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It is Laurel's well-deserved and long-anticipated August break. She arrives in Arezzo from Rome on the fast train, then takes a taxi to a little restaurant in the center of town. The restaurant is filled for the evening hour.
There they are as planned, Margaret and Roberto, sitting at a corner table with friends and family, celebrating their daughter, Frederika's, sixteenth birthday. And as her godmother, Laurel measures her emotional growth, like inches marked with pencil on the wall.
Laurel met Margaret and Roberto on the gynecologist's waiting-room floor at 91 st Street and Park Avenue a week before they both gave birth. Tom did not want to attend the classes with Laurel, so Roberto coached the two expectant mothers on their birthing breaths. Laurel felt she was giving birth to a bastard, the only woman without a husband at her side. Where was Tom?
“Hello, hello.” Margaret rushes over, smiling and radiant. “You must not know what time you're on.”
“What time is it?”
“Nearly ten-thirty. Italian country time.” Margaret helps Laurel off with her jacket.
Roberto greets her with a warm hug. “You look wonderful,” he says.
“Try this. Panza panzarotti. The porcini mushrooms are from the village. You go to the market and ask what was just pulled from the ground and then you cook it.”