The Miracles of Santo Fico Read Online Free PDF

goats and sheep, Topo glanced nervously over his shoulder. The Lombolo family leased these fields from Leo to graze their horses, and horses made Topo nervous. The Lombolo horses were fierce and powerful Spanish thoroughbreds that, Topo was convinced, were also treacherous. Fortunately, he didn’t see them right now, so he hurried on toward the only thing to break the landscape for some distance—a small stone dwelling surrounded by a half-dozen flame-shaped cypress trees.
    To call this structure a house was flattery; it was little more than a large hut that sat on a rise overlooking the sea and when the wind was right you could hear waves crashing. Probably built by some ancient Pizzola ancestor many centuries earlier, the stone and plaster walls gave the impression of snug lodgings. But for all its quaint charm, it was still just a single-room stone hut with no electricity or indoor plumbing. Why Leo chose to live here rather than in the big house on the hill where he grew up was a question Topo would someday have to ask. He knew it must somehow be connected to why Leo refused to walk into the olive grove or tend the vineyard, and he was pretty sure it had something to do with why Leo mysteriously ran away to America eighteen years ago. Someday he would ask him, but not today.
    He leaned against the door and pounded only once before opening it and calling.
    “Leo!”
    The room was empty. This was not just bad; this was a catastrophe. Where could Leo be in the heat of the day?
    Of course! It was Monday! Topo’s heart sank. Disturbing Leo today could be trouble, even dangerous. The secret that Leo had revealed to him about his Mondays was shared in confidence and no invitation had been extended. Leo was going to be angry.
    “Well, let him be angry,” Topo huffed. “This is business.” And he scampered across the meadow toward the sea.
    Leo Pizzola struggled to pull his lanky frame forward through the tall razor grass with some sense of stealth and still keep his knees and elbows out of the dirt. Why the hell hadn’t he changed his clothes first? It was so stupid to crawl across a field in a linen suit, and he was glad he was horizontal so he couldn’t kick himself. He was the only man in Santo Fico with enough style to even own a linen suit and here he was . . .
    A sand flea jumped up his nose and his whole body spasmed at the invasion.
    “The price you pay for crawling through their neighborhood with such a big nose,” he told himself.
    He flopped onto his back and beat his hands against the marks smudging his elbows and his knees. Fortunately, the pale sand and dust of this region were of a similar hue to the creamy suit so Leo was able to rationalize how the delicate shadings of dust might even enhance the casual nature of the rumpled cloth.
    Too late now and it was his own fault. He’d once again lost track of the days of the week, and when he dressed this morning for his usual pointless trip into town, some unexplainable whim told him to put on his suit. He was all the way to the olive grove before he remembered it was Monday, and his run back down the dusty path and then the sprint up the coast had left him sweating and out of breath. Now, here he was, thirty-six years old with grass stains on the elbows and knees of his only suit, crawling through the tall grass like some hormonal schoolboy.
    With one final grunt Leo pulled himself to the edge of a low bluff of sandstone boulders that joined a white beach and led down to a peaceful lagoon. Carefully parting the blades of razor grass, Leo peeked over the edge of the cliff toward the sea.
    Across the white sand beach an attractive but rather ample woman lazed back on a smooth boulder at the water’s edge. Her bleached tresses rested on a rolled towel and her thin cotton dress was hiked up revealing pleasantly plump legs. Leo realized that in his haste he was becoming careless. He still wore his soiled Panama hat and it stuck out like a white flag in the tall