Sister Swap

Pia’s playing collapsed into laughter and fractured rhythm and thumping keys, and Dr. Madison sank sideways against her little shoulder in an exaggerated parody of breathlessness and exhaustion after a race.

“There! Whew! Fabulous! Thank you! It’s not nearly as much fun playing ‘Chopsticks’ on my own. Do you remember what this note is called, Pia?” She touched a key, and the sound of a single note vibrated from the instrument.

“Middle C,” Pia said.

“That’s right. Now if I shut the piano lid and open it again, can you still find Middle C?” She did as she’d described, and Pia’s finger went straight to the right note. “Very good!” She stood up, closed the lid once more, and turned to Gino. “We’re ready. I’m sorry, I felt I should—”

“No, that’s fine. You’re right. You needed to finish properly. Pia, Dr. Madison is going to show us her plans for the garden, now.”

Crunch time, Roxanna thought.

She’d decided to wing it without Rowena’s written and sketched-out plans, because she knew that her sister would have had the whole thing locked down in her memory the way Rox had locked down the lyrics and music to all her favorite songs. Without those comforting scrolls of paper clutched in her hands, however, she felt like an actress caught without a vital prop.

Gino was dressed down today, in a white Polo shirt that showed off the natural tan on his arms and on that very nicely shaped column of neck appearing from inside the Polo collar. He wore his hair short at the back, but not too short; just the right length for a woman’s fingers to run through—not too prickly, not too soft.

Rox happened to be an authority on exactly what this length was, because she’d never convinced Harlan to let his hair grow to it. He’d always kept it as short as cornfield stubble.

After she’d retrieved some of Rowie’s notes from the office, Gino led the way outside, and asked her about what she’d been doing with Pia. “Was it a lesson, or just fun?”

And that was a much safer subject than either garden restoration or the best length for a man’s hair, so she snatched it up.

With too much enthusiasm, as usual.

“Lessons and fun should be the same thing for a four-year-old, I think, especially with something like music, if you don’t want to put them off for life. So it was both, really. And she was very responsive. She was great!”

“Really?” He sounded skeptical, as if he didn’t dare to hope for too much where his daughter was concerned. And that was just ridiculous!

“Gino, she’s a very bright, creative little girl, hungry to learn. She latched on to what we were doing incredibly fast, and she loved it. I think you should consider music lessons for her.”

He thought about it for a minute, then shook his head. “When she’s older.”

Oh, okay, right.

Older.

You mean, when she’s snowed under with schoolwork. When that great big spark of joy and curiosity has been completely snuffed out by gray dresses and repressive tantrum control. When you can hit her with endless scales and finger exercises, and toss poor old Beethoven’s trampled-on “Fur Elise” at her like tossing a bone.

Makes total sense.

But, as we discussed yesterday, it’s none of my business, so I’ll keep my trap shut.

“You’re very talented at music, by the way,” he added, distracting her.

“Oh…not half as talented as I’d like to be. I love it, but, no, I’m coming to realize—”

That Harlan is probably right about my voice.

Oops, and that Harlan has nothing to do with any of this, because I’m pretending to be my twin sister.

“Gardens are my real love, of course,” she quickly added.

“Talk me through the whole plan,” he invited her.

Examination time.

Half an hour later, she was pretty confident she’d earned a passing grade. When you had to do all your exam preparation the night before, jet lag did have its advantages. Walking around the extensive and beautiful but dilapidated and overgrown old gardens, only part of which had yet been cleared under Rowena’s supervision, they managed the odd snatch of polite but slightly more personal conversation, also, which made Rox relax more than she’d expected to.

She asked Gino whether he had any kind of a garden in Rome, and he told her, “Only the one in the oil painting on my wall. It’s from the French Impressionist school. Not by a world-famous artist, but pretty.” He asked her why she’d chosen to go into a field like this. The combination of dry historical research and outdoor work was unusual, wasn’t it?

And since Roxanna knew her twin sister so well, she could find an answer that was true for Row and true for herself, as well. Something about how you can appreciate and enjoy something more when there’s more than one layer to it. A seven-foot-high Harrison’s Yellow rosebush in full bloom is beautiful all on its own when you’re standing in front of it on a gorgeous day, but when you also know that pioneers on the Oregon Trail packed the same rose in their wagons to plant out west… Well, that adds something, doesn’t it?

She didn’t express it very well. Rambled on a sentence or two too long, no doubt. Reasons Number One and Two, by the way: “You’re always so (expletive deleted) enthusiastic,” and “You never know when to stop talking.”

But this morning she was supposed to talk, so she did, and Gino listened, while Pia played in sunshine that definitely felt as if it were part of spring today.

“Impressive,” Gino said, when Rox had finished.

Was that an A grade?

Sounded like an A.

She relaxed a little too much, and that mouth of hers opened right up and she said, “Of course, if it were me, I’d do it the other way around.”

Gino looked at her blankly. “But it is you.”

“I mean, if it were my garden, if I weren’t working for you, the client. Fulfilling your—”

Help, help, help!

Why did I say it?

“Tell me what you’re talking about.” He frowned, sounded impatient. “The other way around?”

They stood at the end of a long, south-facing wall that marched along the side of the formal part of the garden, edged by a gravel track and overlooking a sloping field of vines that were just showing the first hints of green growth. Pia was throwing bits of gravel toward the vines. It was a very pretty spot, but since they were on the far side of the wall, it wasn’t visible from the main garden, the terrace or the house.

Rox had just finished dutifully describing to Gino how she—i.e. Rowena, as per Rowena’s plans—envisaged a single line of roses growing all along the wall, chosen not for their heritage value, like those in the main garden, but for other features, such as color and scent. And now, instead of leaving it at that, Rox had gone and blurted out her own opinion.

Harlan’s Reason Number Three: “You have an opinion about everything.”

“Well…” she said cautiously. Was there a way she could get out of this? Backtrack? Fob Gino off? No. She’d already put one foot in it. She had no choice now but to jump in with both. “I just mean that, even though, historically, the antique roses would obviously have been a part of the main garden, I think it could work better to have them along this wall instead.”

“Yes?” Gino said, indicating that she should please continue to insert her feet even deeper.

“Um, you see, initially, conforming to…uh…what I thought the family wanted, I attempted to combine the…uh…botanical-historical dimension of the main garden with the…uh…aesthetic dimension, but in some ways this may well mean that neither goal is effectively fulfilled. Whereas—”

She took a breath.

A very large, shuddery and somewhat desperate breath.

“—if we were to treat this wall as a kind of time line, we could create quite a fascinating walking history lesson on the development of rose species, dating from sixteenth-century varieties such as Eglantine and Austrian Copper and—and—” Yikes! “—Maiden’s Blush…” Whew! “…through to the hybrid teas cultivated since, um, 1867—” Was that date right? “—going from one end of the wall to the other. And that would mean we could leave the main garden as an exercise in pure drama.” She stopped channeling Rowie for a minute and dropped right into Rox. “And I love drama in a garden, don’t you?”

Harlan’s Reason Number Four: “You always think other people will agree with you.”

“Color and scent and big, showy effects,” she went on, knowing it was too late to stop now, so she might as well sell the idea as best she could. “A garden you can really breathe and see and feel and be passionate about.”

Gino looked blank again.

He was good at that.

Blank, arrogant shock at the fact that other people were so much slower to grasp things than he was. “Then why didn’t you plan it that way in the first place?” he said.

Rox’s turn at doing the blank look. “You mean you like the idea?”

“Yes. Very much. You’re right. We should keep the history and the drama separate. Why haven’t you suggested this before?”

“I—I thought—at the meeting—you wanted—”

“I don’t remember saying so.”

“Well, Francesco…”

“Hmm, possibly Francesco might have, but I doubt he gave it much thought. Look, is it too late to do it this new way? The other way around, as you put it? Would it drastically change which roses you’ve ordered, and how many, and your timetable for planting?”

Yikes, again.

How should I know?

“I—I’d have to check my notes.”

And call Row.

Even if it is, what, around six in the morning in Florida.

“Do that, then, and get back to me with your answer as soon as possible. I like the new idea better.”

He was already moving toward the house, calling Pia’s name over his shoulder as he went. Pia didn’t come. She was still throwing bits of gravel. “Pia, it’s time to come in now,” he said more sternly. “And I will not have any nonsense about it!”

The pale gravel looked like fallen blossom on the brown earth beside the vines. Pia picked up another piece, scowling just like her daddy.

“Go in,” Gino told Rox. His mouth had gone tight. “I’ll handle this.”

Back at the palazzo, from which Pia’s frustrated screams could barely be heard, the housekeeper told Roxanna that there was a phone message waiting for her.

Whew! In Florida, Rowie was up early. Rox could call her right back and learn just how deep a hole she’d dug herself into.

“From Francesco,” Maria said.

“I’ll, uh, phone him from my room.”

Once I’ve thumbed frantically through Rowena’s notes to find his number in Rome. I know she wrote it down for me somewhere…

“Hi-i-i, Francesco!”

“You’re back? It’s so good to hear your voice.” His breath swept heavily into her ear through the earpiece of the phone. “I left you alone while you were in London, I knew you needed time. But I’ve missed you, the way a thirsty flower misses rain. Have you missed me, sweetheart?”

“I’ve been thinking about you…” True, but not the way he thought.

“And have you made a decision?”

“About…” Rox let the word hang, hoping he’d fill in the blank for her, even though she was pretty sure what decision he was talking about.

And it didn’t involve roses.

Instead, he took her hesitation as an answer he didn’t want. “Haven’t I given you long enough? More than long enough? Let me tell you, my darling little American, there comes a point where a woman’s holding back stops increasing a man’s interest and becomes only annoying.”

Annoying?

Annoying?

Roxanna thought about the long, tearful session she’d had with Rowie in London, when they should have been talking detail on the Di Bartoli garden. She thought about all of Row’s doubt, her anguished questions about what she really felt and what Francesco really wanted. She unfortunately didn’t think about whether opening her mouth and speaking her mind might endanger the very contract she’d come here to protect.

Francesco had a fiancée, dang him. He’d said all these fervent, romantic, irresistible European-type things to Rowena, but did he love her? Really? Would he put his money where his mouth was and break it off with Marcellina? Did Rowena want him to?

“I just can’t, Rox,” Rowie had said in London. “I can’t give him what he wants. I—I don’t think he means any of it. N-not really. I’m so confused. I want him to mean it, but in my heart…”

And Francesco had no clue about the anxiety disorder, no clue about Row’s strong principles, her sweet, naive belief in a perfect happy-ever-after, her pretzel-like attempts to please everyone she cared about and her determination not to hurt his fiancée, a woman she hadn’t even met, and dismissed all of this as merely annoying?

“You want an answer right now?” Rox asked him.

“I am hungry for it! I am hungry for you. Marcellina means nothing to me. I will marry her, yes, of course, because, you understand, it is what I owe my family, but you will always be—”

“Okay, here’s my answer. Go take a flying leap! Is that enough of a decision for you?”

“Rowena…?”

“Go take a flying flip at the moon, Francesco Di Bartoli. Clear now?”

With a tingling, light-headed sense of satisfaction, Roxanna slammed down the phone.

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