“We could do that.”

“Uncle Bert is coming over a little later. I bet he’ll let you drive the go-cart.”

“Really? You have a go-cart?” He looked up at his mother. “Can I?”

“Yes. But only if Uncle Bert is with you.”

“Don’t worry, Bert’s the only one who can get the darn thing started. Now, you go on, honey. We’ll be just fine. I’ve been doing this mother thing for a long time.”

“All right, Mom.” She kissed her cheeks.

“I love how those Italians do that. They’re such an affectionate people, aren’t they?”

“They are. Ciao, Mom.”

It thrilled her when her daughter spoke Italian to her. “Ciao.”

The drive from Vernal to Park City was a little more than three hours, with nothing to see but scrub oak and desert terrain. Eliana didn’t mind the drive. The sun-baked asphalt road stretched out before her flat and desolate. She welcomed the opportunity to be alone with her thoughts.

It was a warm day, and she cracked her window just enough as to not drown out her car’s CD player. She still listened to her Italian CDs. They were like old friends. But even they seemed different now. Foreign somehow.

Her mind wandered over the blank backdrop of the terrain. She wondered where Ross was. England? Germany? No, she didn’t see him either of those places. Spain? Maybe Spain—the dark, sun-kissed hills of Barcelona, or south in Seville. She could see him in Spain.

He’d learn the language fast. He was good with languages, and they are similar, Spanish and Italian. It would come easy for him. So would the women, she thought. This made her stomach ache a little. Would she be so easily replaced? She did not doubt him, only herself. She never saw what he was so taken by in her in the first place. Still, maybe it was different for a man. Love is a portion of a man’s life, the Italians said, the whole of a woman’s. The Italians had much to say on the subject. Even the word romance found its root in Roman. As much as it hurt her to think of Ross with another woman, she didn’t want him to be alone. She wanted him to find a kind, beautiful woman who would care for him the way she had wanted to. One who could give him everything she couldn’t. He deserved that. Her love for him demanded that.

She had gone to sleep on a thought the night before. As she walked the labyrinth of her aching heart, she realized that love and gratitude are born twins. For if she were asked what she felt for Ross, she’d say love. But what she felt most was gratitude. Gratitude for what he had brought into her life. Gratitude for the way he had loved her. Gratitude that he had made her feel whole again. In spite of what she had said to her mother, gratitude even for the pain.

Maybe she too would marry someday. As foreign as the idea seemed to her, her intuition told her that she wouldn’t be alone forever. Alessio needed a father. She would make a partnership with a man and they would be friends and she might even learn to love him. Still, a part of her feared that deep inside she would always feel that she was only settling.