Gabardi Three

 Progress.

I have a beginning (written) and a sort of plot, but being a pantser, I will await to see how it unfolds.

In the meantime, here is an excerpt from the beginning of the story.

ALBERTO GABARDI, FOR as long as he could remember, had always felt in awe of his father, Salvatore. It surprised him that he still did.

For a start, he had surpassed his father’s six foot two by the time he’d turned seventeen although to be fair, so had his brothers, Angelo and Alexi.

His father has always been a bear-like man, enhanced by thick hair that as a child had been black, but was now silvery white, but still, incredibly, seemed to have not thinned as much as Salvatore’s contemporaries. Even his beard, at times shaggy and seemingly unkempt and at others, neatly trimmed, just added to the prestige of Salvatore Gabardi. Added to that aura around him that said he didn’t suffer fools.

Although that wasn’t true.

Salvatore had lived long enough to know that if you were in in a room filled with fools, then the head fool was the one you saw in the mirror. He was at times a hard man, a ruthless man, but he was also a loving man and a fair man.

How he was going to react to what his youngest son was about to propose, Alberto had no idea.

Alberto steadied himself as he pushed open the door leading to his father’s study. He had no need to knock. His father had nothing to hide.

As Alberto entered, he gave a wry grin at the site of his father relaxed on his chair, feet on his desk, fingers steepled as his father watched a re-run that was surely decades old of his beloved Italian football team.

The comfort watch.

His mother used to talk of the comfort read. That time you picked up a book you adored and could sink into, knowing the end but become absorbed in the words, in the story, in the characters. Alberto had learnt that it also meant that perhaps things weren’t going right if you had to calm yourself down by escaping into a football match you had seen over and over and over again.

Salvatore glanced over at him, then reached for the remote and switched off the game.

“Is everything alright, Father” Alberto asked as he took a seat and relaxed into it, even though his body was tight. Alberto’s mind might think his proposal was going to go down to well, but clearly his body was having doubts.

He gestured to the screen.

Salvatore sighed, then rubbed his hands up and down his face.

“We were at that game,” he said.

“We?” Alberto began, then stopped.

He swallowed. “You and mother.”

Salvatore nodded and closed his eyes. “Yes. The two of us. It was a semi final match. Isobel wasn’t keen on football.”

“No,” Alberto remembered soberly. “She wasn’t. She wasn’t keen on any sport the way you were.”

Salvatore opened his eyes. “Which is why I’ve been working my way through the games the two of us went to. To show her.  To see if it jogs a memory.”

Alberto’s spirits lifted. “That’s why you’re watching?” he quizzed, relieved it meant his father wasn’t feeling in any other way low.

“Yes. That is exactly why. To see what she recalls. What memories it may bring back."

“That’s a wonderful idea, Father. Have you showed her anything yet?”

“Not yet. But then, we’ve been focusing on what things she loved, the things she enjoyed to bring back the memory.” He gave a slight grin. “She once said the only thing she liked about attending the football was because we were there together and there was no Gabardi Media, no demands on my time, no demands on her. It was as if for that time, no matter what was happening in the game, no matter how excited or depressed I was, that we could just be.” He let out a long, loaded sigh before he added, “we could just be.”

Alberto swallowed down the lump on his throat. Salvatore moved his feet from the desk, rose swiftly to his feet, then stalked across to the window looking out over the Tuscan valley.

The love Salvatore felt for Isobel had never changed. In the year since the accident that had seen her suffer a brain injury that had changed her, his love if anything had grown. He had softened. He had delegated as much as he could of his work. He had faith in his three sons to run the company. Here, with a staff of experts, he was devoting himself to his wife’s care and his wife’s rehabilitation.

He had never lost hope.

Salvatore suddenly turned around from the window, seemed to shake himself out of his reverie, and said, “And you, Alberto. You are enjoying your break before you head back to New York? You must be because I have barely seen you.”

“Ah, yes.” Alberto rose to his feet and crossed the floor to stand alongside his father.

In the distance was the steeple of the old church in the village. He suspected he knew more about that old church than anyone else.

He said, “Father, I have a proposal.”

His father brightened. “Good. Let’s hear it.”