Free Italian Fever by Valerie Martin

her. “Is there a chapel?”
    “There is,” Antonio said. “But I am certain your friend was never in it. The only entrance is through my father’s apartments.”
    “Most large villas have chapels,” Massimo observed, stamping out his cigarette stub in the ashtray he held in his lap. “Perhaps he saw one somewhere else.”
    “I trust there are no members of my family in this story,” Antonio said. It was one of his combination question/statements, which, Lucy observed, were a salient feature of his conversational method.
    “I don’t think so,” she replied. “Unless you have a ghost who walks on the driveway late at night.”
    Massimo snorted. He was in the process of lighting his next cigarette and the sudden exhalation blew the flame off course. Lucy noted creases of amusement at the corners of his eyes as he jabbed the thin white column after the elusive flame. She smiled at him.
    Antonio was not amused. “What sort of ghost?” he asked coldly.
    “The ghost of a dead partisan,” Lucy explained. “Of Basque extraction. Murdered in the driveway by Nazi forces during the war.”
    “I must ask you not to bring this up in front of my father.”
    Having drained his wineglass, Stanton Cutler leaned forward to set it on the table. “ Is there a ghost?” he asked.
    “Of course there is no ghost,” Antonio chided him. He turned to Lucy. “But my uncle was killed during the war in much the way you describe. He was not of Basque extraction, however. I don’t know how your friend heard about this sad moment of my family’s history, but it would upset my father tolearn that a foreigner has made”—he paused, searching for the most forceful representation of his feeling—“a mockery of it in a work of doubtful quality. My uncle was my father’s brother. They were very close.”
    “Of course,” Lucy agreed. “We won’t speak of it.” She glanced at Stanton, wondering if he would make some defense of DV’s novel, but his attention was engaged by a burst of activity in the dining room. Antonio came away from the wall. “Here is my father,” he said. “We will go in.”
    Signor Cini had entered from a dark hall, followed by his ancient mother, who was muttering at him irritably. He ignored her, making straight for the table, where he took what was evidently his customary seat. From the kitchen, Signora Panatella appeared, accompanied by a woman who might have been her twin, carrying two large plastic bottles of water. The loggia party filed in, headed by Antonio, who directed them to their chairs. Lucy was placed between Massimo and the grandmother, Stanton across the table with the old man, and Antonio took the chair at the head of the table. The bustle of moving, of greeting the elder Cinis, of taking seats while the glasses were filled with wine and water and the first in a series of large platters appeared from the kitchen served to dispel the torpid, mildly threatening atmosphere that had settled over the company on the porch. To Lucy’s relief, Signora Panatella, assenting to a terse command from Signora Cini, crossed the room and pulled closed the doors to the loggia. For several minutes, the diners were all occupied with passing various platters and bowls back and forth and piling food onto their plates. Lucy, who had eaten very little during the day, was now aware of three conflicting sensations: extreme fatigue, aching hunger, and an undercurrent of nausea. She helped herself to the bowl of white beans, a round of toast spread with liverpaste, a slice of prosciutto, and a few olives, taking each dish from Massimo and sending it on to Antonio, who served out his grandmother’s scanty portions. The old woman riveted her fierce eyes to her plate. She terrifies her food into submission, Lucy thought, an idea that made her smile. Her eyes met Antonio’s. He was watching her over a basket of bread he was passing her way. His mouth was pursed, his eyebrows had a slight interrogative lift, but his