Page 15 of Summer Rush

Alyssa shrugged and turned as Eva came back. “What are we supposed to do with this?”

Eva laughed. “Teresa didn’t tell me! She just said to give you this book when you came to my door.”

Janine dropped back on the couch, at a loss. “We can’t speak Italian.”

“I don’t know if she considered that,” Eva said.

“Maybe you could help us?” Alyssa suggested.

“I don’t know.” Eva flipped through the first several pages, scanning quickly. “It seems like a very old book about art. Nothing about it stands out to me as a clue.”

“Is anything underlined?” Maggie asked.

“Not that I can see,” Eva said, frowning. “Listen, girls. I had better get started on my mother’s pasta sauce. If I don’t do it correctly, I can hear her screaming at me. She’s been deceased for five years, and still, she has this power!”

Using the canvas bags Eva gave them, Janine and Maggie wrapped up the book, listening as Alyssa and Eva gossiped in the kitchen.

“Alyssa is really into this,” Maggie said thoughtfully.

“You’re not?”

“It’s not that it’s not interesting,” Maggie offered. “It’s just strange. This woman laid out all these clues for us. Where is this headed? I don’t trust it.”

When Alyssa and Maggie had been little girls, it had always been this way. Although she was younger, Alyssa had always been the first to climb to the top of the monkey bars, always the first to race the boys. Maggie had always sat back, watching, thinking.

“Like I said before. It’s just a vacation. And we’re meeting a distant relative of yours! Isn’t that incredible? I mean, when the babies get a little bit older, you’ll be able to bring them here, to show them the villa, and to introduce them to Eva.”

Maggie’s lips curled into a smile. Always, it was easy to cheer her up, talking about the future— about the babies yet to be born. With the book secure in its packaging, Janine rubbed Maggie’s shoulder, then tilted her head toward the kitchen. “Why don’t we join them? I can’t believe it because it seems like we just ate, but I’m already starving.”

“Sounds like you’re half-Italian, already,” Maggie said with a laugh.

“No, honey. You’re Italian,” Janine reminded her. “I’m just along for the ride.”

ChapterSeven

After their luxurious meal at Eva’s, Janine, Maggie, and Alyssa chatted with Eva for a long while, about her life in Italy, about her friends and the rest of the Cacciapaglia family, and about her recommendations for the remainder of their stay in Venice.

“We don’t know when we’re going back,” Alyssa explained, then placed her hand across her stomach. “We’re at the mercy of Teresa’s game now.”

Eva laughed openly, waving her hand. “I can’t imagine it’ll take you longer than a week or two.”

“Have you seen that book?” Alyssa asked again, gesturing toward the enormous, old-world book that served as their next clue. “It’ll take us a lifetime to go through it.”

“I imagine Teresa knew Jack couldn’t speak Italian,” Eva said thoughtfully. “He never had any reason to learn it, did he?”

Janine shook her head. Jack had never considered learning another language, not that she knew of, anyway. Perhaps, during his affair with Maxine, he’d spoken a bit of French. As this thought floated in and out of her mind, she waited for the pain which so often accompanied any thought of Maxine and Jack together. To her surprise, the pain didn’t come. She felt almost as though they were people she’d met in another life.

“What I mean is, Teresa must have decided to use that book for reasons that extend beyond language,” Eva suggested. “I wouldn’t begin by translating the entire tome. Rather, think outside the box, if you can.”

After they kissed Eva on both cheeks and bid her goodbye, Janine, Alyssa, and Maggie stepped back into the blissful night, where a moon hung low, casting a shimmering light across the canals. On the water taxi back to Teresa’s villa, Alyssa clung hard to the large book, her eyes to the water, as Maggie texted her boyfriend, David, furiously.

“How is David doing?” Janine asked.

Maggie glanced up, jolting out of her phone-world. “He’s okay. He and his mother worked at the bookstore today. He had a signing, and it sounds like it brought in quite a few new customers.”

“That’s wonderful,” Janine said. “Did I tell you I finished readingThe Lighthouse on Arkin Bay?”

Maggie’s eyes lit up. “I forgot to ask you about that! What did you think?”

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