Chapter 195

“Come on, you sad thing,” Frankie murmurs, petting my head and making me look up at him as I laugh. “Let’s go have a drink by the river.”

“I’m not sad!” I protest, laughing still. “Just – overwhelmed and…tired and…it’s so beautiful here and…”

“And maybe a little sad?”

I shake my head no, still smiling, but the way he looks at me lets me know that he sees right through me. But he doesn’t address it - just nods to me, and takes my hand, and slowly we make our way down through the Porto streets and a few sets of very adorable stairs down to the river’s edge.

The entire time that we walk my head just swivels around as I look at everything, drinking in the sights and the sounds of this beautiful city that is so foreign to me. Luckily, Frankie takes charge and makes sure I don’t fall or bump into anyone as he leads me along, and then across a street to where there are little tables set up on a stone patio so close to the rivers edge that I can see the water lapping at the stones.

Frankie sits down at the table, gesturing to the waiter to let him know that we’re here, but I hesitate. “Frankie,” I say, looking around. “It’s so fancy here – can we afford this?”

He grins at me. “Just because it’s beautiful doesn’t mean that it’s fancy, Bambs – it’s just a little riverside café. And we have a couple hundred bucks left –“

“We do?” I ask, my eyes going wide.

“And technically it’s your money,” he says with a shrug. “So, if you say we can afford ten euros for drinks and snacks while we plan out our fugitive lives –“

“It’s that cheap?” I ask, my eyes going wide, immediately sitting down.

He just laughs at me, again good-heartedly, and when the waiter comes over he orders Vinho Verde – whatever that is – and some French fries. When he turns back to me, my head is already cocked to the side.

“Do they speak English here?” I ask, completely swept away in my curiosity as I settle back in my chair.

“Portuguese is the national language,” he says, smiling at me, I think excited to be able to show me all this. “But a lot of people – especially in big cities like this, where there are tourists – speak English too.”

“Lucky,” I say, but before I can open my mouth to ask another question the waiter comes back over with a bottle of wine and two glasses.

“Wine!?” I gasp, staring at Frankie and bursting into laughter. “Frank, it’s – is it even noon!?”

“It’s Europe, baby,” he says, giving a wink and pouring me a glass of lovely, sparkly wine before he pours his own. “Get used to it.”

“No way,” I say, laughing a little even as I eagerly take my glass. “No way they live like this.”

“Just weekends, holidays,” he says with a sigh, raising his glass to mine and clinking them together. “Days when they blow up their entire lives and need a little refreshment after they sneak through customs.”

I can’t help it then, I laugh so hard for a minute that I can barely taste my wine. But when my laughter fades I take a long, deep sip and relish the sharp, citrus and apple taste, the light effervescence that I’m not sure I’ve experienced in a wine before.

“You like it?” Frankie asks, still beaming at me when I put my glass back on the table.

“I love it,” I say with a sigh, looking around. “Love the wine, love all of it. Thank you, Frank – for…doing all of this. For me.”

“For me too,” he says with a shrug, looking around. “Like I said, Bambs, I think…I’ve been looking for a way out too. Maybe for longer than I thought.”

“Well, then,” I say, raising my glass again for another toast. “To our way out.”

He clinks his glass with mine, giving me a soft smile. “And to whatever comes next.”

My stomach twists with anticipation, butterflies welling in it, and I have to look away as I take a long, deep sip.

Because honestly, I’m not sure I’m really ready to think about what I want that to look like. I think I need to just take it step by step, for now.

And when I put my wine back down on the table, and lean forward as Frankie is doing, we begin to have a good, long chat about what those next steps should be.

We stay in Porto for two nights, getting used to the city and getting some basic supplies. Our money goes further than I thought it would, especially as we stay in a hostel that takes cash and doesn’t ask a lot of questions. But after a few days of Frankie asking questions and me stocking us up on some basic supplies – toiletries, a few changes of clothes – we head out of the city, eager to get into some less explored regions where we couldn’t be as easily spotted, should the Romanos come looking for us.

The morning of the third day, we head out of the city in the back of a farmer’s pickup truck, though to my pleasure this time our presence is invited and welcomed, not illicit, which means that I’m able to peer through the high slats that he’s constructed around the bed of the truck to see the beautiful countryside as it passes.

What I see takes my breath away – every acre of green country spreading all the way to the horizon as we move away from the city and out into the hills – out into wine country, apparently, where Frankie thinks we’ll be able to trade some work for a place to stay.

Frankie stays close beside me as we ride, a protective arm loose around my waist as I sit on a crate in the back just peering out the side of the truck, the wind whipping through my hair as we go, just…completely unable to take my eyes from the landscape. I laugh a little when we go through a tunnel, looking down at Frankie in the darkness as he smiles up at me.

And I smile back, because even if the wind and the sound of the highway is too loud for us to talk, we don’t need to. I know that we’re both just…so happy with this new world we’ve chosen, with the adventure laid out before us.

We talked about it, of course, in the two nights in Porto, pushing our little twin-sized cots close together in the hostel room and whispering our plans. He asked me if I was all right with it – with a quiet life, for now, that’s based in labor, getting paid under the table if at all, resting quietly in a place where we won’t be noticed while the Romanos, assuredly, continue their search. He told me that it would be a simple life – not at all what we had grown used to in the time when we’d lived in Romano quarters.

And I had beamed at him, telling him that’s precisely what I want.

The farmer lets us out of the truck about three hours from the city, pointing up a dirt road and speaking in some halted English to Frankie about whatever it is they’d discussed before – a vineyard, apparently, and work to be had if we’re looking.

Frankie slips him some money – our dollars long exchanged into Euros, of course – and then he turns to me as the farmer drives away.

“What’s this?” I ask, taking Frankie’s hand as he holds it out to me.

“A family vineyard, apparently,” Frankie says as we start up the road, the backpack on his shoulders our only luggage. “Beautiful land, apparently, and good grapes – but it’s gone a bit to crap now that the patriarch is gone and the mother is getting older. One of her sons is back now after years in business and that farmer seems to think he’d look well upon two people who want to work hard in exchange for quiet keep. What do you think?”

I grimace a little. “Do we want to be getting involved again in a family business?” I ask, worried.

Frankie laughs and tugs me forward. “Don’t worry, Bambs,” he says. “Not that kind of family.”

And I laugh too and follow him eagerly up the road.