Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 100605 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 503(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100605 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 503(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
She nodded. “That’s easy to see right from the start with you.”
“Izzy grew up very differently. But we were a balance, so it seemed to work. She’d lived in six different states in America before she was even a teenager, so she was more adaptable than me. The best way I could describe her was restless. She craved change. When we were younger, that meant a new hobby every few months. As we got older, it meant entire careers. While I longed for stability, Izzy was always reaching for what came next. And somehow, for a time, that balance held us together. Until it didn’t.” I took a deep breath. “Her travels took her to bigger cities, and she decided she didn’t want to live in a small town anymore.”
“Did you ever consider moving to give her what she wanted?”
I nodded. “I would have moved around the world to be with her back then. But she wanted her freedom. It didn’t make sense to me because when we were together, we were happy. And I needed to make sense of it, which was why I initially convinced myself she was having an affair.”
“But she wasn’t?”
I shook my head. “I’m grateful I didn’t find any evidence she was. It made accepting that we were just different people much easier, and I was able to move on without holding on to a lot of anger and bringing my past into my future relationships.”
She smiled ruefully. “I definitely understand that. I already felt like I didn’t know how to let go of my distrust from my past relationships and my job, and now…finding out even my dad wasn’t loyal, it all feels too heavy to lift.”
“It will take time.”
Allegra looked into my eyes. “What happens if it takes so much time that something really great passes me by?”
I reached across the table and stroked her cheek. “If something is really that great, it will be there for you when you’re ready.”
Her eyes filled with tears, yet she smiled. “You promise?”
I nodded. “Ti prometto.” I promise you.
Chapter 19
Matteo
14 years ago
ORDINE DI SFRATTO
I read the sign posted on Isabella’s front door. “Is everything okay?”
She shrugged. “The landlord is a jerk. He’s always coming by and bothering my dad.”
Izzy spoke pretty good Italian after a year of living here, so I wasn’t sure if she really didn’t know the paper taped to her front door read Order of Eviction or if maybe she was embarrassed and didn’t want to talk about it. Either way, I let it go and followed her into the house. I’d been to her place—or places, since she’d moved twice so far—dozens of times over the last year, as my mom always made me walk her home when she stayed past dark hanging out with Luciana. But this was my first time going inside. This year we had history class together, and we’d had to pick someone to do a group project with. I’d practically jumped out of my chair to ask Izzy to work with me before anyone else could.
Inside her house, the entryway was crammed with boxes and piles of books. I had to turn sideways to squeeze through. The living room was more of the same. “You are moving again?”
She nodded. “My dad wants to be closer to his land so he can spend more time hunting.”
“Hunting? I thought your dad gave tours in Florence?”
“It was hard for him to compete since he wasn’t born here. Tourists like to see things with a local.” She shrugged. “There’s more money and less government interference in truffle hunting anyway.”
It sounded like she was repeating some excuse her father had given, but I kept that thought to myself. “Will you still go to da same school?”
She nodded and moved a couple of stacks of papers from the kitchen table to the top of the stove. Most of it looked like bills, and the top one was marked overdue. “The new place is closer to school.”
This would be the third time Izzy had moved in the little over a year she’d been here. The first time she’d said her dad had found a better place, but now I wondered if that was true.
“Where is everyone?” I looked around. “Your mom and brother?”
“My mom is on a mission trip.”
“What is a mission trip?”
“She goes with her church to different countries that need help and does things like build houses and install water-filtration systems.”
“How long is she gone?”
Izzy shrugged. “A month. Sometimes longer.”
Her family seemed stranger and stranger by the minute. I looked around for a surface that wasn’t covered in boxes and papers, but the choices were limited. “You want to work on our project on da couch?”
“I’m not really in the mood to work on history yet. Why don’t we go sketch the clouds into drawings?”