You did what?” Leonardo demanded.

Nicolo flinched and then remembered that his brother could see him over the video screen. “It will work out,” Nicolo reassured. “We can sell the Romano del Mare for much more if she is fully restored. If we show her to be a proven earner, it will benefit us all the more.”

“Oh, we will get back to that and your decision to move forward with fixing her without including either of us in the decision, but I’m talking about Adeline. Are you telling me that you have already messed things up with her?”

“What do you care about Adeline?” Nicolo exclaimed. His personal affairs were none of his brother’s business. It was true that he had not spoken with or seen Adeline in weeks. What he wasn’t telling his brother was that her lingering absence from his life had not been his idea. Since that night in southern Tuscany, she had refused to take his phone calls. He had been tied up in India during all of that time and had not had the chance to track her down in person, but that had changed. His feet were finally back on Sicilian ground.

It had taken him nearly a week of thought and self-reflection to soften his anger and to see Adeline more clearly. Fueling his inner reflection was the misery that had descended on him in Adeline’s absence. She had done him wrong—she had done his entire family wrong—but that did not change all the ways that she was good for him. And, she was good for him. She’d made him want something more than living a transient life with no connections. She had made him want to belong to someone, and his life was empty and without purpose without her in it. All of the goals he’d set for himself and that he’d thought were important became meaningless; his achievements meant nothing without her to share them with.

“I care about you, little brother. You finally found someone to come back to. You found your anchor. Now you’re telling me that you’ve thrown her overboard.”

“She lied!” Nicolo exclaimed. He still cared more about her lie than he wanted to. It had been difficult to let go of her deceit with full forgiveness.

“I don’t care if she did! You have to get her back.” Leonardo yelled back with equal passion. “So she had you wrapped around her little finger? So she manipulated you into doing what she wanted? You know what that is? That’s a woman you want on your side. That’s a woman who will move mountains to take care of and provide for the ones she loves. Who named the Romano del Mare?”

It felt like a trick question, but Nicolo answered anyway. “Nanno.”

“And who told Nanno that he wanted to name it the Romano del Mare?”

Nicolo pursed his lips.

“Nanna was always the drive for our family, and Nanno was her engine. And, you know what?”

“What?” Nicolo asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

“That man never had an unhappy day in his life that he spent with her,” Leonardo declared, and it was true. “He trusted her. He gave her the reins of the family because she was focused on the present, the past and the future. She saw it all. She saw how it was all connected. And when he didn’t agree with her, he still did what she wanted because her finger was on the pulse of the family—and family is what it’s all about. She was his anchor. She was his home, Nicolo, and now you’ve thrown your home away.”

Nicolo shrugged his shoulders as if his brother’s words didn’t matter, but they did. Less than two days after his dinner with Adeline, Nicolo had no longer cared that she had manipulated his pride. Actually, he hadn’t even cared from the very beginning. It was his ego being taken down a peg that had made him so upset. He had not thought that his pride was such a blinding part of who he was, but she had taught him that it was himself he could not trust. That had hurt. That had taken time for him to learn how to accept.

“She won’t take my phone calls,” Nicolo finally admitted. “All of this time, it’s her who’s thrown me overboard, not the other way around. She’s done with me.” His throat tightened as his heart skipped beats. He was no longer a whole man without her. She had made a space for herself inside his heart, and with her gone there was an emptiness there. He’d even called her place of work and had asked to be patched through to her, but they had told him she had taken an extended leave of absence.

“It’s not that large of an island, brother. Find her.”

“I will,” Nicolo said, making the promise to himself even if tracking her meant traveling to Spain and searching its every corner.

Their call ended, and Nicolo made his way to Adeline’s home. Bounding up the stairs to her second-floor apartment, he knocked with one hand while holding a large bouquet of yellow sunflowers in the other. He’d chosen sunflowers because they were Adeline’s favorite but also because she was the light of his life. While the sunflowers didn’t shine as bright as she did, they were at least a token gift representing how he felt about her.

There was no answer. So, he surmised, she was either still refusing to speak to him, or she wasn’t at home.

Nicolo leaned forward and held his ear close to the door to see if he could hear movement inside. All was silent. From the floor below, however, he heard the shuffle of feet and then the closing of a door.

Heading back downstairs, Nicolo examined the door options of the nearby apartments and chose to knock on the one closest to the building’s entrance. If he wasn’t mistaken, it would be the home of the building’s landlord.

No sooner had he tapped his knuckles against the painted wood than the door opened to reveal an elderly lady with her gray hair pulled into a bun atop her head and glasses worn on the tip of her nose. She took longer looking Nicolo over from head to toe and back up again than she’d taken to open the door. A slow smile lit her face when her gaze came to rest on the bouquet of flowers.

Nicolo looked from the landlady to the flowers and back again. Then, arming himself with his most charming smile, he bent low and presented the elderly lady with the bouquet.

Taking the flowers, she cradled them in her arm like a baby, and her smile grew all the brighter.

“I am looking for Adeline Peluso, signora. Would you know where she is?”

The landlady’s mouth pursed and her eyes drifted up in thought before refocusing on him to answer. “It’s Tuesday.”

Nicolo waited for more of an explanation, but none came. “I’m sorry, signora. What happens on Tuesday?”

“Adeline likes to study on Tuesdays.”

She’s taking classes? Nicolo was beginning to feel as though he hadn’t known her at all. Did I make the entire relationship about me?

“Can you tell me where she studies?”

“Mmm,” the woman answered with a nod. “Concetta’s… in the square. But her study will end soon. Where she goes after that…” The woman shrugged.

“Grazij,” Nicolo said, bending low to kiss her free hand. She waved him off as he ran out the door.

He didn’t bother to get in his car and drive the distance but opted to run instead. He darted down narrow alleyways, up streets that wound uphill, and through an open-air market before reaching the town square. There, tucked away in one corner, pushed back and almost invisible to allow for a street entrance, Nicolo found Concetta’s.

The door chimed as he pushed inside. He was still a little out of breath, but he was catching his wind fast.

The space inside the small shop was cramped, and on every available surface hung every type of lace he could ever imagine. The work was intricate, complex, and beyond exquisite.

“May I help you?” asked a tall, slender woman whose body seemed younger than her crinkled eyes hinted.

“I am looking for Adeline Peluso.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, everything about the woman’s countenance changed. Her mouth tightened, her eyes narrowed, her shoulders went back, she stood taller, and she clasped her hands before her.

“Oh.” She looked him over from head to toe and back up again, just as the landlady had done. “I will ask if she is available to be seen.”

“Wait,” Nicolo said quickly as the woman turned to make her way into the back of the shop. This was his one shot. He could feel it in his gut. If he got turned away without getting to talk to Adeline this time, she would find a way to be gone from his life forever. “Please, give her a message. Tell her that I am…” He swallowed, then blurted. “Tell her that I’m not a fool, but that I’m her fool.”

The woman didn’t move except that her eyes lit and the corners of her smile pulled up ever so slightly. Then, squaring her shoulders again, she said, “No.”

Nicolo wanted to throw his arms down in frustration. Barging into the back would win him no points with Adeline, but he had to see her. He had to tell her how he felt.

“You can tell her yourself,” the woman added, her smile growing.

Leaping over the counter that separated them, Nicolo took the woman’s face in his hands and planted a big kiss on her cheek before rushing through the door that led to the back of the shop.

He wove his way past mountains of supplies and works-in-progress until finally, toward the back, space opened up for a collection of women to sit while they worked. It was at that point that he froze. He didn’t speak. He watched, and he saw.

Adeline sat with her head bent over a pillow in her lap. Atop the pillow was a piece of paper sewn on cloth, and on top of that paper Adeline was stitching the delicate design of a butterfly. The thread was thin and every stitch she made only grew the butterfly by the merest amount, yet her focus remained and she kept working. To him, the work that was left to be done on her butterfly seemed insurmountable, but if it was, that message had not reached her nimble fingers. To Adeline, the impossible was possible and the improbable was an absolute.

She can move mountains… and she can build my world.

One of the ladies lifted a head and saw him, and her work stopped, then another and another. Soon it was only Adeline who worked. Finally she, too, stopped, looked to either side of her and then followed the other women’s gazes to him.

“Nicolo,” she whispered and let her now-still hands rest in her lap.

“I am an idiot. I am a fool,” Nicolo said, stepping into the half-circle created by the women’s chairs. He got down on his knees before Adeline and took one of her hands in his own. “But whatever I am, I am a better man with you in my life.”

“I’m so sorry,” Adeline said, tears welling in her eyes.

“I’m not. I’m stubborn and pigheaded and rarely ever look at life past the end of my nose. If I had sold the Romano del Mare to be destroyed, I would have been haunted by it for the rest of my life. My grandparents poured their entire lives into the resort and I was ready to bulldoze it to the ground just because the going had gotten a little hard. I don’t want to do that now. I want to have more to show for my life than to destroy the legacy left for me. It would have left a hole in my soul that I would have never been able to fill. You saved me from that fate, Adeline. You pushed me into keeping what is dear to me by giving me the chance to give it up. In that moment I realized that I wasn’t ready to see her go.”

Nicolo brushed a tear from Adeline’s cheek. “I’m not ready to see you go either, bedda. You’re a part of me. I know that I’m a foolish man, but will you give me another chance?”

Adeline pushed her lace into the lap of the woman next to her and then threw herself into Nicolo’s arms, knocking him backward. With her on top and him pinned beneath her, she rained kisses down upon his face to mingle with her still-falling tears.

“Shoo! Shoo!” the tall woman from the front of the shop said, clapping her hands at them both as the other women laughed.

“Take me home,” Adeline demanded of Nicolo, following with a big kiss on his lips.

Nicolo didn’t even have to think of where she meant. His mind did not imagine his plane. He saw her and him. Everything else was a blur. The rest didn’t matter.