to ask many times before.

“Claire, I know someone hurt you badly. You’ve hinted at it many times, but you always pull back before getting it out.”

Her lips parted, but no words formed.

“What happened?”

She released a long sigh and pulled the blanket closer around her shoulders. After what felt like a painfully long time, she spoke. “It was the choir director.”

Beauty and chaos collided in me for the second time that night. Her willingness to finally confide in me felt beautiful. At the same moment, the thought of a twisted man violating my friend made me sick to my stomach.

“At the school where they treated my dad so horribly.”

I waited, and Claire began to slowly, quietly pour out the details.

As she did, I kept swallowing and blinking back the tears.

I wanted her to stop and no longer dredge up the memory.

At the same time, I knew that, like an infected wound, the toxins needed to be released. She needed to let it all drain out.

When the painful account was finished, I put my arm around her and gently rested my head on her shoulder. She was trembling.

“Thank you,” I whispered. “Thank you for trusting me with your story. I am so, so sad that happened to you.”

She rested her head on mine. We sat in sadness and silence for a pause that was long enough to respect the bravery it took for Claire to confide in me. I affirmed her again.

When we both sat up straight, Claire cried for the first time since we had started talking. She dabbed her eyes with the edge of the blanket. “I told my mother.”

“What did she do?” I asked.

“She told me I couldn’t say anything because my father might lose his job.”

A bolt of lightning shot through me. “Oh, Claire.”

Now I was crying. To be assaulted and robbed of innocence was horrible enough.

To be denied comfort or protection from her mother was worse.

And then to be placed in a position where it was up to her to keep silent so that the whole family could eat and have a roof over their heads was a terrible demand to make of a child.

No wonder she struggled with injustice. No wonder she’d had very little contact with her parents after she left home at eighteen.

No wonder she didn’t want anything to do with the church.

Deep angst welled up in me. My feelings poured out of a reservoir of compassion that had been filling up for my friend ever since I met her. I had seen the shadows, heard hints of the unspoken, and felt the mysterious weight she carried. Now that I knew exactly what it was, it shattered me.

I wept wildly, and Claire didn’t know what to do with me.

“Grace?” She waited a moment and repeated, “Grace?”

When I could pull myself together, I wrapped both arms around her. “It hurts me to the core that you went through that and no one was there for you.” I let out another burst of tears and tried to stop, but I couldn’t.

Claire should not have been the one comforting me, but she was.

We sat under the wisteria for more than an hour. I settled into a calmness born of emotional exhaustion. The door of Claire’s past had been opened all the way, and she seemed to have the freedom to release every grim memory and let it go feral into the night.

She talked about how she had to get on the plane to Rome with the choir director leading their trip and why it hurt so much that the guy she liked wouldn’t be there for her or protect her. It made sense why her memories of Rome were so painful.

“I hid from the teacher the whole trip. Nothing happened to me there. After we got home, it came out that he did the same thing to another girl. She told her mom, and her mom blew the whole mess open during the summer. Three other girls came forward. It was awful. The story was reported in the papers, but my name was never connected to any of it. No one but my parents knew, and they wouldn’t say anything.

I felt like I couldn’t say anything either.

” Claire shifted and adjusted her blanket.

“By the end of August, the choir director was fired. My family started the school year as if nothing had happened.”

“But Claire, something did happen. Something terrible and wicked and wrong.”

“I know.”

We sat in silence again. All my tears were spent. She still had a few stragglers.

“Thank you, Grace. Thank you for feeling all of this for me, and with me,” Claire said. “I never expected that. I don’t know what I expected if I told you. I never wanted to bring it up. I told Jared when we were engaged, and he wanted to track the guy down and make sure he was still in jail.”

“Did he go to jail?”

“I don’t know. I think so. It was all hush-hush.

I wasn’t in the group of girls who had gone to court and testified.

I never asked, and my parents never said anything.

We moved right before the case went to trial.

I think my parents figured distance would solve everything.

It may have helped my dad in some ways, but it made it worse for me. ”

“I understand now how you became so strong. And brave. You had to go through all that without any support,” I said.

“I tried to move on. I mean, I did. I got married and everything. But how can I forgive? How could Gio forgive the guy who made him homeless? How can he forgive his first wife for abandoning him when he needed her most?” As if she could guess what my answer might be, Claire added, “If Jesus is all about love and justice, He could have stopped what happened to Gio and what happened to me. I was a good little girl. I used to love God and love people. It was simple. Then all that happened. Why didn’t God stop it? ”

It took me a moment to say the only answer I could give her. “I don’t know.”

Claire folded her arms on the table and rested her chin on them. “I used to really love God. I told you that. Maybe not as deeply as you do, or Gio, Amelia, or Paulina. But for a young girl, I gave it my all. I trusted Him, and I believed everything the singing vegetables taught me.”

I grinned at her “singing vegetables” reference again.

Claire raised her head. “I don’t think I can talk about this anymore. My head is pounding, and I feel exhausted all of a sudden. Can we table this?”

“Yes, of course.”

As she stood, Claire said, “Thank you, Grace. I mean, really. Thank you for going into the muddy pit of my private horror and allowing yourself to feel it with me, or for me, or whatever it was that came over you. I don’t think I’ve ever cried about it the way you cried for me. Maybe I need to do that.”

“Maybe.”

“I’m glad I told you,” she said. “But in some ways, I wish I hadn’t. The whole thing is so repulsive to me.”

“It was evil,” I said. “All of it was vile. So wrong. It makes me sick too.”

“Well, thank you.”

I stood and gave her a long hug, wrapping my arms and my blanket around her like two flapping wings of comfort. Silently, we slipped back to our room and found needed comfort in our cozy beds.

The next morning a little after 9:30, I heard a tap on our bedroom door. I rolled over in bed and squinted in the light. “Yes, who is it?”

“It’s Rosie. Good morning. Buongiorno! Didn’t see you two come down yet.

Amelia wondered if you would like to do some cooking.

You don’t have to, of course. It’s only that she said you might want to join her.

And don’t think I didn’t notice the gelato bowls in the sink this morning.

A late-night binge, I’m guessing?” She laughed in her robust way.

Claire propped herself up on her elbow. “I’ll be down in about twenty minutes.”

“I need a little longer than that,” I called out. “I hope Amelia isn’t waiting for us.”

“No. Come down and join in whenever you like. Oh, and did you know the pool man was here yesterday to fix the heater? If you decide to go swimming again, it might be more of a California experience and not the polar-bear plunge it’s been since I arrived.

I left extra towels on the chairs. Ta for now. ”

I grinned at Claire. “Well, now you know where I’ll be while you’re creating torte—whatever it is. But I do want to join in the cookie baking.”

She stretched and yawned. “Sounds like a plan.”

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Like I have a vulnerability hangover.”

“Understandable. What you did last night in sharing with me was so, so significant. It was a bold thing to trust me with your story. Thank you.”

“No, thank you, for being pretty much the only person in the world I can talk to on such a deep level. Except for Jared. But whenever I tell him about a problem, he wants to fix it right then and there. I love that about him, when the problem is a leaky faucet. But with complex life stuff, it’s not a one-and-done kind of fix.

” She tossed the covers off her and got up. “Mind if I use the bathroom first?”

“All yours.” I rose and pulled open the curtains. The sky was periwinkle blue and sprinkled with cotton-ball clouds. If I were a landscape painter, this would be the day to go outside and set up my easel.

Instead, I put on my bathing suit and gathered everything I needed to pursue a different form of art that was beginning to feel as Italian as gelato. I was about to immerse myself in the art of doing nothing, this time by the pool.