He kept frowning. Apparently, this hadn’t been the memory he wanted everyone to remember. “No worries. Henceforth, it’ll be impossible to forget me,” he boasted.
For a moment I almost asked what he meant by that but I caught myself. Don’t feed the troll, Sienna. Praying he wouldn’t speak to me again that night or preferably ever, I returned to my soup and took a spoonful. It tasted wonderfully fiery and smooth in my mouth.
“Fabio just graduated from a university in Edinburgh,” my mother said. “Since both of you have similar educational experiences from the United Kingdom, I’m sure you’ll have lots to talk about.”
“Sure, Aunt Marzia,” he replied, “but the rigors of a postgraduate degree are not to be spoken lightly of, or even compared to the minimal effort needed for an undergraduate degree. Even if we were in the same country, I doubt Sienna would be able to fathom the level of stress and demands that I had to endure.”
Someone somewhere on the table snickered.
Oh my, what a colossal prick. I clenched my fork tightly. “You’re right.” I smiled. “We have absolutely nothing to talk about.”
“What did you study, anyhow?” he asked.
“Economic and Business,” I replied.
“Why did you waste your time and money on that?” he scoffed. “Those degrees are totally useless. Either you are business minded or not. You can’t teach anyone to be an entrepreneur.”
I hated to admit it, but he was right. My degree was useless. Those Saturday classes were by far more useful to me.
“It’s a great thing then,” he continued, thankfully his voice had dialed down to normal, “you won’t be searching for a job with that dead-duck degree. A comfortable position should be waiting for you at one of our family’s companies.”
I gritted my teeth and tried to steer him away from the topic of me. “What did you study?”
“I got an MBA,” he responded proudly. “It takes much more than common sense to manage the spread of businesses that our families run, so I couldn’t just choose blindly.”
The waiters came once again to retrieve our bowls and cutlery in preparation for the next course.
The moment the waiters walked away, he continued, “All is not lost though. The most important thing anyway is that you have an education. With that, you should be able to handle yourself in the years to come.”
Thanks for that, Fabio. Very magnanimous of you. Seared duck breast with creamy potato dauphinoise and caramelized chicory was placed in front of me. I used the distraction as a valid reason for ignoring him, however he wasn’t finished.
As he droned on, I stabbed my fork into the duck breast. I would never know how I sat through the rest of the meal, but by the time dessert arrived, I didn't even want to look at it. Which was a tragedy because the golden opulence sundae with its bean ice cream, gold dragnets, Drambuie soaked cherries, and truffles was absolutely gorgeous. I took a few mouthfuls while he enthused about something else he had accomplished.
As soon as my grandmother rose, I too got to my feet, and escaped from Fabio’s braying voice.
Chapter 7
Sienna
I couldn’t however completely disappear, since the party was in my honor, so I made my way to the balcony overlooking the gardens. Thankfully, I was the only one there as the rest of our party had moved out of the house and spread out around the pool.
From where I stood, I could take it all in; the gentle breeze of the evening, the fire-eater, and the live Italian music which some of the guests were dancing to.
This was the perfect spot for me. I wasn’t in the midst of the action, but at the same time, I wasn’t too far away from it either, and this, I had come to realize, was my preference for the most part. I enjoyed solitude in big doses, and I suspected it was because I was an only child. My mother suffered a great deal during her pregnancy. She spent nearly five months in bed. So after I was born, the doctors told her having another child would not be a good idea. My mother wanted to try again because she was afraid my father might stray, but my father wouldn’t hear of it. To prove he didn’t want another child, he went and got himself a vasectomy.
Perhaps if I had been surrounded by siblings, I would have been a different kind of person.
It made me think of the handful of people I had come to call family back in England. Charlotte, Danny, and Christine. Christine’s family also lived in Los Angeles, and she had returned home just as I had. We had both been busy settling in in the last few days, but we had agreed to call each other and plan some sort of meet up.