Page 27 of Nantucket Reflections
Charlie nodded. They held the silence for a moment. Julia realized they hadn’t decided what they were going to order for food, and the server was giving them annoyed glances, wanting to clean the table as quickly as possible to make way for more tourists, more customers.
Just when Julia started to suggest a salad to share, her phone rang. It was a Nantucket number. Shivery with anxiety, she answered it on the first ring.
“Julia Copperfield? This is Officer Jeff Magnum. We spoke the night Lucia Colombo went missing,” he said. His voice had that familiar Nantucket East Coast accent, and it filled Julia’s heart. It was strange to be so homesick so soon.
“Yes? I remember,” Julia said.
Across the table, Charlie folded his hands.
“I wanted to let you know that we picked up one of the guys she was with,” Officer Magnum continued. “Are you in Nantucket to come in and identify him?”
Julia was on her feet. “I’m not,” she said. “But my son, Henry Crawford, will be back on the island tomorrow evening. He was with me. He can identify him.”
Julia asked the officer to keep her updated. With a shaking hand, she ended the call and pressed her palms to the table. “They picked up one of the guys,” she explained to Charlie, finally. It was impossible to imagine what he would say. Here in the beautiful daydream of Positano, it was impossible to imagine how one of those men had ever crossed paths with Lucia Colombo. As always, there were more questions than answers.
ChapterFourteen
Christmas 2020
Positano, Italy
It had been a few months since Alessandra learned that she wouldn’t live longer than six years, and Alessandra continued to carry the secret alone. With winter crashing in on Italy, gray weather and illness had returned. COVID was back in full force, and the schools were closed. Panic was everywhere. Federico usually went to the grocery store, and he always wore two masks and plastic gloves. He stayed away from the rest of the family for a few hours after he returned. They’d already had COVID, of course, but there was talk that the virus was evolving. No telling what would happen next. Alessandra didn’t want to tell him that COVID was the least of their worries.
She was grateful that her parents hadn’t moved back in this time. She wasn’t sure she could take her mother breathing down her neck.
Dr. Vincento was still singing the same tune. The cancer was back, and it would kill her. But there were ways of extending her life, things to be done to keep her around as long as possible, and Alessandra had agreed to a hormonal treatment that wouldn’t do anything funky to her hair. The struggle was getting out of the house to go to appointments, at least at first. But Federico was busy slinging pots in his workshop, and Elena had a new boyfriend that she wanted to talk to on the phone for what felt like five hours a day. Alessandra might have cared about her screen time, or whatever, but she wasn’t keen on having those kinds of fights, not now. Perhaps Federico could deal with it later, after Alessandra was gone.
If and only if Alessandra lived the full six years (or longer! Miracles could happen!), then maybe she’d live long enough to see Elena graduate from high school and go to college. But it wasn’t likely that she’d be present for her wedding, or meet her first grandchild, or anything like that. These thoughts weren’t useful, but Alessandra wanted to prepare herself for the full breadth of reality. With the time she had left, she wanted to do what she pleased.
Most of all, she wanted to work.
A few nights before Christmas, Alessandra approached Federico with three projects meant for the following year of 2021. Now that the flights were up and running again (which you could board if you took the requisite COVID tests), Alessandra could technically go anywhere. She could go to New York City. She could go to Los Angeles. She could go to Buenos Aires if she wanted to travel that far. She’d already drawn several sketches and mapped out where she wanted to put her newest murals. “I don’t want CAT to quiet down,” she told Federico, trying to hide the urgency in her voice. “People need her more than ever.”
Federico looked at her with love in his eyes. “It’s a long way to go by yourself,” he said finally. “It’s a lot of work.”
“I know that,” she said. “But I promise, I won’t be gone long.” She reminded him that all of the locations she’d picked had money involved. She also reminded him that 2020 and the subsequent years had been some of the most politically charged ever. She wanted to make more statements. She sought to stand up for what she thought was right.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Federico asked in a joking voice, then kissed her. He knew that was exactly the kind of question that would drive her nuts.
Throughout Christmas—an elaborate affair, as always, with Alessandra’s parents braving COVID to come over—Alessandra kept mum on her travel plans. She cooked and baked herself into a tizzy and bickered with her mother and took the medication that had begun to make her feel like her body was made of stone. Frequently, she had to take naps in the next room and always set an alarm to ensure she didn’t sleep the day away, alerting everyone that her body was not all right. Alessandra felt like the most brilliant of actresses, fooling all of her loved ones. Maybe they would hate her for this one day. But in her mind, she was giving them more time together. More normal time.
Normal time was the only time she really wanted.
But during the Christmas feast, Alessandra had to bite her tongue to keep from crying. It was hard for her to fathom that all of this joy, the fights with her mother, her daughter’s teenage attitude, the delicious foods, the flowing wine, and the beautiful view out the window might not belong to her any longer.
“What’s gotten into you, Alessandra?” her mother asked pointedly. “You look like you’re going to be sick.”
“I’m fine,” she told her, putting an edge to her voice. She poured her mother more wine and ordered her to keep eating. “You’re making me feel bad about my food.”
“It isn’t your best,” her mother said of the pasta.
Alessandra rolled her eyes as her father and Federico interjected to say that, actually, it was the best pasta they’d had all year.
“Don’t flatter me.” She laughed.
“Your mother is being cruel because it’s Christmas and it’s tradition,” her father teased, then pressed a kiss onto her mother’s cheek. “It’s what a family does.”
“I know all about what a family does,” Alessandra said, thinking about herself, about her lies.
