We’re still holding hands when we get to my hometown.
Natalia gawks out the window as we cruise along the narrow main road. “This is insanely cute. Look at these colors! I feel like I’m in a Wes Anderson film.”
Though I was an adult the last time I was here, everything looks smaller. Maybe it’s only that my life has grown in scale. We pass bicyclists, people sitting at umbrella-covered tables outside a restaurant, an elderly couple walking, each carrying cloth market bags.
“I wonder if you knew it was this special when you lived here,” Natalia muses, gazing at an old church as we pass. “It’s so easy to miss what’s right in front of you.”
I’m unsure how to reply. In my youth, I noticed the town’s appeal chiefly through the eyes of others. I wonder if there’s a subtext to her observation.
Two weeks ago she forwarded me a link to a website with a photo of us in Monaco. She seemed concerned about the online reveal, but really, who is interested in the romantic life of the third-place Formula 1 team’s principal? I’m hardly “news.”
Whatisnews is the troubling situation I’ve hidden from her about the new grand prix location. It’s still brewing and has expanded to nothing short of a crisis for the sport.
My phone buzzes in my breast pocket and I slide it out to look when we come to a four-way stop. As if summoned by the worry simmering at the back of my mind, a message from Phaedra is there, the preview on the screen reading,This is a fucking shitshow.Another follows close on its heels, then a third.
“Ooh,” Natalia says, gazing out the passenger side at a shop on the opposite corner. “Local glassware. Look at that decanter in the window! Gorgeous.”
I take advantage of her admiration for the object and pull the car over once I’ve cleared the intersection. “Go ahead and look—I’ll catch up with you.” I lift my phone, its back toward her. “I must reply to this.”
“Okay, perfect.” She leans to give me a peck, then wipes a smudge of lipstick off me. “See you in a few.”
She climbs out and I open Phaedra’s messages.
Phaedra:This is a fucking shitshow. Ben from Allonby threw a fit in the lobby after you left for the airport, leaned on the other teams to take his side, saying they “shouldn’t have to suffer bc of Emerald.”
Phaedra:What if this blows open before we get it under control? Terrible timing for you to be dating a journalist, haha.
Phaedra:Anyway, hate to rain on your parade. Enjoy the getaway with Nat. But an announcement needs to be made soon, either denouncing or reassuring. PlatiNumeric say they won’t have their name on our fucking car if this goes forward, so I’m not feeling great (though I agree with them in principle)
I scrub a hand over my face with a groan. The passenger door opening startles me as Natalia gets back in. I shove my phone into my pocket, and her eyes follow the movement with a glint of suspicion.
“Back so soon?” I ask lightly.
“They were closed. That is, the door was locked, and the old woman inside was way too into eating a sandwich to acknowledge my knock.”
I glance at my watch before starting the car up. “Ah. It’s the lunch hour.” We ease back onto the road, headed for the end of town where my childhood home is.
“Everything okay?” Natalia asks.
“I’m fine. Just a bit tired. It’s odd to be here, perhaps, after so long.”
She’s quiet for another minute. “Did you ever… come here with Sofia?”
“Once, a few years after we married.” I give Natalia a weak smile. “There was scant reason. My mother was long gone, and my father… he wasn’t an easy man. He was unkind to her. Called her ‘das Bücherwurmmädchen’—the bookworm girl.”
Natalia runs her finger along the windowsill. “I wonder what he would’ve thought of me,” she says, her voice tentative.
“He’d have been glad you’re beautiful. You’re more spirited than he preferred in a woman, however.”
“Was your mother pretty and deferential?”
“Pretty, yes. But not deferential enough for them to be happy together.”
Natalia puts a hand gingerly on my leg. “You’ve never told me how, um… how your parents died. Or when.”
“My father had a stroke when I was in my thirties. My mother was only twenty-nine when she died. I was six.”
In Natalia’s long silence, I can feel her shock at this revelation, her uncertainty in how to proceed. “What happened?” she finally manages.
