The scariest moment is the one I predicted, when the chairs rise above the hills and the peaks of limestone cliffs, and my mind tells me we’re going to crash. But before I know it the chair turns into the roundabout and suddenly I’m on solid ground again, my legs feeling a bit like jelly. In seconds, Derio gets off, too, and joins me by my side.
“You did it,” he says, holding my face in his hands. “I am proud of you, mia leonessa.”
I laugh as he kisses me. He puts his arm around my waist and guides me toward the viewpoints.
“It wasn’t so scary,” I admit as we walk. “It was more thrilling than anything else. In a good way.”
“Brava,” he says, “but don’t get too attached. I thought maybe we could walk back down. It only takes about forty minutes but it takes you past a tiny church that many people never see.”
“Sure,” I tell him. “And if I get too tired, you can carry me like a pack mule.”
He squeezes my hand and we start walking up a short staircase until we’re at the top. Suddenly, I stop dead in my tracks.
We’ve come through a stand of pine to the guardrails that mark the viewpoints. Beyond the people gathered at the edge of the guardrail is the most stunning, dizzying, terrifying view I’ve ever seen.
“Holy shit.” I breathe out. “This is beautiful.”
Derio takes out his phone with his other hand. “This time I will take all the photos. You just enjoy the view, the moment. Do you want to go closer?”
Normally, I would say no and stay as far back from the edge as possible but the whole motorbike ride plus the chairlift has left me with a sense of fearlessness. I’m not about to run to the edge but the terror no longer feels quite as real. Maybe it’s the man whose hand I’m holding.
“Yes,” I tell him. “Let’s go closer.”
We make our way through the people and then it’s all there in front of me. Unlike the stunning views I’ve seen before, this one makes you think you’re God himself with the whole world at your feet. From here, Capri town and the Faraglioni Rocks lay beneath you like a postcard, like something you can hold in your hand and hang on your wall. The water and sky meld together into a smooth plane of cerulean blue, and white clouds hang like accents. The island itself is sharp and distinct, even in the summer haze, and you can almost count every white house, every green tree, every ecru-colored slab of rock.
It’s sobering. Not just the fact that I’m able to stand near the edge and not feel sick but because this view makes me realize how small the island is. Somewhere down there, Alfonso and Annabella are with their new church group. Somewhere down there—and if I had binoculars I could probably see where—the house of the sad lemons sits along the promenade. So many sorrows and tragedies and small triumphs contained in the history of one place, hidden from most people’s eyes. I wonder how many other stories of heartbreak and hope are attached to each of these houses.
“No wonder your mother was a writer,” I blurt out.
Derio looks at me sharply. “What do you mean?” Though he looks wary, as he always does when the subject of his parents comes up, his voice is gentle. I know he’s not going to fly off the handle this time.
I gesture to the miniature island below us. “Look at that. Look at all those people, all those lives containing all those stories that we have no idea about. Your mother, she must have come here sometimes and wondered these same things. She gave those people the lives she imagined for them.”
He nods slowly, chewing on his lip for a moment. “Yes, she came here sometimes.” He glances at me. “But, you know, not all of her books were set on Capri. Only one was. Well, two, technically.”
“House of the Sad Lemons,” I say and then catch myself. “I mean Villa dei Limoni Tristi.”
“Correct.”
“And what is the other?”
He looks around us at all the sunburned, baseball-cap-wearing tourists clamoring for the best shot and then guides me away from the viewpoint. When we’re far enough away, he says, “Correre il Sole. Racing the Sun.”
“That’s the book I saw on your desk.” He flinches at that. I stop walking and look up at him, holding on to his arm. “I told you I didn’t read it and I meant it. I just saw the title and your mother’s name. You know I can’t read a lick of Italian anyway.”
“Yes,” he says carefully. “Well, the book was never published. She . . . died before she could finish it.”
“Is that what you’re doing in the library all day? Are you reading it?”
He exhales sharply out of his nose and looks at the ground before straightening his shoulders. “I was reading it. For a year, it’s all I would read. I thought that if I kept reading it, I would know how it would end. If I knew how it ended, she wouldn’t really be gone. I wanted answers, any kind.” I hold on to him tighter, my heart bleeding for him. He goes on, though I can tell it’s difficult for him. “But there never were any answers. Not in the book. So I started reading all of her books. She has so many, you know, over thirty. And in my whole life I had only read one of them, Villa dei Limoni Tristi, the one that made her famous, successful. I wanted to keep her alive by reading her work. She would often say that immortality was the writer’s gift and the writer’s curse. I believe her now. She’s always haunting me but she’s never here.”
I pull him over to a low, flat stone beneath a cypress tree and we sit down. “You were close with her, I gather.”