Angela flew down the stairs and back out to the party, which was just as lively and full of energy as it was when she left.
She found Rosa and tapped her on the shoulder. "Rosa, have you seen Tony?"
She shook her head. "I have not. I am sorry." She put her hand on Angela's shoulder and gestured enthusiastically to the large elderly man next to her.
"Angela, I would like you to meet my cousin Pino."
She waved brusquely, "Ah, hello Pino, so very nice to meet you – Rosa, please excuse me, I need to find Tony, it's a matter of some urgency."
Angela's heart was turning flip flops as she scanned the crowd, weaving in and out of cocktail tables, doing a lap around the perimeter, anticipating seeing Tony.
Anticipating the moment everything between them would change.
She ran smack into Matteo, who grabbed her arm gently to steady her and his fresh drink. "Easy there, signora. You look like you are on a mission."
"I, well - yes, I am. Have you seen Tony? I can't seem to find him all of a sudden."
"Maybe he is in the bathroom?"
The bathroom, of course. She headed back inside to the bathroom adjacent to the Great Room and knocked on the closed door. "Tony?"
"No," said a woman's voice. "No, Maria."
"Mi dispiace," Angela apologized. Her pace quickened again as she stepped outside, and stood on the veranda, looking down at the party below. Where could he be?
She turned the corner and ran straight into Antonio Ripelli. "Antonio!" Angela exclaimed. "Oh Tony will be so glad to see you, we heard you were coming but didn't see you at the ceremony."
"I confess I came a bit late. I'm too old to make the long walk up the hill to the ceremony, and I've been enjoying the reception from a table off to the side. I don't get around as well as I used to," he gave her a wistful smile and put his arm behind a lovely olive-skinned woman with snow white hair. "This is my wife, Lucia."
"It's lovely to meet you Lucia," Angela said, offering her hand to the slender woman.
"And you as well, Angela. Antonio told me so much about his lovely American visitors," she said with a small smile.
"Well Tony will be so glad to see you - have you seen him yet?"
"I saw him from afar, walking toward the wine cellar. Maybe he's still there? Perhaps seeking a specific bottle?"
The wine cellar. They still hadn't made it over there, but he had pointed it out on their walk; Tony had been excited to show it to her.
"Thank you Antonio, that must be where he is. We will be sure to come find you both in a little while," she said as a way of excusing herself.
Antonio placed a gentle hand on her arm and whispered in her ear. "Angela, I am not sure if you know this, but I think your Tony has very strong feelings for you. He is just afraid. Or perhaps, confused. I was surprised when he told me you are just friends. That is a man who is deeply, painfully in love. Don't let him run away from you."
She blushed, "Thank you, Antonio" she said quietly.
Lucia interjected, "Meeting you both was the highlight of my Antonio's year. He has long wanted to see Antony again. He will always miss his friends. They were so very dear to him."
"Antonio, meeting you was an incredible gift. Thank you for sharing your story with us."
He nodded, patting her arm again. "It was an absolute pleasure to meet you both. I hope you'll both return to Sicily again soon and pay us a visit."
She covered his hand and squeezed it warmly. "I hope we will too."
Angela smiled graciously and excused herself, quickly making her way across the back of the house, past the party and down the winding gravel pathway. She thought about Tony, and how much she had learned about him over this trip, and about each other. How human, how whole he suddenly seemed.
She realized for the first time that she was seeing Tony through an entirely different lens than ever before. Gone were his many daily responsibilities, and hers. She had forbidden him from taking care of her in any way. Here he was just...Tony, widower from Brooklyn, child of Sicilian immigrants, father of Samantha. In the bustle of his day to day, he was only thinking about the needs of the family, the home, and her. She now understood that Tony's cheery, upbeat positivity on the daily was actually a masterful coping mechanism, an override function to mask his underlying, tightly locked away grief. And maybe the distance afforded by this trip was serving an important purpose in Tony's journey, helping him reconnect with a part of himself he had long tucked away and put aside, not unlike a cigar box of boyhood treasures.
There was no doubt in her mind this time together had brought them closer; the distance from their every day lives, the ability to be just Tony and Angela, rather than Angela the ad executive and Tony the housekeeper, had quickly formed an entirely new facet on the prism of their complicated relationship. And while some part of her had loved him for as long as she could remember, their romantic relationship had crystallized since arriving in Sicily together, alone, stripped of every other barrier in their lives, like a sense that had been heightened when other senses are lost. And she knew in her heart that he was hers, and she was his.
Had always been his. Would always be his.
The door was ajar, with a dim glow permeating the crack. She could hear Sinatra crackling faintly on a record player inside.
She descended the small flight of stairs, pushed the heavy door open, peered in, and took a hesitant step inside. Before her the rustic stone archways of the cellar were flickering with a buttery tangerine glow coming from the arched room off to her right. She stepped inside toward the record player to her left, when a cracked voice from the room behind her stopped her in her tracks. She froze.
"My - ah - my father, he really loved this place. He knew it was full of potential. But after the war, it was in ruins. He had already given so much of himself to Sicily. I think he didn't want to spend years in the rubble rebuilding. They thought they couldn't have kids. I never knew that, but he always told me he was ready for a fresh start - an adventure, with my mother, his 'luce della mi vita.'"
His voice was raw and emotional. "I wonder, you know? I wonder what woulda happened if they had known they could have kids. Would they have left? Would I have been a child of Sicily, instead of a child of Brooklyn?"
She turned to face him. He stood in front of a long, heavy table, his features warm and earnest and longing, bathed in the glow of what seemed like a hundred candles of different heights and sizes, dripping habitually into the craggy collection of molten wax sculptures below. Lined up on one end of the table were 4 wine bottles, with two glasses across from each bottle, a simple cheese board with crackers, honey, and grapes, and a small silver bowl of chocolate truffles. Angela's mouth turned upward and she looked at him curiously. His jacket was slung over a barrel in the corner, his tie still in place, but his sleeves rolled up, his hair a little more disheveled than before. He looked devastatingly handsome in a tux, she always thought so; but tonight there was something alive in him, the candlelight glow dancing across his face, brightening up his eyes, which she now knew were full of desire for only her.
"It's funny the way fate works. I always felt so connected to Italy; a part of me always wished I had lived here growing up. Dreamed about it, even. But if I had been born in Sicily, I never woulda played for the Cards. I never woulda met Marie. Never woulda had Sam." A tingle went up her spine as he met her eyes, licked his lips ever so slightly and took a deep breath before continuing, "Never woulda met you."
Standing before her in this dimly lit cave of a cellar, his tender expression locked with hers, she realized he looked completely different to her. Changed. This man who she began and ended every day with, who she had grown to know so intimately over the last five years had a new air of something - confidence? resolve? - she couldn't quite put her finger on.
"My parents. They went for years not knowing if tomorrow was promised to them - if they had a future together. They had so many forces trying to tear them apart, Angela. Their parents, the war – my mother was almost killed. I'm pretty sure after hearing their story that my father came close to being killed too, probably on several occasions. Somehow, through unthinkable circumstances, they managed to find their way back to each other."
"What's our biggest challenge Angela? That I work for you? That people will talk? They already talk. That the kids will be confused? I think the only thing they're confused about is why we've been in denial about this...intense connection...between us. All the way back to the beginning they've seen it. And as Jonathan once said, there's only one thing married people do that we don't do, and I intend to change that tonight."
Her heart hammered wildly in her chest. Even now, whether out of habit or good old fashioned fear, the subject of intimacy with Tony made her stomach do backflips. "We've blurred plenty of lines already, Ange. If anything, we're the opposite of my parents, you and me. The universe has been pulling us together for years and we've been fighting against it, trying to resist it."
She nodded slowly in agreement as she walked toward him, afraid to break the spell, needing him to continue. They had been interrupted so many times tonight.
"They fought so hard to be together, Angela. Why are we fighting so hard to stay apart? Because I've been falling for you from almost the very beginning. My father..." his voice cracked again, and he broke his gaze, looking down as he cleared his throat. "My father, he lost my mother unexpectedly, like I lost Marie. Sam was almost the same age I was when she died. My father thought he had 50 more years with her. After all they'd been through - he thought they would be together forever. He spent the rest of his life grieving her, his one true love, his soulmate, the woman he was supposed to grow old with. And I understand why, boy do I understand it. But I can't follow in his footsteps. I'll always love Marie, but I know now that she wasn't the end for me. But – I'm pretty sure you are, Angela."
Her voice caught in her throat, and she could only gasp out a small, emotional "Oh," as she ran her hand down his arm, threading his fingers into hers. He kissed their joined hands and met her eyes again, and in this moment, her heart pounding yet calmly resolute, she felt them tumbling over another boundary, becoming something new.
"I think the point I'm getting at, is that my father...he risked his life to get to my mother when she was hurt. He would have died for her. And in the end he woulda killed for one more week, one more day, one more year with her, his one true love. He died with a broken heart; he never found love again. And here I am, a widower in the prime of my life. Living with a woman who is so incredible, but so out of my league, yet who I somehow connect with on a level I've never connected with anyone, a woman who, incredibly, might even feel the same way about me. But I'm coming up with all these...all these excuses, for why we can't be together."
"She does feel the same way about you Tony," she said softly, almost too softly, through her tears. "Of course she does. And you offer her so much more than any man she's ever dated - or married. I can't imagine my life without you. You were simply, the very best surprise of my life."
He reached out and cupped her cheek, brushing one escaped tear away with his thumb, his eyes all at once soft and warm and loving and alive.
"I hadn't thought about it all, until this trip - how alike my father and I are. How Marie has been holding me back. What my father would say to me about you, if he were here."
He looked away from her for a moment, gathering his thoughts, or perhaps his nerve, then pulled them back to meet hers with a renewed tenderness, as if she were a most precious treasure he would always keep safe. The way he would her heart.
"But I know what he would say about that, Angela. I know now."
To be continued...
