Sister Swap. Lilian Darcy

She was wincing and flapping her hands, clasping them together, begging him to understand, acting sincerely distressed. “I do that. I say things. And—oh my gosh! My blouse isn’t even done up right. You’re never going to beli—” She stopped, then fastened the slipped-through button that had caught his attention when she’d first come up to him in the terminal.

      “Never going to what?” he asked.

      He was curious.

      And he’d started to have a theoretical inkling about what Francesco might have seen in her.

      There was a beat of silence.

      “Never going to forgive me,” she said.

      “Don’t be ridiculous. It was a small misunderstanding.”

      “No, um, I meant for my comments about the t-a-n-t-r-u-m thing.” She spelled out the critical word.

      “I will forgive you if it’s not mentioned again.”

      “Right. Okay. It won’t be.” She stopped flapping and clasping her hands, settled a little deeper into her seat and turned to look out of the window.

      Glancing in the rearview mirror, Gino saw that Pia had fallen asleep. It was three-thirty in the afternoon. They’d be home in an hour and a half. If she slept until then, she’d be difficult to settle tonight, and he was essentially on his own. Miss Cassidy was taking a four-week paid break in England, at his request. It was the right thing, he was sure of it, yet he felt daunted.

      Even utterly capable, immaculate, Paris-born Angele had been daunted by taking care of Pia. Gino and Angele had separated when Pia was just six months old, and of course she had gone with her mother—and with Miss Cassidy, whom they’d hired before their baby was even born. Miss Cassidy had been part of the divorce settlement, if you wanted to look at it that way, a live-in fixture at the spacious apartment Angele had rented in Rome.

      During Angele’s illness two years ago…such an aggressive form of cancer… Gino hated to think about it…he’d moved Pia and Miss Cassidy back into his own apartment, but he hadn’t changed anything about their routine. He hadn’t felt it was his place. He had consulted with Angele’s older sister Lisette, also married to an Italian and based in Rome, and she had agreed.

      “Of course, you must think of what my sister would have done and what she would have wanted!”

      “I need you to help me with all of that, Lisette.”

      “I’m here, Gino. You know I am.”

      Pia had lost her mother. Miss Cassidy gave her continuity of care and affection. Gino himself had been very tied up with the acquisition of a rival company that year and with his complicated feelings about his ex-wife’s death. He worked long hours, and he traveled frequently.

      “I’m not sure how much Francesco has told you about my situation,” he suddenly said, dragging Roxanna Madison’s rapt attention from the unfolding views of Tuscany in early spring.

      As a horticultural expert, it made sense that she was enthralled. He should probably have left her in peace. But with Pia safely asleep and with the prospect of the three of them living under the same roof for several weeks, he wanted to make sure everything was clear. And he wanted it to come from him, not from Francesco over the phone, or from the staff employed at the Di Bartoli palazzo and surrounding tract of land.

      “Um, not much,” she answered.

      So he told her about Angele, Miss Cassidy, the apartment in Rome and his own growing belief, over the past few months, that he needed to get more involved with Pia, get more of an idea about the reason behind the tantrums. Was it because of her mother’s death? Was there some area in which her needs were not being met? He was her father. It was his duty to understand his little girl.

      “Thank you for sharing that with me,” Roxanna said when he’d finished speaking, and he realized he’d gotten more personal and detailed than he’d intended and that he’d shown more vulnerability also.

      It didn’t make sense. On top of the two narrow misses on major tantrums, those few moments of fearing that he’d lost Pia at the airport must have unsettled him more than he’d thought.

      Still thinking about his daughter, he made the final turn into the graveled avenue that led to the estate, and the palazzo came into view, its terra-cotta-tiled roof softly washed by the thin late-afternoon March sunshine, and the first hints of spring green dusting the landscape all around.

      “Ohhh, it’s beautiful!” Dr. Madison said beside him. “I mean, today. It looks particularly beautiful today. Compared to when I was last here, last week, when it was, when it was—”

      “Probably raining,” he finished for her, not really thinking about it.

      Pia was still asleep, and he wondered how disastrous the consequences would be later on tonight if he left her that way, parked safely in front of the palazzo with the car windows open. Or should he wake her up at once? He knew from recent experience that this would definitely make her cry.

      Chapter Two

      In her room at midnight that night, Rox very much wanted to call Rowie and Mom to report, like a covert operative, that she’d achieved successful and undetected insertion into the target zone. She’d managed to greet Maria, the housekeeper, as if the two of them had met before. She’d correctly matched the three gardeners’ names with the descriptions of them that Row had given her. She’d used the sketchy map of the palazzo’s interior to navigate her way to her bedroom, and had only gotten lost once.

      But Rowie and Mom were on the plane to Florida, so she couldn’t.

      At least, she really hoped they were on the plane to Florida. What if Row couldn’t bring herself to leave the hotel, even when she had Mom with her every step of the way?

      How much of the difference in their personalities came down to the fact that Rox had been born first and heaviest and healthiest and easiest? It had always seemed to her like such a random quirk of fate. She’d held the winning ticket in that particular lottery, and she wasn’t going to let her sister suffer for it.

      Since she couldn’t call Mom and Rowie, she called Dad instead. “You haven’t heard from them?”

      “No, which means they must be safely on the plane.” He sounded relieved about it, also.

      “That’s great! Tell Rowie as soon as you see her that everything is going fine here, no problems, and she’s not to worry about a thing. She’s to focus on herself, on getting the right therapist and the right treatment, and getting better.”

      “Will do, honey.”

      “Talk to you soon.”

      “Thanks for doing this for your sister.”

      “Oh, it’s a walk in the park, it’s a breeze,” Rox lied. “It’s going to be fun. Make sure she really knows she doesn’t have to worry about me.”

      Roxanna didn’t feel sleepy, since her body was still set on New Jersey time. When Gino had taken his still-wide-awake and protesting daughter up to bed an hour ago, Rox had almost blurted out something about jet lag and understanding how Pia felt. She’d shut her treacherous mouth just in time.

      You weren’t supposed to get jet lag going from London to Italy, since their time zones were only an hour apart, so she’d put on a fake yawn, said good-night, and hidden her raring-to-go energy levels in this gorgeous, high-ceilinged, powder-blue-painted room, with adjoining bathroom, that Francesco had assigned to her sister.

      It was no coincidence, Roxanna knew, that the room was situated just along the corridor from where Francesco had slept. She wondered whether Rowie might have been able to hold herself together here in Italy, enough to complete the garden project, if she hadn’t faced Francesco’s constant and seductive attempts to sleep with her.

      Water under the bridge now.