“What do you think?” said Giorgio excitedly, nudging him in the ribs, when she turned the corner and they could see her no more. “She’s a goddess, isn’t she?”

“Who is she?” murmured Giancarlo, still gazing after her.

Giorgio took a long, deep breath and let it out. “She’s the girl I’m going to marry someday,” he said.

Giancarlo turned and looked at his brother.

Not if I marry her first, he thought.

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 25

Giancarlo sat at the piano, staring at the keyboard. What was it, he wondered, that had suddenly called forth the memory of that day more than thirty years ago when he and Giorgio had gone up the mountain? He supposed that it had all come to mind because he had been thinking about his mother while he practiced his scales, just as he had been doing on that long-ago spring morning. Even now, after so many years, he still heard the echoes of her voice, gentle and encouraging, whenever he sat down to play. Sometimes the memory of it was so strong, he heard it so clearly that it was almost as if she were still sitting there beside him on the piano bench. Few of Giancarlo’s memories were as strong as that of his mother’s voice, and it had, he knew, the power to evoke many others. And so it came as no surprise to him that one memory had led inescapably to the next, like the fall of the first domino against the second, toppling all the rest in sequence. Dwelling on the past, however, was not a favorite pastime of Giancarlo’s. It only made him weary. So, as he always did, he pushed the whole thing from his mind, just as he pushed himself away from the keyboard.