“Oh. That’s wonderful. They must love living here.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know yet. They’re in California with my wife. She’s American, and she prefers LA over Tuscany. I can’t seem to convince her to stay here more than a few weeks at a time.”
Lillian considered this and watched his expression as they walked slowly up the hill. “But you prefer it here? Even though you’re from the UK?”
He gazed up at the sky. “That’s another story altogether, and it requires wine. We should go and get a couple of bottles out of the cellar. I want you to taste something outside of the current inventory. I want you to have a better understanding.”
“A better understanding of what?” she asked, wondering if he was going to share more about what had brought him to Italy.
“Wine,” he replied, as if she had missed something.
She followed him through the pinkish glow of the setting sun toward the wine cellars across from the chapel. Together, they descended the circular staircase to the cavernous gloom belowground. Mr. Clark switched on the lights. The air smelled of oak and wine.
“What do you think?” he asked. “We could try something from a decade ago or go back even further, maybe to the 1950s. It’s risky, though. About twenty-five percent of those old bottles are no good. We’ll be taking our chances.”
He inspected a few different sections of the wine library and selected two bottles. Then he moved deeper into another area and stopped outside a medieval-looking arched door.
“The tour groups don’t come in here,” he told Lillian with a sly grin as he dug into his pocket for his key ring. He unlocked the door, which creaked on ancient hinges as he opened it. Then he led her into a small room and switched on a light. A few hundred dust-covered bottles were stacked up against each wall, resting on wooden slabs.
“I didn’t know this little cellar existed,” Lillian said.
Mr. Clark gave her a moment to look around, then spoke in a quieter voice. “When you’re leading the tour out there and you talk about the family’s private collection, that’s just for show. This is the real private collection.”
Small wooden plaques hung on the walls above each stack. The plaques indicated a name and a year.
“These were gifts for the Maurizio children,” Mr. Clark explained. “Whenever a child was born, one hundred bottles were set aside from that year’s harvest. The intention was for them to begin aging so that the child could enjoy the wine later in life, on special occasions. As you can see, some of the children enjoyed their wine quite a bit while they lived. But look at this one.” He pointed at the largest stack. The plaque said LORENZO , 1920 . “All one hundred bottles are still here. I looked into it, and this man lived to be fifty-seven, but he never opened a single bottle. I wonder what he was waiting for.”
“Maybe he didn’t drink,” Lillian suggested. “Or maybe he was a wayward son who wasn’t close to the family. Either way, it’s sad. Especially for the father, to have outlived all his children and to know that they didn’t get to enjoy every last drop of the wine he had left them. Or that they chose not to enjoy every delicious drop of life when they had the chance.”
“Exactly,” Mr. Clark said.
Suddenly, Lillian felt a shiver run down her spine. She rubbed at her arms to warm herself. “It feels like a tomb in here.”
He turned to her. “You’re right. It does. Maybe I shouldn’t have presumed . . .”
“No, don’t apologize. I’m glad you brought me here. I’m honored to see it, especially after . . .”
She stopped herself, because she didn’t want to become maudlin or overly philosophical about the car accident. Freddie certainly hadn’t wanted to talk about it. He kept shutting the conversation down whenever she brought it up.
“You’re thinking about what happened to you when you went off the road,” Mr. Clark conjectured.
Lillian dropped her gaze. “Is it that obvious?”
“Maybe. To me, anyway.” He shrugged a shoulder. “Maybe that’s why I brought you here. Because I’ve been thinking about it myself, quite a bit.”
“Really? Why?”
“I’m not sure. There was just something about the way you fell to your knees when you climbed out of the car. You seemed so grateful to be alive. It was . . . I don’t know . . . humbling to see that. We should all be so grateful. Every day.”
She felt a rush of emotion. “Yes, and I have been feeling immensely grateful. More than that. I feel different. Like it changed me somehow. Now I can’t seem to take my eyes off the moon at night or the way the mist rolls between the hills in the early hours of the morning. Just looking at the world makes me feel euphoric. I’ve never felt such joy before. I can’t begin to explain it.”