The next morning, still feeling the heat of Lauro’s magnetic touch on her skin, Celina bathed and dressed. After walking Marco to school, she slipped on a lightweight, sleeveless ivory sweater and a flared navy skirt with casual espadrilles. She twisted a twill scarf and wrapped it around her neck, tying the brightly colored silk in a side knot.
Sara had asked her to join her on the terrace this morning for latte and brioche. Though the days and evenings were growing cooler now, the sun was still warm on Celina’s shoulders as she strolled outside. Thankfully, Carmine had left, leaving the two of them alone.
“Buongiorno. I’m so glad you had time for me today.” Sara welcomed her with a casually studied look. Celina wondered what her mother-in-law had on her mind.
Could Sara sense the joy in her heart or the apprehension in her thoughts? Though yesterday with Lauro, in their hidden cove, had been the most glorious day she could recall in such a long time, her pulse thudded with warning.
Her mother-in-law wore a slim taupe dress with a wide black belt. A silk paisley scarf tied at the nape of her neck secured her glossy hair. Gold earrings dangled from her ears, and she’d draped a colorful Murano glass and pearl necklace around her neck. Even in her daily dress, Sara Savoia’s high standards were always evident.
“Since you’re here today, I thought you could help me sort through some of Nino’s old things,” Sara said in a friendly manner. “You might want to keep a few mementos for Marco.”
“Thanks, I’d like to help.”
Celina was relieved that she was back in Sara’s good grace. As she followed her through the villa, she thought about all she was thankful for. After Tony’s death, when her life was the darkest she could imagine, reaching out to his family had changed her life. What began with a long-distance telephone call led her to a new family and rekindled her heart.
Since her mother was gone, Celina had welcomed the relationship with her mother-in-law. As with any relationship, occasional disagreements were normal, but she felt close to Sara. She would talk to her about the situation with Lauro and Carmine.
Her father-in-law was different. Carmine was the patriarch of the family, the oldest son of his father, who had been the oldest son in his family. Head of the family conglomerate, who employed his son and nephews in businesses his great-grandfather had founded. A man others in the family turned to for advice and assistance. A man unaccustomed to having his decisions challenged.
Could Sara help them, or would the cost to her be too high?
Sara led her into a bedroom Celina had never been in before and opened an armoire.
“For a long time I kept his room just the way it had been when Nino left, thinking that he would return soon.” Sara smiled wistfully as she ran her hand over an old jacket. “Recently, Matilde and I found some items that she had packed away.”
“Like the wooden train set.” Celina smiled, feeling the tension between them dissolving.
“One of Nino’s favorite toys when he was young. My father carved it for him. It makes us so happy to see Marco playing with it.”
Sara brought out a box of painted blocks. “Marco would probably like these, too.”
Celina picked up a worn blue block and rotated it. The initials A.C.S. were crudely carved into one side. “He’ll be so excited to see these. Anything that belonged to his father he cherishes.”
For weeks after Tony died, Marco had slept with a soft, worn flannel shirt that had been one of his father’s favorites. Tony’s scent clung to the fabric for months. Tracing the block’s worn edges, she said, “Just knowing that his dad played with these blocks will make him feel closer to him.”
Sara furrowed her brow and gave her a sad smile. “I can imagine how he feels. These toys are a substitute for a relationship that’s gone. My grandmother once complained that if we live long enough, we lose most of those closest to us. She called it the curse of old age. I learned that unless one wants to be alone, one has to build new bridges in life.”
Celina detected a deeper meaning in Sara’s words. “I built a bridge clear to Italy.”
“And I’ll help you finish that bridge. Any way I can.” She pressed her cheek against Celina’s. “We are so blessed to have you and Marco. You have no idea what that means to us.”
Celina sank into a brocade chair. Carmine adored Marco, but she wondered if his acceptance of her had waned. “Sara, do you think your husband will have a change of heart about Lauro and me?”
“Circumstances might soon change,” Sara said, cryptically dismissing the question with a wave of her hand.
Before Celina could ask what she meant, Sara brought out a finely grained wooden box, set it on a desk, and lifted the lid. The slightly sweet scent of olive wood was still apparent. “This is some of Nino’s old schoolwork from primary school. And drawings and watercolors.”
“That must be why Marco likes to draw.”
Sara gave her a sad smile.
Celina lifted a yellowed paper from the box. “His penmanship was—” She stopped. She was going to say different. But of course it was. He was a child then.
The letters were straight up and down, lacking the exaggerated right slant to his adult writing. Some letters even tilted a little to the left. The writing was smudged. As she studied it, a dull throbbing began in her head.
Flipping through the pages, she stopped at another piece of paper with strange writing that she couldn’t make out. “What’s this? It looks reversed.”
Sara took the paper from her and smiled. “That’s mirror writing. Sometimes he did that when he was a young boy.”
“Why?” Celina raised a quizzical eyebrow.
“Some left-handed people can do that.” Sara chuckled at a memory. “We always had to be careful where we placed him at the table. When Nino and Lauro were young, they often fought over bumping elbows.”
While Celina studied the page, she felt Sara’s eyes on her, almost as though she expected her to comment. A sinking feeling gathered in her chest. Tony often bragged that he was ambidextrous, although he wrote only with his right hand. Could he have switched because of an injury? Surely that was it.
She flipped to a typewritten page. “And this?”
“An essay from a summer study program he attended in London. Nino excelled at many things.”
As Celina stared at the essay, an uneasy feeling crept over her. The text was so…eloquent. That was not a word she would’ve used to describe Tony, although he was smart. He knew a lot of Latin names of medicines she’d never heard of. “He liked science,” she said. “And medicine.”
Sara looked at her with a strange expression. “Why yes, he did. He studied biology in Rome, preparing for medical school.”
That fit. Celina breathed easier.
However, the fact that she was relieved made her even more anxious. Wasn’t she sure of who her husband had been? Surreptitiously, she pressed her fingers against a temple to conceal a throbbing vein.
Sara turned her attention to the wardrobe. “Would you like any of Tony’s clothes?” She brought out a finely tailored pair of musty-smelling, light wool trousers.
Admiring the exquisite fabric, Celina reached out to run her hand down the long length of the legs. “He must not have had a chance to wear these.”
“Why do you say that?”
Celina laughed. “Because I spent hours hemming his trousers. He was long in the torso, but he always complained about his comparatively short legs. I hope Marco inherits my family’s longer legs.”
“These fit him perfectly,” Sara said softly.
Celina took them from her. She stretched a trouser leg along her arm from her fingertips to her chin, measuring. “No, that’s impossible. These must have been Lauro’s. They look about the right length for him.”
“That’s because they wore the same size.”
“Maybe his injuries…”
Sara continued to stare at her as if she were waiting.
Waiting for what?
Celina’s headache intensified. Feeling suddenly light-headed, she lowered herself onto the chair next to the desk. She stared at the trousers crumpled in her lap, then at the written pages in the box. Passing her hands over her face, she felt as if her carefully constructed world was crumbling.
Sara rested her hand on Celina’s shoulder a moment before stepping into the hallway and calling for Matilde.
Celina couldn’t hear them speaking in the hallway. Blinking, she had a wild, unbridled urge to find something that had belonged to Tony that would be familiar to her.
There, under the papers she’d looked at, was a worn, leather-bound journal embossed with her husband’s name. Antonino Cesarò Savoia. With trepidation, she lifted it out and opened it.
The handwriting was in the same strange style, and the entries were written in Italian. Focusing her mind, she began to translate the first entry. In the past few months since committing to spending a year here, she’d been studying the language. Her reading comprehension was far better than her conversational skills. Dissecting the slightly smudged script, she began reading.
20 April 1937, Venezuela – Papa asked that I accompany him on his tour of South America this year. He knows how much I want to travel and see worlds different from our own. Here, farmers produce the most exquisite cacao varieties, Criollo and Porcelana. One day, armed with a machete, I helped harvest pods. Incredibly, some trees are more than one hundred years old. The beans ferment in wooden cases for only a few days to protect the delicate flavor. After the beans dry in the sun, they are inspected for quality, and then shipped to our factory in Naples. Tomorrow we will embark for Ecuador.
Fascinated with the story, Celina flipped through the pages and ran her finger down to other handwritten entries. She had never seen live cacao trees, and could only imagine what an enthralling journey this must have been.
12 May 1937, Ecuador – Thus far, it has been fascinating to understand the farming and processing, to meet the farmers who produce our beans, and to learn more about Theobroma Cacao, the tree that produces what the indigenous people here call the “food of the gods.” We met a fine man from Germany who facilitates this process by writing contracts with many of the local farmers and cooperatives to guarantee prices for their crops.
In the wild jungle, I have found myself strangely more at home than in Italy. After examining the cacao trees here, I talked to farmers about how they avoided and treated plant diseases. They also use many plants that are foreign to us for healing.
Celina could imagine the trip her husband had been on, but why hadn’t he ever mentioned it? Particularly knowing how much it would have meant to her. She lifted the journal to continue reading.
30 May 1938, Peru – After a long, arduous journey, Papa led me to a community of cacao farmers in the Andean highlands of Peru where we found excellent, robust Trinitario trees growing on the mountain. What a magical, mercurial part of the world, with a mighty river and majestic mountains that rival the Alps. In the Marañón Canyon, a man could get lost from the world and never found.
Papa told me the story of a rare cacao tree that he fears has become extinct. About twenty years ago, aggressive hemibiotrophic fungi swept through this area, claiming the most delicate and flavorful cacao trees that produced the rare white beans and nearly destroying the cocoa production. Called la Escoba de Bruja, or Witches’ Broom, the disease devastated the beans that gave us chocolate with delicate, complex floral aromas and mellow flavors. Alas, we found no sign of survivors.
As in Ecuador, I spent more time with the indigenous people learning about their healing methods than Papa preferred. I also shared ideas from our culture and found the people quite receptive. To me, medicine is more intriguing than cacao beans and chocolate, but as the oldest son, Papa expects me to learn the family business. He has allowed me to study biology because of our business interests, but my heart longs to practice medicine and explore the world, not be tied to a life toiling in commerce. Lauro is much better suited to the family business. If only Papa could see that.
Celina pressed her hand to her mouth. The words wavered and swam before her eyes, taunting her with their veracity. She scanned the journal pages, which included observations and drawings of local plants and the medicinal uses. But in scrutinizing the entries, one aspect of the writing mocked everything she had ever believed, and she could no longer discount it.
Sara’s footsteps seemed muffled on the stone floor even before she reached the fine woven rug. She eased herself into another brocade chair next to Celina.
“I see you found Nino’s journal,” Sara said. “I hoped you would find it interesting.”
Celina raked her teeth over her bottom lip and shook her head. “The handwriting…” Even her ability to speak faltered. The writing was a more mature version of his school boy’s style with its slight left-leaning script.
It was nothing like her husband’s handwriting.
Sara nodded and waited.
“This writing…those trousers…” Celina shook her head, piecing together the clues she’d tried to avoid for so long. “You said Tony spoke Spanish.”
“Beautifully.”
Blinking back hot tears of frustration, Celina went on. “My husband spoke Italian with some broken Spanish to the Mexicans in Santa Monica and San Francisco, saying the languages were close enough for them to understand him.”
She was fluent in Spanish, having grown up in California, so she used to intervene, and they’d argue and laugh about it.
“Maybe he’d suffered some slight brain damage in the war,” Celina said, grasping for an excuse, though his technical knowledge of drug terms hadn’t dimmed.
Sara made no reply.
“His demeanor was so different than how you’ve described him.” Sucking in a breath, Celina covered her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut.
It couldn’t be.
Yet the facts remained. And they’d been there all along.