Ring of Truth (26 page)

Nicholas made good time back to Moscow. Veronica had seen him dodge traffic before, but tonight he seemed particularly adept. In the end she couldn't reach Rinaldo so she left a detailed voicemail. And she opted for the second departure of the morning, as she would miss rehearsals anyway and the first flight would require her to appear at the airport at the ungodly hour of five a.m. She had the idea she would have better things to do at that time than check in her baggage.

At one point as the Renault cut a swath through Moscow, Veronica remembered the ring. It felt very natural on her finger now, its gemstone a spectacle of glimmering green and white. Though she left it unchanged, for the first time she felt an urge to turn it around so that the heart would face inward, not the crown. She knew from what she'd read before that would signal that her heart had found its mate.

Her impressions of Nicholas's apartment, hastily gained, were favorable. It was on a quiet tree-lined street and backed onto a park. Small and charming, it had hardwood floors and clean white walls and pocket doors that hearkened back to an earlier era.

He poured them glasses of red wine, which they tasted between kisses. “I suppose I should feed you,” he said.

She had breath enough for only one word. “Eventually.”

***

Sometime in the delicious night, Veronica awoke. She lay still and listened to Nicholas's steady breathing. She reveled in his naked warmth beside her, and her lips curved in a knowing lover's smile. In the air hung a faint aroma of the eggs they'd scrambled when hunger of a different sort had driven them from his bed. They'd downed the meal with the red wine and yesterday's bread that did the job when it was toasted.

In the distance a siren wailed. A tree branch tickled the windowpane, making Veronica think the wind was still tumbling the snowflakes in a wintry dance.

Very carefully, so as not to wake Nicholas, she got out of bed. It had occurred to her she should charge her phone. She would need it in the morning.

In the living room, with its accent wall of striped wallpaper and bookshelves stocked with tomes in English, Russian, and French, she was attaching cord to phone when she noticed she'd received a voicemail hours earlier. She had been fully occupied, it was safe to say, and so had missed it. It was from Rinaldo.

Her heart thumped when she heard the message the first time. She had to play it a few more times because Rinaldo was so upset he lapsed into Italian occasionally and those parts were hard to understand. Though in truth she didn't need to grasp the words to ascertain their meaning.

This was too much. She had gone too far. What did she take him for? How little did she value his opera? Carina would be his Leonora, on Friday for the preview and on every other night. Veronica needn't bother herself to return to Florence from Moscow on Rinaldo's account. He was done with her.
Finito
.

The readout of the hour glowed ghostly white on her cell phone. If Veronica rushed, she could still make the earlier flight. The faster she got to Rinaldo, the more likely it was that she could change his mind. Her persuasive powers had never been stronger, she was sure of it. Especially armed as she was with the ring.

She threw her phone and its cord into her handbag and abandoned all efforts to be quiet. She raced around Nicholas's apartment grabbing articles of her clothing from all the places they'd been flung. She took special care to return the ring to her finger, knowing as she did its odd propensities when it came to international travel.

She was almost dressed when Nicholas appeared in the living room. He sported a robe and a dazed expression. “What in the world are you doing?”

“I have to catch the early flight. I got a call from Rinaldo. He”—she didn't want to say it out loud for fear that would set it in stone—“said he needs me back ASAP. I'll call you.”

She tried to kiss him on the mouth but he moved his head slightly so her lips grazed his cheek instead. “I'm sorry, Nicholas. Please understand.”

He shook his head as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing. Veronica was unnerved to see a flash of the disillusionment he'd displayed in her aunt's apartment, when she'd asked the evil pair how they'd like her to pay for the so-called special treatment and Nicholas had assumed she'd fallen for their treachery. Now he started to speak. “Then at least let me—”

“I can't wait. I've got to go now. I'll take the metro.”

She was out the door without looking back.

Stunning scenery does not squelch your anguish when you've willfully demolished your career. Nor does it compensate for losing the love of your life.

Veronica was learning that lesson in Florence as she nursed an early evening cappuccino at an outdoor café at the Piazza della Signoria. Not even the Palazzo Vecchio or the replica of the David could salve her wounded soul. For Rinaldo would no longer have anything to do with her. And Nicholas wouldn't, either.

Rinaldo had told her
finito
in as many ways as it was possible to express it. And it was not because he didn't believe Veronica could sing the role of Leonora. It was because he could not forgive her disrespect. She had mocked his production. She had mocked him.
Finito
.

It was very possible her career would evaporate. Rinaldo could blackball her from Florence to San Francisco and back again. A major diva could survive such a firing. A lesser star could not.

With Nicholas, it was much worse. He wouldn't even respond. His mobile went to voicemail every time Veronica called. She was up to six calls, and each had produced the same result. She was pondering whether to make a seventh plea for forgiveness. Nicholas warranted a hundred tries.

She did not doubt she had behaved abominably. If a man had decamped from her bed the way she had decamped from his, she would never forgive him. She couldn't blame Nicholas for writing her off, which was the problem with placing a seventh call. She didn't have any more arguments to muster in her defense.

She was morosely counting the euros to pay for her cappuccino when something prompted her to raise her head to look across the
piazza
. And there right in front of her, as unexpected as a visitor from another world, stood Nicholas.

He wore a black trench coat and rolled a suitcase behind him. Under his arm was a rectangular parcel wrapped in brown paper and string. With people moving around him like guppies around a large fish, he stood on the paving stones worn smooth by centuries of booted feet and gazed at her.

She was thinking how he must not be angry with her—because why would he be in Florence if he were angry?—when his smile dispelled her last doubt. She leapt to her feet to catapult herself into his arms. “You're not mad at me. You don't hate me.”

“I am a little mad at you. But I don't hate you.”

“I called and called—”

“I was in the air. I got your messages when I landed.”

She stated the obvious. “You followed me.”

“I had to.”

“How did you even know where to look for me?”

“You told me you were staying in a guesthouse behind the Palazzo Vecchio. I planned to check every guesthouse between here and the Duomo until I found you.”

He stopped. She waited. The air in the
piazza
stilled, awaiting lovers' words it had heard before and would hear again.

“I love you, Veronica.”

“Oh, Nicholas, I love you, too. So much.” The words spilled from her mouth before she could think to restrain them.

They kissed, two alone in a multitude, under a sky filled with stars and possibilities. The ring, Veronica had no doubt, had once again gone from emerald green to a pearliness as dazzling as the moon in its brightest hour.

She pulled back and pushed the dark hair from his forehead. “I just had the craziest thought.” She stopped as suddenly as she had started.

“What?”

It was about the ring. All at once she didn't want to tell him. The ring was her little secret. And now, in the midst of the greatest happiness she had ever known, she understood what it had been up to all along.

The ring didn't send her to Moscow to meet her birth mother. It sent her to meet Nicholas. True, it gave her the gift of understanding where she came from, but really it was this man who solved the deepest riddle of her heart. And without the ring's intervention, she never would have found him.

The woman with the dark hair had said the ring was precious to her. Now it was precious to Veronica, too. For it had given her Nicholas.

She took his hands. “Let me tell you about Rinaldo. He fired me even though I flew right back. I was an idiot to walk out on you, Nicholas. I'll never make that mistake again.”

Again that smile of his. “I think I deserve another ‘I'm sorry' kiss.”

She'd give this man whatever kind of kiss he wanted. When she was done, and only then, she posed another question. “What is that you've got with you?”

“For that, my dear Veronica, we should sit down.”

They returned to the café table she had just abandoned and this time ordered Prosecco. The bubbles danced on Veronica's tongue. “This feels like a painting,” she told Nicholas when he handed her the parcel.

“Unwrap it.”

It was a painting. It was the only lovely thing she had seen in her aunt's apartment, the oil of a blonde girl on a beach building a sand castle. Veronica raised questioning eyes to Nicholas, though she was beginning to understand.

“Your aunt said you had an aunt who painted that,” Nicholas reminded her.

Veronica nodded. She found the artist's signature, partially hidden by the frame. Even in the fading light and with her poor grasp of the Cyrillic alphabet, she could read the first name.
Rada
. “My mother painted this,” she murmured.

“That girl by the sea is you.”

It was how her birth mother wanted to imagine her. In a beautiful place, happy, cared for, loved.

Veronica held the painting to her chest, tears welling in her eyes. “What a treasure, Nicholas.”

“I suspected your birth mother painted it. Then Anya confirmed it. I wanted you to have something from your birth mother.”

“And now I do.” Tears spilled down her cheeks.

“Oh, good. You're crying. Now I know it's really you.”

She gave him a light slap that ended in another kiss. “So my demon aunt was willing to part with this?”

“For the right price, she'd be willing to part with anything. Fedosia better watch out.”

They got a good laugh out of that. They got another when again Veronica spoke, this time with a teasing lilt in her voice. “I have to thank you somehow for this, Nicholas.”

She expected him to banter but instead his face grew serious. “Sing for me, Veronica. I want to hear you sing.”

She had a moment's pause as she pondered making a spectacle of herself in this grand
piazza
. But for this man she would do anything. “There is a beautiful aria Leonora sings. It's called
‘Tacea La Notte Placida.'
‘The Placid Night is Silent.' ”

“What's it about?”

“A woman realizing that the man she loves is in love with her, too.”

Nicholas lifted her hand to his mouth. “That sounds perfect.”

Veronica rose and stepped away a few feet. She began to gather herself. It had been days since she'd sung, and the
piazza
was full of people. But tonight she cared only about pleasing one man. As she lifted her head, closed her eyes, and let the aria fill her soul, she realized there was someone else she was singing for, a woman who had left her earthly cares behind but who would never stop listening for her daughter's voice in the starry night.

Veronica opened her throat and loosed the aria's first notes across the
piazza
. She was vaguely aware of the surprise that reverberated around her. She sensed that surprise turn to pleasure, then entrancement. And as always, before long she lost herself in the music. The
piazza
and its ancient glories fell away. It was, more than it had ever been, as if she herself were Leonora, singing of a silvery moon, the chords of a lute, and the troubadour who called her name. For Veronica, too, love had made earth a paradise.

As the last note died away, applause thundered toward her.
Brava! Brava, bellissima!
Veronica bowed her head before lifting her eyes to heaven. She was quite sure that high above one star twinkled with very particular brightness.

Nicholas was on his feet, cheering and clapping and beaming. She was about to make her way toward him when a burly man with a dark beard waylaid her to hand her a business card. It bore a name Veronica recognized, of a well-known opera director. He was visiting Florence but was mounting a production in Berlin. What was Veronica's name? Who was her agent? Might she consider the soprano's role? For, he had to tell her, she had created an amazing moment. She had dazzled him. She had sung like an angel.

Veronica felt the splendid ring on her finger. She smiled at Nicholas and thought again of the twinkling star in the heavens.

No wonder. She'd had help.

***

It was foggy in San Francisco that January morning, a few weeks past the holiday rush. Veronica stepped out of the Buena Vista Café at Fisherman's Wharf. It was an appropriate breakfast spot for a diva with a Claddagh ring, as the café was famous for introducing Irish coffee to the American public. As it happened its breakfasts weren't bad, either.

She shivered as she gazed at the mist-covered bay, pondering whether to walk back to her flat or take the cable car. Her lilac-colored trench coat offered scant protection against the elements. She'd been silly to wear it, but she was in the mood for spring.

Spring meant Berlin, and her next opera, and Nicholas less than a three-hour nonstop away. His visit to San Francisco, during which he'd met her parents, had ended only a week ago, but the minute he left, she missed him desperately.

As she made the noble decision to walk off her eggs benedict, a brunette at the cable-car stop across Beach Street caught her attention. The young woman had the sort of creamy complexion that preferred fog to sun. She was attractive but seemed oddly flustered, and she was carrying the most unwieldy tote.

Veronica fingered the ring box in her pocket. The ring was nestled inside.

Once her face you see, you'll know the one who must the ring receive.

It could not have been more clear to Veronica if the brunette had had a target on the back of her trendy gray suit. The time for Veronica to cede the ring had come.

She couldn't deny a certain bittersweetness. It was as if the curtain were going down on a beloved production. When an opera closed, she was acutely aware of the great sopranos who had preceded her; she knew others would follow. She was one in an infinite line who had added to the opera's legacy.

So it was with the ring of truth.

Veronica approached the woman, who gave her a curious look as she neared. Veronica wondered if she herself bore the same joyous expression as the dark-haired woman who had given her the ring, if she glowed with the same inner light. What a wondrous thing to pass on.

Go do it again
, Veronica silently urged the ring.
Go work your magic.

*********