The Girl in the Glass (14 page)

I knew before she said another word why she had called.

“I don’t know where he is, Therese. I haven’t talked to him in several days.”

Therese didn’t say anything for a few long seconds. When she did speak, I could tell she didn’t believe me.

“What he did was wrong, Meg. The money he took was what Allison had been given from her grandfather’s estate. It didn’t belong to him. Neither did the car or the earrings and necklaces he took.”

“I don’t know where he is.” I said it plainly and without a hint of emotion.

“Do you hear what I am saying? He took money that her grandfather had left her.”

I was seconds away from hanging up on her, but I wanted to get out of the office with her as a distraction as I walked out. I grabbed my purse, Sofia’s pages, and my book bag.

“And do you hear what I am saying? I don’t know anything.”

“You were planning a trip to Italy with him. I’d say that’s knowing something.”

I pulled my office door shut and headed down the hall at a brisk pace, hoping that Gabe was still with Geoffrey and I could just walk out. Get away. “Apparently you know just as much as I do.”

“Why are you protecting him?” Therese shouted.

“Why do you care what he does or doesn’t do?” I yelled back. I could see heads in the reception area turning toward me as I pushed open the front door and emerged into April sunshine. “He’s not your husband. He’s not your problem.”

“He’s my brother! I promised my mother I wouldn’t let him bury himself in debt. And for your information, Allison doesn’t deserve this!”

I clacked my way to my car, wanting to run to it and feeling imprisoned by the heels I had decided to wear that day. “Oh yes. Let’s do talk about what Allison deserves. Goodbye, Therese.” I was ready to hang up on her, but she yelled at me not to.

“Look, I don’t know what he’s promised you, but you’ve got to know he’s stringing you along, like he always has. You think he wants to do right by you, but he’s got you fooled, Meg. You know I am right about this. He’s in trouble. Big trouble. He owes money all over the place. He’s not taking you to Florence. I’m sure he never planned to.”

I stopped in the middle of the street as her arrow hit home and buried itself in my chest. “How dare you say that?”

“It’s true. I’ve known him all my life. I’m sorry to say it, but this is just the way he is.”

A car whooshed past me, honking. For a second I wavered. I nearly gave in to her, but then I remembered the morning Dad brought the poppy-seed bagels and he apologized to me. Something had changed inside him; he was different. He desperately wanted to make things right between us.

He begged for me to come up with a way to let him show me how much.

He promised to find the painting.

I took another step toward the curb and then stopped. My dad left the last morning I saw him, impatient to find it. He said he was going to start looking for it that very day.

He was going to start with Therese and Bianca.

With one question, I could gauge my father’s new intentions toward me. One answer to one question would let me know if he’d been sincere the day he drove down to see me or if he was still who Therese said he was.

“Did my dad ask you about the painting of the little girl and the statue?”

There was a momentary pause. “The
what
?”

I closed the distance between myself and my car. I steeled myself against it and asked her again. “Did my dad ask you about a painting? It was Nonna’s.”

“What painting? I haven’t talked to your dad in over a month. Why are we even talking about this?”

The ache that had begun at losing Florence intensified as I fought now to calmly remind Therese which painting of Nonna’s I was talking about. “The one of the little girl and the statue.”

A second of silence.

“I have no idea where that painting is.” Exasperation laced her voice. “I haven’t seen it since my mother died. What has this got to do with
anything
?”

No idea where that painting is
.

No idea
.

He hadn’t even asked her.

He hadn’t even asked.

“Are you still there?” Therese’s question was wrapped in impatience.

Oh yes. I was still there.

Nothing had changed.

I was in my eighth year when I asked Nurse what my father was like, for I could not remember him. I had seen him only once after my mother died. And it was only for a moment. He came to Florence to discuss financial matters, not to see Virginio and me. There was no caress on the cheek during that visit.

Nurse and I were outside taking in the fresh air on a warm spring day. I was watching my cousin Maria with my uncle Francesco, observing how he spoke to her as he held the reins of his horse with Maria on the animal’s back. Two years younger than I, she still seemed little more than a baby. There was an urgency to my uncle’s words as he told Maria how to sit on his horse, as if she had only that day to learn and all would be lost if she could not make the horse obey her that very afternoon. His attention on her was intense, in a way that interested me, even though I was afraid of him. He was the closest thing to a father that I had, and he never spoke to me. I think he saw my mother in me, and that made him look away from me whenever I was near. He was not fond of my mother.

Maria did not seem to be enjoying the lesson very much. I saw the sparkle of tears on her cheek. I never envied her having Francesco for a father. But a curling tendril of something akin to envy began to wrap
itself around my heart as I watched her being the center of her father’s attention in that moment.

I allowed the little vine to stay. Even then, though I did not know it yet, I was nurturing my budding belief that envy can transform into something nobler when watered with hope.

12

When I moved into the cottage last year, Findlay Wyndham, an old family friend on my mother’s side, told me I was to think of it as my home. I was to eat on the good dishes, burn his candles, use the seashell-shaped soaps, and play his vintage LPs on his old-school turntable as much as I wanted. The lifelong bachelor was off to spend three years sailing around the world at a minnow’s pace, and I was his happy answer to needing a house sitter.

I eat off my own open-stock stoneware, and I forget to burn even my own candles. The seashell soaps are still in their packaging, and I hardly ever turn on his old stereo.

But on days when I am feeling particularly disappointed with the state of the universe, I pull out his B. B. King albums, switch on the stereo, and fill the cottage with the blues.

Fifteen minutes after I hung up with Therese, I was sitting on Findlay’s leather sofa, sipping a Merlot at three o’clock in the afternoon with Alex on my lap and BB belting out “Worry, Worry.”

Therese had figured out, within seconds of my asking, that Dad had promised to find a painting that meant a lot to me and he hadn’t even asked her about it.

But the cruelest of his injuries was letting me think he was taking me to Florence when apparently his only plan of late had been figuring out how to run out on his wife with as much cash as he could. What was the purpose of his so-called plans to go to Florence with me? Had it been a distraction
for Allison so that she wouldn’t wonder why he was making travel plans, airing out his suitcases, and pulling his passport out of the safe?

He knew how much I wanted to see Florence, how much I’ve always wanted to see Florence. He had to know how much this would hurt.

My phone vibrated as I sat there sipping, musing, and pondering; a text from Gabe.

“You all right?”

I texted back that I would be okay. I would. Eventually.

“Want to do something tmro? Helping friend move but can come over when done.”

I texted back that he could let me know when he was finished and I would see where I was at emotionally. I wanted to think that by tomorrow late afternoon, I’d be up for frozen yogurt and company instead of tissues and pity.

I finished the glass of wine, BB moved on to a happier tune, and I got up, dumping Alex on his black-and-white feet.

A sense of finality seemed to spread over me as I took the glass to the sink and rinsed it out. I was finished with waiting.

Done.

I walked over to my kitchen table where my laptop rested, opened it, and powered it on. A minute later I was transferring two hundred dollars from my checking account into my savings account. The following month I would do it again. And again the next month. And the next. By the same time next spring I would have more than two-thousand dollars saved. If that wasn’t enough for the plane ticket and food and cheap lodging, I’d beg Lorenzo to let me sleep on his kitchen floor. I wouldn’t care. I wouldn’t care if I slept on tile and ate bread and water for a week straight. I would see Florence. I would let Sofia Borelli take me wherever she wanted. And I would stop at any painting or sculpture or doorknob in a church that spoke
to her and ask her to tell me what Nora wanted to say about it. And I would find the statue with the beckoning hand. I would take a picture of it and have it printed on canvas when I got home, and I’d hang it over Findlay’s fireplace. I wouldn’t have Nonna’s painting, but I would have this.

Saturday dawned brilliantly sunny, a rare treat for a coastal dweller, but I pulled the covers over my head and slept like a moody teenager until eleven. I’d missed a call from my mother while I slept. Her voice mail made it easy for me not to call her back. She wanted to know how I was doing.

I changed into yoga pants and a cotton hoodie and medicated my smarting emotional aches with a long walk on the beach. There is a calming aura at the ocean’s edge, despite the frothing foam, crashing waves, and roaring white noise. The ocean looks the same on your good days and your bad days. Nice to know on the worst of days that there are a few things you can utterly count on.

After a late lunch of fish tacos at a sidewalk café and then a long walk back, I finally returned to the cottage a little before two, my feet aching. A purple, orange, and white envelope was leaning up against my front door when I stepped onto the porch and opened the screen door.

A FedEx envelope.

I scanned the
From
label as I unlocked the door.

Premier Travel out of Los Angeles. My breath caught in the back of my throat.

I threw my keys onto the little table by the door and tore open the envelope. Inside was a folded piece of paper, an American Express cash card, and an airline ticket in my name. With a quickening pulse, I zeroed in on the destination.

Florence, Italy.

A tiny gasp burst past my lips.

The date? A red-eye out of Los Angeles. That left that night. In five hours.

I leaned back against the wall, dazed. It had to be a mistake. I reread the date and time. Twice. Three times.

The ticket in my name was for that night, leaving out of Los Angeles at seven.

I roared something unintelligible.

How could he do this? How could he do it like this?

I unfolded the piece of paper, and my eyes met my father’s handwriting.