“Don’t worry,” Giancarlo told him. “It doesn’t matter how much you know about art. It only matters that you are human. Trust me, the pictures in your books don’t begin to do those places justice. When you go there and see them in person, some of what you find will be so beautiful it will make you want to cry.”

“Hey, I don’t cry easily,” chuckled Carter with mock bravura.

“Perhaps not, my friend,” said Giancarlo with a shrug. “But I suspect that when you go to Italy, you may discover that your heart is just a little softer than you imagine it to be. But you can always take that up with God when you get there.”

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 21

August came, and July was soon a memory.

What had started for Carter as just a dream back in May was quickly taking on the shape of reality, looming larger and larger on the horizon just ahead. As the days went by and the date for his departure to Italy drew inexorably closer, it felt to him as though time had suddenly accelerated simply by virtue of his having flipped the calendar over to the next page. It was like he had been paddling a canoe all summer down an easy-flowing river, unaware that the quiet water beneath was gradually pulling him along faster and faster until all at once, without warning, he had found himself on the rapids. Now there was no way to escape its irresistible pull, and Carter had the strange sensation that all he could do was hang on, let the river take him where it might, and try to steer a safe and steady course until he reached his destination—which he fervently hoped was not the falls.

It was at once exhilarating and unsettling, but August had always been a month of mixed emotions for Carter. Ever since he was a boy, he had looked forward with great anticipation to the end of August and the start of the new football season. Just the same, he loved the summer—the lazy days at the beach, the soft nights, the tranquil feeling inside that it would go on forever—and it saddened him to watch its final days beginning to slip away from him. He was of course thrilled at the prospect of very soon setting off to find Elena, but the approach of autumn still brought a nervous twinge to his stomach and filled him with a sense of regret that somehow he had frittered away his time in the sun and left too many things undone.