Gina

Copyright © 2013 Ann Edwards.

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ISBN: 978-1-4525-8588-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-8589-5 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 11/14/2013

Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Author’s Biography

For Andy

forever

Acknowledgments

Diane Lazzarino and Donna O’Connell for manuscript review

Judy Cuoco for her knowledge of hospital procedures

Dan Cuoco for information about boxing techniques

and

Alison and Jackie

for sharing the journey with me

Chapter One

S OME WINE-TASTING TOUR! Wearing new sneakers had been a big mistake. Gina’s feet were killing her. False advertising to the max. They should have billed this thing as a fitness challenge.

Today’s tour had taken them to the hill town of Lucca, one of Italy’s lesser-known crown jewels, and they’d been trekking along medieval walls and cobblestones for more than two hours.

Walking close beside Gina was Cassie, her best friend for as long as either of them could remember. Cassie gave her arm a quick elbow jab. Next time, don’t be such a fashionista.

Gina looked longingly at Cassie’s well-worn Nikes. Who knew we’d be auditioning for Survivor? This had been the only tour of Tuscany with bookings still available at the last minute, so they hadn’t bothered to research it thoroughly, and the frenzied pace had come as a nasty surprise.

Four days ago, immediately after checking into their Siena hotel, the ‘Daily Schedule’ posted in the lobby began to rule their lives. Gina had never been in the army, but she was starting to feel as if they’d signed up for boot camp. The drill was the same every day, and it was brutal. After an obscenely early wake-up call, they bolted down breakfast in the dining room, then raced outside to board a bus that waited like a grumbling white behemoth in the pre-dawn mist.

They returned fifteen hours later, again in darkness, after climbing endless steps and walking for miles. Thankfully, there had been hour-long breaks for lunch and dinner each day at a caffe, trattoria or ristorante. The food was always excellent, and the house wine was often far better than they ever would have expected on a low-budget tour. Consumption rates ran high, especially at dinner, and most of their merry little band dozed off soon after boarding the bus for the last leg of their daily marathon.

When they reached the hotel, the driver’s strong, sober and steady hands helped them all safely down the steps to the curb, and the weary group shuffled their way into the hotel lobby to retrieve their room keys from the front desk. Those at the end of the ragged line clustered around the bulletin board to confirm the next day’s schedule, then either edged up in line or peeled off in the direction of the hotel bar. Only a hardy few still had enough energy to take the stairs. The lucky ones who were first to be given their keys hurried to cram themselves into the lumbering cage that passed for an elevator in the historic old hotel. Supposedly, Verdi had often stayed there, or so the guidebook boasted. Fact or fiction, the true meaning of the word ‘historic’ hadn’t been lost on any of them. It was simply code for ‘dilapidated.’ Quick showers, bed, and the cycle began all over again.

There were twenty people on their tour, an interesting mix of ages and relationships, the only real commonality New York City as their point of origin. Gina’s throbbing feet virtually guaranteed that she and Cassie would always be bringing up the rear, as they were now, lagging about ten feet behind a seventy-something married couple in sturdy Birkenstocks.

At five-six and a hundred and thirty pounds, Gina had thought she was in fairly decent shape, until she met up with the amazingly fit power bar crowd that seemed to comprise most of their group. She thought longingly about the emergency biscotti that she always had tucked away in her purse, but she didn’t want to embarrass herself or Cassie by nibbling on it.

Andiamo, Gina! barked their tour guide Francesca. She had just glanced over her shoulder to count heads, and the woman had zero tolerance for slackers. Her problem, not mine, Gina decided. She didn’t much like Francesca to begin with, and she saw no reason to knock herself out trying to make her happy.

By now, after four days of touring Tuscany, they pretty much knew what to expect from Francesca wherever they went. She would hurry them along past the best boutiques in town until all the born shoppers in the crowd were salivating, but she wouldn’t even slow her pace, much less stop. Not until they finally reached a predetermined landmark, usually in a park or piazza. At that point, she would let them loose for an hour or two, after announcing the precise time and location for them to reassemble.

Cameras clicking madly, everyone would immediately scurry off to part with more of their euros. Meanwhile, their clever guide would be spending her downtime relaxing in some quiet little caffe. Kudos to Francesca, thought Gina. Not a bad gig at all.

The Tuscan hills with their majestic cypress trees, mountains of pure white marble, lush green vineyards, and silvery olive groves were breathtakingly beautiful, but walking for hours each day over surfaces that had last been paved during the Middle Ages was exhausting. Especially when it was all happening just two weeks after the end of the annual San Gennaro festival at home. Gina sighed with relief when they finally reached a broad and sunny piazza lined with outdoor caffes. Yes! She pumped a fist in the air.

All right! laughed Cassie, duplicating the gesture, determined to take her cue from Gina’s mood at all times on this trip.

When Francesca finished giving instructions for everybody to regroup at the Giacomo Puccini statue in just one hour, the group quickly dispersed, everyone eager to make the most of the limited free time allotted to them. Gina and Cassie had already blown their entire gift budget yesterday in Florence. The exchange rate amounted to highway robbery for Americans, but who could resist those butter-soft leather gloves in so many rich colors? The short answer to that one was nobody, at least not in their group.

Today, while everyone else was enriching the coffers of countless happy merchants, they would be relaxing in the piazza, giving their wallets and feet a breather while they soaked up the feel of Tuscany. Gina had given up torturing herself over gorgeous shoes that never seemed to come in her size. She had bought a few extra boxes of band-aids instead. No blisters yet, and she wanted to keep it that way.

Cassie quickly scoped out the ideal table for people watching. She tugged at Gina’s arm. Andiamo! Unable to resist, she did a fair imitation of Francesca’s brusque tone. Andiamo, Gina!

Gina narrowed her eyes, then burst out laughing. Not bad, Cass. Not bad at all.

Cassie led the way to a scarred old dark wooden table under a bright yellow umbrella that would keep them in the shade while allowing a completely unobstructed view of the sunny piazza. Gina nearly collapsed into her chair and immediately toed off her sneakers. Elbows on the table, chin tucked in her hands, she scanned the faces in the piazza, wiggled her toes, and simply enjoyed being pain-free.

Behind dark glasses, Cassie watched her friend and smiled. She was starting to unwind, finally. When Gina had suggested this trip, it was just a month ago, her birthday, September ninth. She had been lazing around over morning coffee and the Sunday Times when she was sucker-punched by a society page announcement, complete with studio photo, about her ex-husband’s recent engagement to a gorgeous twenty-something heiress. It was a sadistic fortieth birthday present, and Cassie had no doubt that the timing of the announcement had been deliberate. No questions asked, she had cleared her calendar to escape with Gina to Italy. They had been looking out for one another for so long that neither of them knew any other way.

Gina and Brad had been legally divorced in 2005, after ten years of marriage, but Gina’s deeply religious upbringing hadn’t allowed her to think of herself as a single woman until the Catholic Church decreed that there had never actually been a valid marriage in the first place. The annulment process had dragged on for two years. Now, seven years after the divorce and five years after the annulment, just when Gina was finally starting to put her life back together, Brad had dealt her yet another blow.

Cassie believed that there was a God. She just didn’t believe He cared about His children very much. Kind of like her own father, wherever he was. Still, she was a great believer in hedging her bets, so she had been lighting candles for Gina in every church they visited, praying that her friend’s heart would open to love again. And soon.

For years, Cassie had known that the perfect man for Gina was waiting patiently in the wings for her heart to heal. And Gina was deeply fond of him. But only as a friend. She just never seemed to notice all the sparks flying between them whenever they looked at one another. Cassie knew they were in love. Gina’s family knew it. All their friends knew it. But Gina didn’t have a clue.

Recognize any paisanos, G?

Don’t I wish. Gina smiled wistfully as she scanned the piazza. She’d never had any siblings, aunts, uncles or cousins, and she had always wanted a big family of her own. Yet here she was, forty, divorced, and with only the heartache of a second trimester miscarriage to mark the relentless ticking of her biological clock.

Her maternal ancestors, the Renatos, had emigrated from Naples to America in the eighteen nineties. They’d settled in Manhattan’s Little Italy where their descendants, Gina’s grandparents, Vittorio and Annaluisa Renato, eventually opened the renowned Italian restaurant that proudly bore her grandmother’s name. Weekday or weekend, there was always a wait to be seated at Annaluisa’s.

Her paternal grandparents, the Riccios, were later immigrants, also from Naples, but their dreams had died with them within months of their arrival in New York. A drunk driver had run them down in a horrendous car crash on the West Side Highway. They had one child, a three-year-old son named Antonio, who was sleeping at home at the time, under the watchful eye of his aunt Sophia, his father’s sister. She became a second mother to Antonio and raised him lovingly, but she too died young. Lung cancer claimed her life shortly before Antonio, Gina’s dad, graduated from high school.

Because Sophia had never married or given birth to a child of her own, Gina was the end of her father’s Riccio line. Since she was also the last one on her mother’s Renato side, she felt a little guilty about not traveling three hundred miles south to visit Naples, the city that had once been home to both families. Cassie was more than willing to share the driving if they couldn’t get tickets on the high-speed train. Either way, they could manage to squeeze the trip into the one free day their schedule allowed, but romantic Napoli was the last place Gina wanted to be right now.

She knew she’d regret avoiding her ancestral birthplace the moment her grandmother asked if she’d been there, but that was okay. Italians, she had long ago realized, were genetically predisposed to lay guilt trips on their loved ones, and she’d had plenty of practice with the delicate dance of remorse that inevitably followed.

Hello! Earth to Gina. Cassie was waving a hand in front of Gina’s face.

Gina laughed. Sorry. Just thinking about family. All those Riccios and Renatos who left here to sail off into the great unknown. She shook her head wonderingly. Not sure I’d have been gutsy enough to do it.

Me either, kiddo. Cassie saw a waiter heading in their direction. When he started to veer away, she waved a hand to attract his attention, but he blithely ignored her. Sighing, she shrugged, settled back in her chair, and focused on resetting the tempo of her patience metronome from Manhattan to Tuscany time. Trying to get in sync with the leisurely atmosphere of the sunny piazza, she sat quietly and let her mind drift back to the day she and Gina had spent on Ellis Island a few years earlier. Her voice was almost reverent when she spoke about it.

Remember all those pictures we saw at Ellis Island?

Gina nodded. Vividly. The images had been haunting. Unforgettable.

All those people boarding their ships. Stars in their eyes. Dressed in their Sunday best. Incredible. Cassie sighed. Too bad we couldn’t pick Big G’s face out of the crowd.

Gina smiled at Cassie’s reference to the ancestor for whom she’d been named, Gino Renato, a tinker from Naples. With his wife and family, he had emigrated from Italy to New York City and had actually gone on to live the great American dream. Back in the eighteen nineties, while he was traveling throughout his