Letters to the Baumgarters Read Online Free PDF

had
practically adopted me, and it had woken something in me I had almost forgotten
about.
    “There you are!” Cara Lucia opened her door as I made my way down the
hall. How she’d known I was there was beyond me. The woman seemed to have
extrasensory perception. She stood only five-foot-two and her graying hair was
pulled up and back, her aging face still quite beautiful. Her daughters looked
just like her—all five of them. I could hear them laughing and talking inside.
“Come to celebrate Carnavale?”
    I felt guilty about not accepting her earlier invitation. I didn’t see
any of her other boarders—most of them foreign exchange students—sitting at the
dining room table. Had she invited them as well? Or just me, I wondered? I’d
had lunch with her almost every week at that table, talking about her husband
and daughters, my studies, my life—before. She was probably the closest thing I
had to a friend in Italy.
    But I still shook my head, smiling. “No, I’m sorry, I’ve had enough
celebrating today, I think.”
    “I have something for you, wait.” She held up one finger, leaving the
door open a crack.
    “No, that’s—”
    She had disappeared already, so I waited, sure she was bringing me a care
package, more food to add to the calorie-laden meal I’d eaten today. I smiled,
remembering Nico’s family. Remembering Nico. Just thinking about him made my
head swim. What had I gotten myself into?
    Cara Lucia reappeared, something small in her palm. Definitely not the
care package I’d expected. She held it out, smiling, gesturing for me to take
it. “For you.”
    The necklace was beautiful, a gold ellipse with a green stone set in the
center. “Oh, no, I can’t possibly accept this.”
    “It is the emerald eye of Beatrice.” She was already folding it into my
hand. “I thought of you and your work with Dante Alighieri and knew you must
have it.”
    She knew that I was doing my thesis on The Inferno.
    “That is so sweet of you.” Of course, now I felt doubly guilty for not
taking her up on attending her Carnavale celebration. “Thank you, Cara Lucia.”
I leaned over to kiss her cheek.
    She beamed. “Perhaps your Dante will return to his Beatrice.”
    “You mean Mason?” I blinked, looking down at the charm in my hand. It had
never occurred to me that my ex-husband might be my Dante—the doomed love of my
life, a relationship destined to end in tragedy, at least on the worldly plane
of existence.
    “He redeemed himself in the end, you know,” Cara Lucia reminded me with a
wink.
    “And Beatrice might have been better off if she’d just let him go,” I
countered, turning the charm over in my hand. I had to admit, I was thinking of
Nico.
    When I looked up at Cara Lucia, I saw the speculative look in her eyes.
I’d told her a great deal—probably too much—about my relationship with my ex
and everything that had happened when it all fell apart. “Anyway, thank you.
It’s beautiful.”
    “L'esperîenza di questa dolce vita,” she murmured, squeezing my
hand. It was a quote from Dante— the experience of this sweet life. “It
is yours, Cara,” she told me, using the endearment her own man had given her
years ago. Cara meant ‘beloved’ and she had been called  Cara Lucia her whole
life because her husband couldn’t speak her name without putting his love for
her first. “It is all of ours.”
    I thanked her again for the charm, promising to come by next week some
time for lunch, going upstairs and down the hallway to my own room. Jezebel was
waiting, mewing impatiently for her own Carnavale feast. So we sat on my little
bed and listened to Venice celebrating and I hand-fed her the bread and cheese
I had been expecting to eat for my own dinner.
    So many things had happened that I hadn’t been expecting today. What else
did the experience of this life have in store? I wondered, looking at the
charm. So far, aside from a few bright moments, life hadn’t been very sweet to
me. But