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grandmother’s diaries, wasn’t sure she should or even wanted to, but now that Camilla’s life was hers, Holly hoped to find a secret or two hidden in the pages, something to make this new life feel more like hers—and something that would help her understand her own mother, from whom Holly was pulling further and further away. Her mother had lost her own mother, and though Holly had seen her crying at the funeral, her tears seemed less about her grief than about something else—the unbridgeable gulf between them, Holly thought. Luciana Maguire rarely talked about growing up on Blue Crab Island, except to say she’d been miserable there from her first memory.
    Holly had a feeling that if her grandmother hadn’t wantedher to read the diaries, they would not be front and center in the top drawer of her dresser when she clearly knew she was dying. She took the top notebook, with her grandmother’s beautiful handwriting, declaring: This notebook belongs to Camilla Constantina. She lay back in bed and opened the first notebook.
    August 1962
    Dear Diary,
    A few days ago I tacked the ad (LEARN TO COOK ITALIAN FOOD) in the large space between Annette Peterman’s call for a babysitter (the poor infant is colicky and no one responded to the ad, according to the proprietor, despite Annette’s willingness to pay three dollars an hour) and a black and white signed glossy photograph of President Kennedy. The bulletin board in the general store is also Blue Crab Island’s suggestion box and complaint bureau. Please lower your car radios when driving along Blue Crab Boulevard was one complaint. Someone is not picking up after their dog on Shelter Road was another. The poster of Kennedy is reassuring. Armando loved him, the first Catholic president of our new country. “You see,” he said, “we belong. ”
    But now he’s gone. A full year has passed since Armando died from a heart attack while pulling weeds from the garden. The grief counselor in Portland suggested I start a diary to help me get out my feelings, especially because I have so few people to talk to now. I was not interested in writing about my grief, but oddly enough, today, the very day I begin what feels like my third life (the first being Italy, the second with Armando in America, and the third as a widow with a child to raise), I bought this notebook from the general store here on Blue Crab Island. It’s amazing that just one month ago I woke with the notion to go to Blue Crab Island, where Armando and I rode bicycles along the bay one fine summer day. The feeling was so strong and I knew I was meant to go, meant to take Luciana, who is now five, to the Island, where there are no blue crabs, and there was the bungalow, this two-story apricot-colored gingerbread cottage at the far end of the main road, nestled against evergreens. I knew instantly it was meant to be our house. It’s small, just two bedrooms, and a bit run-down, but the kitchen is the biggest room in the house, and there’s a small backyard where I can grow herbs and vegetables.
    The moment I drove over the long bridge that connects Portland to Blue Crab Island, I felt my knowing come back. This past year without Armando, I woke up each morning with nothing more in my head, my heart, my bones, than what even my dear Luciana could plainly see: that I was grief-stricken. But we have been five years in America, in Portland, and I will be fine. That I know even without the help of my comfort stones. It was time to take Luciana out of that house of loss and into a house of beginning. Now, just one month later, the rooms are painted the cool shades of the Mediterranean, the kitchen is stocked and ready. And I am ready to give this newfangled idea a try, teaching a class in Italian cooking. I have a decent amount of money tucked away, but I want to try to earn my own living, to show Luciana that a woman can be enterprising.
    Today I had my first class. Four students. Four surprising students. They