“But as a big girl, you’re now old enough to learn.” Diana smiled encouragingly. “There’s no reason you can’t start today. Shall we?”
Evelyn’s expression brightened, and she nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, please!”
With that decided, Toby gathered the boys with a look, then rose.
Giulia pointed at him and at Giovanni, who also got to his feet. “Promise me you will not be late for dinner.”
Toby grinned. “We’ll return in good time and, with any luck, with some larger fish for the meal.”
The boys added their eager assurances, and minutes later, the four males strode off to the dock.
* * *
Two hours later,Toby sat drifting in the rowboat on the placid waters of the lake.
Giovanni had directed them to a spot where he swore there were always older, larger fish. With Giovanni, Toby had rowed to the location, then they’d shipped oars, and the four of them had baited their hooks and cast their lines into the water.
So far, Roland had reeled in one decent-sized fish, and Giovanni had pulled up a larger cousin.
The boys were talking in hushed voices in the bow, while Toby and Giovanni shared the stern bench.
Toby had known Giovanni for nearly twenty years, ever since he’d first ventured into Italy at Drake’s behest. Giovanni knew what manner of enterprise Toby spent most of his time engaged in, although he’d never known any details. Consequently, Toby felt no reservations over explaining that this mission was slated to be his last. “I’ll be back here to visit, of course,” he added. “Although at this point, I can’t say when.”
Giovanni shrugged. “Me, I say it is more than time you gave up the racing about and settled to build your life.”
Toby wasn’t quite sure what his old friend meant.
Correctly interpreting his faintly baffled look, Giovanni explained, “Life. A life. It is so much more than merely living. You have been living a lot, yes, but you haven’t been building, and a life needs to be built.”
“Ah.” Toby said. “Yes. I see.” After a moment, he added, “Building blocks. Bits that fit together to form a whole.”
“Si.That is it. You lack any bits—any of the usual blocks. You need to find them, collect them, and fit them together, yes?”
“Hmm.” Toby thought about that.
Then a tug on his line had him reeling in the biggest catch so far.
After the ensuing excitement had faded and they’d all resettled and were watching their lines again, Toby asked Giovanni about his family, and the conversation veered into other pastures.
Except that, this time, Toby paid closer attention.
Later, when he and Giovanni had lapsed into companionable silence, Toby realized he wasn’t in the least bored.
The realization made him blink. Normally, during those times when he wasn’t actively engaged on a mission, beneath any and all conversations and activities, he was fundamentally bored.
He usually felt the lack of excitement and was aware of it at some elemental level.
Yet today—in fact, over all the days since they’d effectively stepped out of the mission and come to the island—he hadn’t been and still wasn’t bored.
He felt no hankering, no hunger for the next exciting incident, no overriding impulse to pit his skills against some unseen foe. No yearning for the thrills from what Giovanni had labeled his “racing about.”
The reality hit him with the strength of an epiphany.
Being bored had always been the underlying reason that he’d never settled down. He’d been sure that if he did, he’d be bored.
The inescapable conclusion was that he’d changed. And the shift in him—in his reactions, expectations, and needs—owed much if not all to the children and Diana coming into his life.
He wasn’t entirely sure how it worked, but it seemed that they—his pretend family—were providing the right sort of excitement and thrills for the man he now was. Or perhaps, more accurately, for the man he was becoming, the man he was evolving into now that he’d accepted that the life he’d led to this point would be no more.
