“You’ll love it,” he said, and waggled his eyebrows.
Mr. Stenner doubted very much that we’d enjoy swimming in the ocean after sunset, but Emile was a man of many surprises, and the spot he took us to was a thermal spa that bubbled up out of the ground and tumbled over a waterfall to dozens of little pools below. Sitting with Mr. Stenner in one of the pools, I said, “This is the best time I ever had,” and then slid over the polished rocks to join Wenefride, where she was splashing in a pool some fifteen feet below.
Mom sat down beside Mr. Stenner.
“Are you happy?” he asked her.
“I’m very happy,” she said. “Are you?”
“I’m very very happy.”
“So am I!” I shouted up to them.
Mr. Stenner burst out laughing. “Do you know what I like best about you?” he shouted.
“What?” I shouted back.
“Your ears!”
The next night, Emile drove us to a rustic old inn high in the mountains. He got lost on the way there, and we didn’t arrive till almost ten o’clock, but ahhh, what a feast! To start the meal, we had a breaded vegetable soup called zuppa alla Certosina. And then we ate fresh rock mullet in tomato sauce, and lamb roasted on a spit, and fried zucchini, and funghi alla Fiorentina, which were mushrooms prepared in the Florentine manner. The wine was delicious, the bread was hot and crisp. There was a blazing fire, and laughter from the kitchen, and laughter at the table, and I felt happier than I ever had in all my life.
In the morning, Mr. Stenner rented a fifty-one-foot ketch with a captain and two crew members and he took us and the Gastuches for a sail up the coast to a cove where we swam till noon, and ate sandwiches the hotel had made for us, and then dozed on the beach till the sun grew weak. He danced with Mom in the hotel lounge that night, and when he got back to the table, I said, “Aren’t you going to dance with me?”
It was all going so damn beautifully.
Until, you know, I went and spoiled it again.
On the morning we were supposed to leave Porto Santo Stefano, I went into the room next door, and told Mom I wanted to talk to her privately. Mr. Stenner was still in bed, half-asleep. Mom was sitting at the dressing table, putting on her lipstick. I whispered in her ear.
She looked at me.
She put down her lipstick.
“I think you’d better discuss that with him,” she said.
“You tell him,” I said.
“Tell me what?” he asked, and raised himself up on one elbow.
“Never mind,” I said.
“What is it?” he asked Mom.
“She wants to give you back the bracelet,” Mom said.
“What?” he said.
“Before we go home. She doesn’t want her father to see it. She’s afraid it’ll upset...”
“What?”
He got out of bed in his pajamas, and walked into the bathroom. I could hear the water running in there. Mom looked at me and shook her head. I went back to my own room. In a little while, I heard the door to their room opening and closing, and I peeked through my window and saw him walking down to the sea. I watched him. He went all the way to the edge of the ocean, and stood there on the rocks looking out at the deep blue cove. A sailboat was anchored just offshore, bobbing on the choppy water. The sky was overcast, the wind blowing fiercely. I saw him pull the shawl collar of his cardigan high on the back of his neck, and thrust his hands deep into his pockets. I put on one of his old sweaters over my long pink flannel nightgown. He’d given me the sweater a long time ago, it was the blue one with a hole eaten in it by Singapore the cat. I put on his leather hat, too, and pulled it down low on my forehead, almost hiding my eyes. Then I went out of the room.
He was climbing back up to the hotel when he saw me standing at the top of the winding steps cut into the rock ledge.
“Get back to the room,” he said. “You’ll catch cold.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“The hell with it,” he said.
“Can’t you tell I’m sorry?”
“No,” he said.
“It’s just...”
“Save it,” he said, “I’m really not interested.”
“It’s just I have two of you, and it’s hard. I don’t want to hurt either of you, don’t you see? I love you both.”
“I don’t believe you,” he said.
“Oh, please believe me,” I said. “I love you.”
He told me later that he realized something in that instant. He realized that never in all the time he’d known me had he said those same words to me. I love you. I was only twelve, I was far too young to treat those words cheaply, they were to me treasured words. I love you. In Milan, Mom had asked him, “Have you ever tried loving her?” As he climbed those steps in Porto Santo Stefano, he wondered if he ever had.
I stood silhouetted against the sky. He climbed to where I was standing, and we looked at each other silently and solemnly, and then he put his arm around me, and together we began walking back to the hotel.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” I said.
“I know you didn’t,” he said. “Let’s talk about it, okay?”
“Okay,” I said. “And while we’re talking, could we also figure out something else to call you? Because if you love somebody, you just can’t go around calling him Mr. Stenner all the time. And I do love you. I wish you’d believe that. It makes me mad as hell when I tell you something, and you don’t believe it.”
“I believe it now,” he said.
“That was my secret,” I said. “Remember when I asked if you wanted to swap secrets? When you wouldn’t tell me what my present was? Well, that was my secret. That I love you.”
I stopped dead on the path, and looked up into his face. The cap was tilted low on my forehead, and my hair was blowing in the wind, sweeping across my face with each fresh gust. But I knew he could see my eyes clearly, and I only hoped he could read what was in them.
“I love you, too,” he said.
About the Author
Evan Hunter is one of this country’s most successful and prolific writers. His first novel, the blackboard jungle, was published in 1954 to wide acclaim, and he has since written over a dozen novels, including STRANGERS WHEN WE MEET, MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS, LAST SUMMER, and STREETS OF GOLD. As Ed McBain, he is responsible for thirty-some books in the well-known 87th Precinct series. Mr. Hunter was born in New York City and received a B. A. from Hunter College. He has lived in New York, Connecticut, and Florida, and has worked as a teacher of high school English, a lobster salesman, and a literary agent.