Lino is unable to return to work and becomes a stay at home dad, while Amy is working long hours to provide for their family, including their adopted daughter Idalia. As I left the Ponte Vecchio toward home, I rode past the corner of Borgo San Frediano and Piazza del Carmine, and I looked up at the church across from my apartment. It boasts a fresco believed to be the first known work of the teenage Michelangelo. Firsts are no small things, firsts hold the beginning of something great. I suspected I had just fallen for a bicycle thief chef: and as clichéd as it might sound, it was love at first bite. Over the years, Lino writes his recipes and precious moments in a notebook which he can pass on to his daughter, like his mother did for him.

How do you know?” Lindsey asked with a wink. She was forever suggesting that Italian men had a predilection for danger. The idea of it thrilled her. Eccola, Tembi! Un’amica americana.” Then she gave me a dramatic kiss on the cheek, pivoted, and left me. Were people doing tiny lines of coke off a farmhouse coffee table? This story had been swelling in my heart for years. Some of it even before Saro passed. I understood that there were aspects of our love story that were rare and beautiful. However, three years after his passing I was seated in Sicily with Zoela and across from us was Nonna. We were at the dinner table at the end of what had been like the perfect summer day. And I had a thought: How did we get here, especially given where we started AND given that the only person connecting us is gone? That question felt like the makings of a book. Yet it was another two years, actually the fifth anniversary of his passing, before I felt ready to write it. I needed to build up my bravery to tell the story. Two months later, Sloane found me scrubbing the toilet in her bar, No Entry. It was in the heart of Florence’s historic center, near Piazza Santa Croce and a stone’s throw from the Arno. As was typical, she had dropped by in the afternoon and found me, scrub brush in hand, Billie Holiday mix tape on the boom box. My friend had by then become my boss, so I was cleaning the place. Despite my early promises of discipline, in six weeks I had blown through a semester’s worth of spending cash. It had disappeared in the form of belts, purses, dinners, and weekend trips to Rome and Stromboli. I was broke but refused to ask my parents for more. As a result, I cleaned toilets at No Entry off the books, before or after my classes.I keep notes, I journal, and I use photographs and music to jump-start a writing session. I write in both spurts and longer periods of time, but rarely more than three hours of continuous writing at once. For me, small is big. Meaning short sessions often add up to a large output. And I write anywhere and everywhere. Seriously. I wish I could say I have a fixed place and set time, but my life doesn't look like that. I’ve written in parking lots. HA! However, occasionally I will go away for two-to-three days at a time, just me, and do a deep dive into the story. Those times are my favorite and keep me feeling sane as I work to finish a complete draft. Nice to meet you both.” Saro shook my father’s hand and gave Aubrey a hug. “I was thinking we should have dinner together tonight. I’ve made arrangements at my restaurant.” Amy leaves her home in Texas and halts her law degree to pursue her passion for art, which takes her to Florence, Italy for a semester. Amy proposes to Lino and they plan to marry where they met in Florence, but Lino’s father makes a point of not coming and forbids Lino’s mother, sister and niece from attending.

Huey, who remains close to both sisters and attended that idyllic Italian wedding, remembers Tembi as the most popular girl at Alief Hastings High School, a star of the school’s theater program. Attica was a freshman when Tembi was a senior, but they related to each other as peers. Netflix's "From Scratch" Is Based On A True Story, And Here's Everything You Need To Know About The Real Couple He led the way, and the gust of wintry air that greeted me on the other side of the door sobered me instantly. I batted my eyes to buffer against the wind. Suddenly everything seemed harsh and in sharp focus. Shadows were elongated by the amber streetlight above. And there, just outside the door, leaning against the massive stone wall, was a bicycle. It was candy apple red with a basket and bell.This kind of shared experience kept the sisters tight. Living through Saro’s illness and death only brought them closer together. Now, telling that story together, for potentially millions to see, only makes sense.

However, three years after his passing I was seated in Sicily with Zoela and across from us was Nonna. We were at the dinner table at the end of what had been like the perfect summer day. And I had a thought:How did we get here, especially given where we started AND given that the only person connecting us is gone?That question felt like the makings of a book. Yet it was the fifth anniversary of his passing, before I felt ready to write it." It wasn’t always easy, especially for the young immigrant. But they knew how to grind. They worked hard. And they had each other. They also had a fairy-tale wedding in a villa overlooking Florence. He's the subject of a new ITV documentary, and viewers want to know what happened to the bigamist after he was caught I felt gushy inside, flush with liquor and excitement. My pant leg caught the pedal as I tried to mount the bike. I was in no position to refuse. The rush of adrenaline and liquor in equal measure told me so.They’ve had this amazing sisterly love and friendship and respect always, even when we were children,” Huey said. “I could see how it would be easy for a younger sibling to get lost in the older sibling’s shadow. But Attica would never have allowed that to happen, and Tembi would never have allowed that to happen.” However, the father and son bump into each other at a market, but the rift remains as his father drives off. Love, as a lasting thing, was a concept that was elusive to me. My parents separated when I was seven, divorced by the time I was eight. My mother remarried when I was nine, my father when I was twelve. While I was in Florence, my mother was divorcing again after nearly twelve years with my stepfather. Throughout my childhood, I had lived in five different houses over the course of ten years. This parent’s house versus that parent’s house. Mom’s second house, Dad’s place as a new divorcé or the one he had as a newly remarried man with a child on the way. When my college friends talked about “going home,” they often referred to a specific place with a bedroom in which they had lost their first tooth or first sneaked a boy inside. That version of home was foreign to me. I didn’t have a fixed place to which I could attach memories. Sure, there had been houses, homes even, but they came with emotional caveats. I had had a kind of bifurcated childhood, trying to fit into whatever configuration of my parents’ life was presently in formation. It was common to my generation of baby boomers’ children. My parents, Sherra and Gene, were no different.

However, after struggling with a knee injury, Lino is diagnosed with a rare tissue cancer, leiomyosarcoma.

Just come outside, one moment. I want to make you a surprise.” English should always sound like this. I let him take my hand.