Free The Miracles of Santo Fico by D. L. Smith Page A

into Leo’s face. He’d changed. This was a man’s face. There were more lines and more scars—probably from fights. The eyes were the same even with the wrinkles, but now the nose was broken in a different way and a jagged scar crossed the bridge. Marta wondered if she’d done that the night before her wedding when she had grabbed up a water pitcher from off the nightstand next to her bed and hurled it at him. She had intended for it to crash into the wall next to him, but in the darkness of the night and blinded by her own tears, she missed. The water pitcher smashed into Leo’s face and knocked him backward out of her second-story bedroom window. He came to earth in the garden below, among the radishes . . . Marta remembered thinking he was lucky. He barely missed landing in the tomatoes where he would have been impaled on the stakes.
    She had watched him from her window as he limped out of the moonlit garden holding his face . . . Eighteen years ago last month. That broken, scarred nose may have been her work, she thought—at least, she hoped it was.
    For his part, Leo had never considered landing in the radishes a particularly lucky break. He often felt his life would have been so much simpler if he’d just landed on the tomato stakes and that thought occurred to him again as he too had a chance to study a face he hadn’t been close to in eighteen years. The girl he grew up with was gone. It was a woman’s face that stood before him now, but it still took his breath away. It was a face that should have been chiseled out of stone centuries ago and celebrated through the ages as beautiful. There had always been that beauty, Leo thought, but now there was something more. Around the corners of her dark eyes and taut mouth were the tracings of small wrinkles some people call laugh lines, but Leo had a feeling that they weren’t caused by years of excessive joy. Marta had always been filled with a certain intense determination and there was no denying it was still there, but that wasn’t all Leo saw today. He also recognized regret and resignation. He knew them because they were such old companions in his own life.
    From his place at the bar, Topo prayed like a zealot that Marta wouldn’t spoil everything—they were so close to success. Even now a few members of the English tour group were asking their guide questions and pointing at Leo. It was going perfectly, and now Marta was going to spoil everything because of some silly . . . What? Even he didn’t know. He, Guido Pasolini, who’d been there eighteen years ago still wasn’t sure what had happened to drive such a terrible wedge between his three best friends. He just knew that after the night of Franco’s awful bachelor party he was never allowed to mention the name Leo Pizzola to Marta again. He’d discovered that much the next day at the wedding. Franco was angry too, of course, because of the fight in Grosseto the night before. But eventually Franco had let go of his anger. Once, when they were drunk and melancholy, Franco had even confessed to Topo that it had been his fault. Sometimes he and Franco would reminisce and wonder what Leo might be up to. They knew he was in America . . . somewhere, and they would occasionally pretend that someday they would get out of Santo Fico too. They would join Leo in America, just like they used to dream of doing when they were boys . . . someday. But they could never talk like that when Marta was around. When Marta was around, Leo’s name was not to be mentioned. Neither Topo nor Franco ever knew about Leo standing at Marta’s window the night before the wedding. She never told anyone. So, of course Topo didn’t understand. He just knew that the English tourists were now talking among themselves and pointing at Leo and nodding. Sometimes Marta’s bitterness made things damn inconvenient.
    Leo and Marta continued to stare at each other in silence. Leo was waiting for Marta. It was her hotel, after all. But at