Free The Girl in the Glass by Susan Meissner Page A

knew how to hope.
    I read it twice, lingering on Sofia’s phrases. At lunch I read both chapters again.
    The rest of the day passed slowly. I did laundry. Washed my car. Cleaned out the litter box. Swept the porch. Vacuumed. Read. Hopped onto Facebook to see if anyone had posted pictures of Miles’s wedding. And when I saw that someone had, I scrutinized the images, studying Miles’s and Pamela’s happy, serene faces for clues as to how they managed to get their lives to play out just like they were supposed to.
    When that contemplation afforded me no quick answers, I sent a quick message to Lorenzo, telling him that my father was making plans for us to come this summer and that I hoped he and Renata would be around in June. And might he ask Ms. Borelli if I could see a few more chapters? And then I sat around waiting for Lorenzo to reply, as if he’d be awake and loitering on Facebook in the middle of the night.
    I stayed up until after midnight watching a dumb movie, then slept poorly. I awoke several times, wondering as I wandered in and out of sleep what exactly Sofia meant when she said the paintings and sculptures spoke to her in the voice of a Medici woman named Nora. In that in-between place of sleep and wakefulness, I imagined I knew what Sofia meant, but only in the smallest of ways. When I was young, sometimes I could hear the music that the girl in my nonna’s painting danced to in front of the beckoning statue. At least that is how I remembered it. Perhaps it was only Nonna humming a tune while in the kitchen, a melody that swirled into the hall where the painting hung and where I stood gazing at it.
    But when I awoke in the morning, Sofia’s claims that she could hear statues and paintings whispering to her needled me. I was a child when I imagined I heard the music. She was an adult who should know better. After reading her chapters over coffee a third time, I texted Gabe and askedif I could go to his church with him instead of my usual rendezvous at my mother’s. Gabe attends an artistically minded church that meets in a refurbished warehouse in East Village. They were as likely to paint or dance a sermon as preach one. But he was on his way to Orange County to visit a friend. I asked him how his date was, and his one-word reply was “Okay.” I was immediately aware of my selfish desire to keep Gabe right where he was. Available.
    I ended up going to church with my mother anyway. She told me in between choruses of “Blessed Assurance” that Devon looked forward to having coffee with me. After eating crepes for lunch with her, I went home and rearranged the furniture that isn’t mine.
    By Sunday night I had a very clean cottage, no further word from my father, no return message from Lorenzo, and an e-mail from Devon: “Coffee after work on Tuesday?”
    Sure.
    He asked for my phone number. In case we needed to contact each other. And he gave me his.

    I was hungry all day Monday. Hungry to hear back from Lorenzo, hungry for more of Sofia’s memoir, hungry to hear back from my father, hungry for Florence. I e-mailed Lorenzo when he still hadn’t responded to my Facebook message and then hungered for an e-mail back from him. I was hungry for details of Gabe’s okay date, hungry to get Geoffrey and Beatriz on board with the memoir thing, and hungry to not be hungry for anything.
    I didn’t think it was a good idea to pump Gabe for details on the date, and he didn’t offer any. He was happy to hear my dad was at last making plans to take me to Florence, but he was cautious in his enthusiasm. “Let meknow when you have the dates,” he said. “I’d be happy to take you to the airport.” But the tone of his voice sounded more like “Let me know if you actually get an airline ticket out of this guy, and I’d be happy to take you to the airport.”
    “I think he might be serious this time,” I said.
    And Gabe said he hoped I was right.
    I mentioned to Geoffrey that I might take a week or so off