“And I guess it didn’t help to find a stranger in his house.”
“Well, in his pool. But don’t worry about him, he’s nothing if not resilient.”
“You speak perfect English,” I can’t help but say. “The both of you.”
“Many Italians do,” he says, almost as if he took offense to that. “It helps that we travel so much, especially when we visit his mother in London.” He pauses. “So, she never told you she had a son?”
I swallow hard, feeling like I might get in trouble for saying anything. “No. She didn’t. We, well, we very much have a client-agent relationship. I actually don’t know anything about her and she doesn’t know much about me either.”
“I don’t think that’s so unique with her,” he says. He finishes the rest of his coffee and then gives me another arresting stare. “So, now what?”
I shrink into the couch a little, hands folded in my lap. “I guess … I go back home.”
My focus is on my hands, but I can feel his gaze on me. When I finally look up, he’s observing me like I’m a sort of puzzle, which I suppose I am. What to do with the writer?
“Do you think you’ll be able to finish your book if you go back home?” he asks.
I shrug. “Who knows at this point? I know I won’t give up on it.”
He nods and then gets up. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to make a call.”
He starts down the hallway and I quickly yell after him, “You’re not calling the cops, are you?”
I don’t think he hears me though, because he goes into the study and closes the door.
Before I can dwell on it, there’s a clamor of footsteps on the stairs and then Vanni bounces toward me. “You’re still here.”
He sits down on the chair his father was just in and takes such a similar pose that I bite my lip, trying not to laugh.
“I’m here for now,” I tell him. “Pretty sure I’m going.”
“Are you Irish?”
“Scottish.”
“Outlander,” Vanni says knowingly. “That show has got time travel all wrong. E un peccato.”
I can’t help but frown. “The time travel is wrong?”
He nods, serious as can be. “Their time travel theory is based on timing, location, and the person traveling. There is no such thing as time traveling traits in people. Jamie Fraser can’t time travel? Why not? It’s not, how do you say … prejudiced. Time travel is equal opportunity.”
I blink at him, unsure what to do with that information. “So, I take it you know a few things about time traveling.” I lean in, my elbows on my knees, and give him a mock suspicious look. “You wouldn’t happen to be a time traveler, would you?”
I obviously don’t have a lot of experience with kids, but they do like it when you humor them, right?
Maybe not.
He stares at me like I’m an idiot. “You think I’m a time traveler? Mio dio. No, no, è il mio cavallo di battaglia.” He notes my blank stare. “It’s my forte,” he explains. “That’s what that means. Anything about time travel, wormholes, the multiverse.”
Jana’s son is a Stephen Hawking in the making. Interesting.
He sits up straighter and puffs out his chest. “I am in science and physics class, three years ahead of everyone else. A thirteen-year-old level.”
“That’s very impressive.”
“Sì.” He sighs, sitting back. “I know.” He stares off into the distance for a moment and I wonder if the conversation is over. Then he looks at me. “I hope you get to stay.”
So do I, I think.
“I’m not sure that will work out,” I say. “Neither you or your father were expecting me. Your mother invited me, but she didn’t tell you.”
He presses his lips together and nods. Perhaps his mother is a touchy subject with him.
Then he shrugs. “She’s like that. She forgets things. One time I went to London by myself on the plane and she forgot to pick me up at the airport.”
My eyes nearly fall out. “She what?”
“She was so sorry about it. She showed up a few hours later crying. I’d never seen my mother cry before, so I wasn’t mad.”
Jeez, Jana.
“Anyway,” Vanni goes on. “If you stay, then I could have some company. I was supposed to be with my best friend Toni, but he broke his leg. It was kind of cool, until he started screaming, and then I realized we would have to come back home.”
“You wouldn’t feel weird about having a strange woman in your house?”
“You’re not strange,” he says. He frowns again. “I don’t think. But you aren’t a stranger. I know your name and what you do. You’re Grace Harper and you’re an author.”
I’m Grace Harper and I’m an author.
Why did that sound like a lie?
Suddenly Claudio’s voice booms from the office, yelling at someone on the phone.
With a sinking feeling I realize who.
Perhaps after this, I won’t be an author anymore.
Four
Claudio
“I said I was sorry,” Jana snipes at me over the phone. “What more do you want, Claudio?”
She pronounces my name wrong sometimes. Clawdio instead of Cloudio, just to piss me off, and she’s doing it now.
“Why the hell didn’t you tell your client that you had an ex-husband and a son? I can understand me, perhaps, but Vanni? Are you ashamed of him?”
She sighs heavily, and I sink down into the chair in the study, feeling the weight of my words in my heart. I don’t talk to Jana on the phone very often because it never goes well, even after all these years apart. But that’s more on her end than mine. It’s better for everyone if we communicate by text.
“I’m not ashamed, I merely forgot. I’m a busy woman, Claudio. It happens.”
“You didn’t forget,” I remind her. “This isn’t even your house anymore. Your name isn’t on it. Any claim you had to it dissolved when we got divorced six years ago.”
“I didn’t think you’d be home.”
“I can see that.”
“Look, this girl has been through a lot. I felt sorry for her. I thought I could help her. And she has potential to go further than she has so far. She needs me to do it, and I provide the right motivation.”
“Uh huh,” I say, squeezing the bridge of my nose. Jana touts herself as a miracle worker when it comes to authors and deals, though this is the first I’ve ever heard of her feeling sorry for someone. “What happened to her?”
“She wrote with another author. Together they were Robyn Grace. Robyn died, so Grace is now on her own.”
No wonder I sensed sadness in the girl. Her blue eyes don’t hide anything.
“And so now her muse is gone,” I say quietly, knowing all too well how that feels.
“I guess,” Jana says. “Though the muse should be money. I’ve never understood that about you artists.” She pauses. “Lucky that you don’t have to worry even if your muse never shows up again.”