Free The Last Promise by Richard Paul Evans

but the child was alone.
    He went into his bedroom, stretched out across the bed and read.
    Later that afternoon Anna came by with a housewarming gift: a bag of biscotti , a large bottle of olive oil and some spinach torte, hot from her oven. Though she had always wanted to learn English, for which she occasionally solicited Eliana’s help, it was in the same spirit in which she wanted to lose weight, and neither had happened. Ross sensed that she was nervous to be alone with him. She spoke halting, monosyllabic English and was as relieved as she was surprised when Ross replied in Italian.
    “But you speak Italian!” she exclaimed.
    “Poco,” he said, gesturing with his thumb and forefinger slightly apart.
    “You speak better Italian than my last husband,” she said, then added beneath her breath, “Cretino.”
    As she went to leave, she said, “I will be leaving tomorrow on vacanza . I am going to the sea. If you have an emergency, Eliana will know where to reach me.”
    “Eliana?”
    She pointed to the green door on the opposite side of the courtyard. “She lives in the next apartment. She was the woman sitting by the pool yesterday. She was with her boy. Do you remember?”
    “Sì.”
     
    The villa had a satellite dish and Ross found CNN. He watched for a while, then surfed the channels until he found a soccer game. The Fiorentina were playing Juventus, their rival, and he watched the match until ten then went to bed early. He had an early tour in the morning, and as he had not yet mastered the bus system, he would have to leave at sunup.
    He set his alarm clock for five-thirty, then undressed to his briefs. He opened the outer window and lay down on top of the bed.
    The sounds of the country seeped into the room like the cool night air. The noises he had grown accustomed to, the horns and brakes of the city, were replaced by the alien warbling of frogs and the shrill songs of the crickets and cicadas.
    For more than three years, he had wanted to be any place other than where he was. But mostly he had wanted to be here, in his own place—here, where he felt like a man. The realization that he had arrived filled him with joy.
    His thoughts returned to the woman by the pool. Eliana, Anna had called her. Though he had only seen her for a few minutes, he could still see her clearly in his mind. He could see those eyes. Could she have really been that beautiful? He doubted it. It was more likely that his loneliness had painted her in the exaggerated strokes of a dream. Then again maybe she was a dream, along with every other good thing that had come to him this last week. If so, he welcomed her and hoped she stayed awhile.
    As he began to drift off, there came from the open window a new sound. He opened his eyes and strained to hear. He wondered what animal could make such a noise. A wild boar, perhaps. Or was it a bird? He couldn’t quite place it. It almost sounded like a woman crying.

CHAPTER 7
    “La vita è breve e l’arte è lunga.” Art is long. Life is short.
    —Italian Proverb
     
“Great art is a hymn that does not dissipate in the immediacy of time and space. I believe that there are greater sermons in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel than in all the texts preached below it—that the brush of Michelangelo was far more articulate than the smooth tongues of the religious orators of his day, and, without a doubt, truer and far more lasting.”
    —Ross Story’s diary
     
     
    R oss woke in the same bed he had gone to sleep in, his alarm chirping a few feet from his head. Dream or not, I’m still here, he thought and smiled. He left his apartment before dawn, walking a quarter mile to the SITA bus stop.
    He arrived in downtown Florence with more than an hour to spare, so he got off the bus at Piazza Beccaria , where he stopped at a pasticceria for a cappuccino and pastry before catching a compact inner-city bus. In spite of the early hour, the bus was already crowded. He moved to the back and