“Of course, Ms. Silver. Anything you need.”
“I need you to tell me how to get to the Sirenuse. And then I need you to please call them and ask if they can find Adam. Tell him I’m on my way and not to meet with anyone until I get there. Not a single person. Can you do that?”
Nika looks at me curiously. “Katy,” she says. The first time she has used my first name. “Are you all right?”
“I will be,” I say. “Everything is fine. I just have to hurry.”
She nods. “Okay,” she says. “You follow the same road down, and then by the church, you turn up. It is a big red building—you cannot miss it. If you get lost, you can just ask. Everyone knows the Sirenuse.”
“Thank you,” I say.
I do as she instructed. I take the path down to the ocean, and when I almost get down to the marina, I follow the road up. On the right-hand side, right on Via Cristoforo Colombo, is the Sirenuse. It is set back from the road with a small driveway, the outside of the building a deep and striking red.
It’s a beautiful hotel. Immediately upon entering I feel swept away. I consider her suggested renovations. The scope of the place. In my opinion, it is perfect. I wonder why we try and change anything. We should do it less. Some things do not need to be tampered with.
“Excuse me,” I say to the girl at the front desk. “Do you know where Adam Westbrooke is?”
Her face folds into a frown.
“The meeting about the hotel?” I say. “I’m here to present my designs.”
She brightens. “Yes,” she says. “They are downstairs, in the restaurant.”
I follow the stairs, and then I’m in a mint-green dining room, the ocean behind me, and I see Adam and two older gentlemen seated inside.
“Katy,” Adam says. His face is befuddled. “I thought we were meeting in the marina at two? Is everything all right?”
“Is she here yet?” I ask.
“Who?”
I shake my head. “I need to talk to you,” I say.
The men exchange a glance. Adam shoots them a placating smile.
“Can it wait until lunch? We’re kind of in the middle of something here.”
“No,” I say. “No, I’m sorry, it can’t. She’ll be here any minute now.”
“Who? Who are you talking about?”
“Carol.”
“Who is Carol?” Adam asks.
“The designer.”
“The designer?”
One of the men says something I can’t make out in Italian, and Adam holds up his hand to them. “I’m so sorry, one minute.”
He walks out of the room toward me. We step into the hallway together.
“Did they give you my message?” I whisper.
“No,” he says. “What message? What’s going on?” Adam’s face is expectant, concerned, even a little annoyed. And it’s at this moment that Carol comes walking down the stairs.
She looks first at me, then at Adam.
“Hi,” she says. “Katy… what are you doing here?”
“Are you Carol?” Adam asks.
She nods. “Yes, hi.” She tucks her portfolio folder under her arm and extends her hand. They shake.
Carol drops her hand, and then she’s looking from me to Adam and back again. The question still hovers: What are you doing here?
I’m saving you. I’m making sure you don’t make a mistake. I’m making sure that everything will turn out exactly as it has. I’m doing what you always did to me: protecting me from a different life.
And then something hits. Recognition. Like a lightning bolt. I look at Carol now, a crisp white linen dress on, her sandals tied, ready to have the meeting of her dreams—and I don’t see my mother. I see a woman. A woman fresh into a new decade who wants a life of her own. Who has interests and desires and passions beyond my father and me. Who is very real, exactly as she is right here and now.
Who am I to rob her of them? Who am I to tell her who she is and isn’t? I do not have the answers. I do not have the answers for her life any more than she has the answers now for mine.
My eyes well with tears. I swallow them back down.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I had to tell Adam something, and I forgot we had lunch plans and…”
“You two know each other?”
“We’re staying at the same hotel,” Adam says.
Recognition dawns on Carol’s face. She does a terrible job of hiding it; maybe she doesn’t want to. She looks at me with a small smirk. This guy?