Carlo left Arabella that day and he shared a loving goodbye meal with his host family that evening.
He left Altamura the next day. He would never know what became of Arabella, if she ever married or had children. But he thought of her often.
He drove his rental car back to Bari, turned it in, and boarded a train for Rome. The hours rolled by as the train rumbled across the land, passing from the arid reaches of the Mezzogiorno to the more fertile landscape of central Italy.
Carlo arrived in Rome on the day before his flight back to the United States. He stayed at the same hotel he had used weeks before, and wandered off into the afternoon sunshine as he had done that day upon arriving in the Eternal City.
It"s true what Arabella and Gia said about Americans, Carlo thought. “We have so
