What Italy Gave Me This Time

I went back to Italy recently.

I wasn’t sure it would hold up to memory, but of course it did. The mouth-watering bakeries where the smell of fresh-baked bread wafts into the street from an open door. Cobblestone streets that snicker at stiletto heels. Ancient churches with their walls of fresco and marble. Sophisticated Italians whose style appears so effortless seated at outdoor cafes sipping espresso and red wine. And the light there is unlike any other light I’ve ever seen — the way it arrives in the morning like it has somewhere important to be, then lingers in the afternoon as if it changed its mind.

I’ve been to Tuscany enough times now that certain things feel familiar. Driving down winding roads where two skinny cars play chicken. Where olive trees tip and bend under their silvery leaves. Where the sound of a tractor somewhere in the hills tips a hat to a farmer getting an early bird start before the rest of the world is awake. Where a simple meal of good bread and local wine can feel like the whole point of a day.

As wonderful as it was to reconnect with all the things that make Italy so special, something happened on this trip that I didn’t expect.

I found myself thinking about Lizzy and Ren and how my earlier trips to Italy had inspired me to write about them.

If you’ve read That Month in Tuscany, you know them. And if you know them, you’ve probably wondered — the way I have — what their life looks like now. Whether it held. Whether the love that found them in that complicated, beautiful summer was really strong enough to build a life on.

Sitting in a small restaurant one evening, watching the light go gold over the hills, I decided I needed to find out.

So I wrote it.

An epilogue. Five years later. I won’t say more than that here. I’m sharing it first with my newsletter subscribers as an exclusive gift. But it reminded me why I write in the first place. Not for the finished book, but for the moment when a character becomes so real that you genuinely wonder what they’re doing right now.

Tuscany did that for me again. Brought back two characters I so enjoyed writing. Characters so many wonderful readers wrote to tell me they loved. That is part of the special magic of Italy for me. And always will be.

Inglath

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