Rush to the Altar. Rebecca Winters

of you I’ve found my happiness. I love you, Ann. We both do. Let us know the number and time of your flight and we’ll be there to pick you up.”

      By now the tears were streaming down her cheeks. “I love you both, too. Thank you, Nicco. See you soon.”

      The sights and smells of any carnival grounds brought back so many vivid memories of Riley’s childhood, he had difficulty believing he hadn’t been swept back in time.

      Before he’d left L.A., Riley had made a phone call to determine the exact location of Rimini’s Traveling Circus. When he’d found out it was performing in Rome for the latter half of September, he’d booked his flight there.

      That part was easy. The hard part was tracking down Mitra.

      The circus Riley’s father had performed in for close to fifteen years was under new management. Though a few of the old troop members were still working, no one seemed to know what had happened to the Gypsy woman who’d once traveled with them and had read tea leaves for the crowds.

      But Mitra had done a lot more than that. She’d been a surrogate mother to Riley though he hadn’t recognized it at the time.

      With a few more questions, Riley found out another Gypsy with a bear act had been added to the circus repertoire. He walked to the older man’s trailer, speaking to him in the Romany tongue he’d picked up from Mitra. That broke the ice.

      He learned she’d left the circus a year ago to join her own people in Perugia, north of Rome. The Gypsy had no idea if she was still alive.

      After thanking him for the information, Riley left for the charming hill town overlooking the Tiber where he’d received his first formal schooling. It had all been thanks to Mitra who knew his father had been drinking heavily again after his third wife left him.

      Though Mitra shied away from schooling, she’d said Riley was a Gadja, an outsider, and Gadjas belonged in the classroom.

      Now he understood why she’d suggested that particular town. Years before her Gypsy heritage had brought her ancestors to the old Etruscan settlement that had become Perugia. The people who’d housed and fed Riley during those years his father struggled had been Mitra’s extended family.

      At first he’d fought his schooling and had gotten into serious trouble on several occasions. But with hindsight he realized she’d done him an enormous favor. He’d learned history and math, and of course how to speak fluent Italian.

      None of that could have been accomplished without money which Riley’s father didn’t have. That meant someone else had to have put up the funds, probably at great personal sacrifice. Only one person would have cared enough about Riley to do that.

      Once he’d revisited his old haunts, one of the men he remembered recognized him and gave him directions to her apartment. Thankful she was still alive, he hurried to her door and knocked. A deep voice called out in Romany, “Who’s there?”

      He answered back in kind. “Your Gadja child!”

      In a moment Mitra opened the door. She was a medium sized woman in her late seventies now. She wore a familiar looking purple scarf around her hair which was turning white, but her black eyes were as alert as ever. They studied him with the same intensity that used to make him feel guilty if he’d done something wrong.

      “You—” she whispered as if she’d seen a ghost.

      He smiled. “You remember.” He handed her a bouquet of lavender flowers he’d bought at a stall near the bottom of the hill.

      She clutched them to her bosom. “Who could forget such a beautiful face? Now you are a beautiful man.”

      With her free hand she touched his cheek where the skin had been grafted. “I saw you in the tea leaves. I saw fire. Life has been hard for you.”

      “My father died last year.”

      She nodded, “I know. Come in.”

      Though modest, her place appeared comfortable. She’d decorated the living room in the same vivid purple color he recalled seeing in her tsara.

      “Sit down.”

      Riley complied while she put the flowers in a vase on her small dining table. Then she sank into the black hand-painted rocking chair he’d admired as a youngster. “How is it you have come to call on an old woman after all this time?”

      “I meant to visit you long before now, but circumstances made it impossible.”

      “Life with your father has taken its toll on you.”

      “Let’s not talk about me. You look well.”

      Her eyes narrowed. “You always were a good liar. You see the picture of us there? I felt good then.”

      Riley glanced at the framed photograph propped on the end table. The two of them had sat on a bench inside a doorless closet hooked up with a camera that took their picture at the carnival. He’d been six years old. She’d had black hair. A lump lodged in his throat to think she’d kept that photo all this time.

      “I took care of you from the age of two until seventeen when your father left the circus and dragged you away. He should have left you with me.”

      With that statement he realized what a wrench that must have been for Mitra who’d never married or had children of her own.

      “My father needed me too much and was jealous of my relationship with you. But even if he took me thousands of miles away, I always missed you. Did you get the postcards I sent you through the circus?”

      She motioned to a black lacquered basket sitting on a bookshelf. He walked over to it and looked inside. It appeared she’d kept all of them.

      Pleased to know she’d received them he said, “Why didn’t you get one of your family members to help you write back? I always left an address where you could reach me.”

      “I didn’t want to give your father any more reasons to make your life miserable.”

      Mitra had understood everything.

      “When he didn’t drink, he was all right.”

      “You deserved better,” she muttered.

      Riley took a deep breath before reaching in his pocket for an envelope. Enclosed was Italian lire amounting to five thousand dollars. Anything more and he knew she wouldn’t accept it. He put it on the table next to the picture.

      “What is that?”

      He stared into her eyes. “I know what you did. No amount of money in the world could compensate for the mother’s love you gave to me. This represents a small token of my affection for you.”

      Like Sister Francesca, she turned her head to hide her emotions. Whether disciplined saint or stoic Gypsy, both were women with hearts bigger than their bodies. Riley had been the lucky recipient.

      “You once told me that if you could have your wish, you would buy fresh lavender flowers for your tsara every day. This apartment isn’t the exciting Gypsy wagon I used to play in. It needs flowers. Now you can buy all you want.”

      After an extended silence she fastened haunted eyes on him. “You are in a great hurry, rushing down a path even more dangerous than the one before.”

      He smiled and shook his head. “Did you read death in the tea leaves for me, too?”

      Her expression grew fierce. She made a fist and pounded her breast. “Without a woman in your life, you’re already dead here.”

      “There’ve been plenty of women.”

      A guttural sound came from her throat. “You think I don’t know that? But they’re always the wrong kind for my Gadja!”

      “There was one exception,” he drawled. “But it turns out she didn’t want me.”

      “You mean