Page 141 of The Wrong Vintage
Me:Please don’t thank me,cara, not for this.
And that’s where the conversation ends.
I pick up my glass and swirl the wine, watch the legs slide down the sides, and smell the aroma rise—wild berries, crushed thyme, a hint of oak.
An absolutely perfect blend.
No one does it better than her.
32
ALESSIA
I don’t know why I asked Nico to join me when I go to see Matteo, I only know that going alone is untenable.
I could ask Lucia.
Or even Alba, she’d fly back from wherever she is.
Toni would come over as well.
ButI don’t want them. I want Nico. That, in itself, is a confession.
He comes on Saturday morning by helicopter, the sky still pale and undecided, mist clinging to the low places between hills.
He drives my car to Matteo’s.
I don’t argue.
I don’t have the wherewithal to pay attention to the road.
I haven’t called Matteo yet.
I called his housekeeper the moment I learned he was ill, and I’ve called every day since to check on him. I told her I would come.
Even though I am angry with Matteo, that isn’t why it has taken me this long to show up. It’s because I don’t know howto do this—how to walk into the ending of a man who helped shape me.
It reminds me too much of losing my mother. And even though many, many years have passed, the grief feels new again because of Matteo.
Maybe that’s why I reached out to Nico.
In the months since our business arrangement of a marriage became something real, he’s been my bulwark when things have been hard. I don’t question how quickly he became that for me, even though I’ve always dealt with problems alone. Maybe I did everything by myself because there was no one to lean on. Nico proved that he would be there.
Yes, he failed me. But not at everything.
That distinction matters more than my pride wants to admit.
I worry that trusting him now makes me weak, even foolish—especially after he betrayed my trust. And yet the relief of having him beside me now as I go to see my mentor is so complete, so instinctive, that it doesn’t feel like weakness at all.
It feels inevitable.
Nico doesn’t fill the silence as he drives. He doesn’t reach for my hand, but when I lean into him—which I do once, briefly—my fingers brushing his sleeve like a test of gravity, he holds me reverently, without hesitation.
“I can’t,” I admit quietly as Castagneto Carducci, where Matteo lives, comes into view, stone buildings stacked so close together they seem to hold one another upright. “I can’t face this by myself.”
“You don’t have to face anything alone ever again if you don’t want to.”
There he is!
