Free The Chapel by Michael Downing Page B

kind.”
    She asked a few questions about Mitchell, and I learned that her husband had been an autoworker, not an executive as I had imagined. From her stories of her early days in Detroit and what she’d said the night before, I patched together a life that made Anna almost eighty years old. This made me feel a little glum about abandoning Shelby for the rest of the month, leaving her to attend to the vagaries of Anna’s tolerance for the rigors of the tour.
    As casually as I could manage, I asked Anna if she had a telephone number or email contact for Lewis. I felt I should tell someone I was going home so I didn’t get reported as a missing person, apt as that designation seemed.
    Anna reached under the table for her purse and pulled out her itinerary, which she handed to me. On the first page, in the margin beside her Venice hotel information, in careful little capital letters, she had written TWO DAYS WITH FRANNY !
    My eyes welled up.
    Anna said, “Are you missing your husband?”
    â€œI’m fine,” I said. I hadn’t been thinking of Mitchell. I had been thinking of people who belonged together.
    Anna said, “It comes on like that, the loss of him.”
    â€œLike a migraine,” I said, too cavalierly, though it was true. Marriage had been a mixed blessing for both Mitchell and me, but missing him was debilitating. Almost my entire adult life had been lived in response to him, or in reaction against him, and now the thought of him just occasioned a kind of paralysis. “I’m not even sure if I miss Mitchell, or if I miss being a wife.”
    Apologetically, and maybe a little reprovingly, Anna said, “That’s none of my business.”
    â€œBut it is,” I said. I flipped ahead to the Contacts page and copied Lewis’s number into my phone. “I have to tell you something,” I said.
    Anna looked alarmed. “Maybe you’ve said enough for now.”
    â€œNo, I want to give you something,” I said quickly, “but I’m not certain I will be allowed.” This sounded vaguely like the beginning of a smuggling operation. “I have to go home, to Cambridge, soon.”
    She looked aghast. “Is it one of your children?”
    Again, announcing my intention had calmed me down. “No, it is not any kind of emergency. I need to be at home.” None of this registered as reassuring to Anna, so I said, “It’s all set. I’ve already scheduled my flight. But I need your permission—I need to know if this is really what you want.”
    â€œI don’t want you to go away,” Anna said. “What gave you that idea?”
    Thank god, the waiter came by and recited the dessert specials,which restored a sense of normalcy. I ordered an espresso. Anna opted for the lemon tart.
    I didn’t wait for the waiter to return. I said, “I want to ask Lewis if my reservations and tickets and meals—if they can somehow be transferred to Francesca, if she can take my place.” I couldn’t decide if this plan was inspired or insane.
    Anna looked past me, her gaze darting around the room, as if maybe I had been talking to someone else. “My sister?”
    This tipped the balance toward the insane. “I don’t have a sister,” I said. “I barely have a brother.”
    Anna drew her napkin from her lap to the table. “Well, I’m sorry about that,” she said.
    I felt queasy, as if I’d arranged this lunch so I could sweet-talk her into selling me a sibling.
    Anna folded the napkin along the ironed-in creases. I couldn’t tell if she was mulling over my offer or waiting for an apology. Finally, she said, “My sister? Franny?”
    I said, “Only if you want her to join you.”
    â€œYou barely know her.”
    This was starting to feel like a warm-up for the conversation I’d be having with Rachel when I tried to explain why I didn’t get even a partial