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the same everywhere, but it always tasted a bit different. Salt cod was dried and preserved with salt. To prepare it, you had to soak it overnight to rehydrate it, and then cook like any other fish. This dish was more of a casserole, with chunks of cod and chouriço, olive oil, potatoes and sliced tomatoes cooked along with them. Topping the dish were wedges of hardboiled eggs and black olives.
    If Julia hadn’t gone to any Portuguese places, it was unlikely she’d had bacalhoada either. He broke off a chunk of potato and salt cod with his fork, swirling itthrough the olive oil. “Here, try this.” He offered her a taste, wondering if she’d accept.
    She looked at him cautiously with her big sherry-colored eyes. He smiled as meekly as he could manage, when all he wanted to do was toss their bowls aside and drag her into his arms.
    But none of that must have shown on his face because she delicately took the bite from his fork, chewing thoughtfully. “Um, very fishy.”
    He had to laugh. “Preserving the cod with salt concentrates its flavor.”
    â€œNo, it’s good. You know I like seafood.”
    â€œYes, you do.” They were both children of the ocean. She had made her mother’s New England clam chowder for him once, and he had practically finished the stockpot in one sitting.
    Julia ate steadily for a few minutes before speaking. “The villa doesn’t need much work, does it? I mean, you probably use it several times a year.”
    â€œMy mother and my sisters do. My nieces and nephews love fishing and exploring the island.” Frank speared an egg wedge. Probably laid fresh this morning in the family henhouse.
    â€œBut you don’t stay there.”
    â€œOnce in a while.” He’d tried to vacation there a few times, but seeing Julia’s shadow in every room had made his visits short and far between. “There are a couple rooms that need to be painted, some garden work done and a thorough cleaning and airing. Oh, and I bought a beautiful new outdoor whirlpool tub that was just installed yesterday.”
    She smiled. “Sounds like a wonderful place for your friend’s sister and her husband.”
    â€œStefania is a real sweetheart. Hard to believe she’s already twenty-four when I remember how little she was when she came to New York. Poor girl, losing both her parents at once.” Stefania had been inconsolable. Her grandmother, fearing for her granddaughter’s mental health, had sent Stefania to live with George, Jack and Frank. After hiring a housekeeper, the three nineteen-year-old guys raised Stefania through her preteen and teenage years. Frank shuddered at some of those memories.
    â€œWhat was that shiver for?” Julia was eating heartily now, wiping her bowl with some bread. He was glad to see that since she looked a bit thin.
    â€œStefania always has been a handful. She once chained herself and her electronic bullhorn to a lamp-post outside a certain foreign consulate whose country was not particularly kind to its women and children.”
    Julia burst out laughing.
    â€œShe called every media outlet in New York, drew a crowd of several hundred enthusiastic supporters and wound up on the national nightly news. When one reporter tried to take her to task for being the product of an outdated patriarchal monarchy, she told her how her own country had granted women the vote twenty years before America and how her outdated patriarchal monarchy had a female literacy rate of one hundred percent compared to that consulate’s country’s dismal rate of fourteen percent.”
    â€œGood for Stefania. Blasted them with facts. And what does she do now?”
    â€œShe’s finishing her master’s degree in international politics and will probably stay in New York sinceGeorge is running their own country very well. She’d let him know if he weren’t.”
    â€œYou have to keep politicians on