“Lauro’s wound must be treated,” Nino said, squatting while he washed his hands outside the cave after the rain had let up. “You need to take him to Lima.”
Celina shaded her eyes from the sun that was peeking from behind clouds. “You have to come with us. We came to find you, and Lauro won’t leave without you. ”
Squinting up at her, Nino shook his head. “I don’t go to Lima.”
“Why not?”
He looked at her as if she were missing an obvious point. “I haven’t left the Andes since I arrived.”
“Lauro needs you. He could have died.” Celina stared back him, incredulous at his lack of concern.
“He didn’t though.” Nino poured fresh mountain lake water over his hands.
“You brought him back from the edge of life. Not only with your medical attention but also with your love. That’s what he needs.”
“He has you, doesn’t he?”
“We came here for you.” How could he fail to understand the magnitude of what it had taken to find him? “And for your parents.”
Nino grew quiet and gazed out over the mountains. “How are they?”
She wished she could lie and tell him that they were ill and needed him right away. But Lauro needed him, too. “They’re in good health. They have missed you terribly, and there are holes in their hearts that only you can fill.”
Nino sighed, acknowledging this fact. “There was a woman,” he began.
Celina knelt beside him. “I know all about Isabella.”
“Then you know that I was responsible.”
“That’s not true. She made her choice. Each of us is responsible for our own actions.”
“All these years… I loved her, too, you know.”
“You left right after the accident?”
“Is that what they called it?” Before she could answer, he nodded. “Of course, so she could have a proper burial.”
With a faraway look in his eyes, he went on. “I was so destroyed that I couldn’t face our families. I was the cause of it all, you see. The day after her funeral, a friend drove me to Naples, where I took a train to Rome. The next day, I caught a flight to New York.”
“At least come for a visit.” She touched his shoulder with compassion. “Your parents will welcome you with so much love.”
Nino shook water from his hands and stood. “I can’t leave my work here.”
How was she ever going to convince him to go to Lima with Lauro or home to Italy? “What’s more important than your brother? Than your family?”
“My research into ancient healing methods is extremely important,” Nino argued. “Not only for the Andean dwellers but also for others who will benefit from my research. I’m not finished.”
“Then share what you have now. Even if your work is not complete, imagine how many could benefit from what you have so far. You saved your brother’s life with your skills.” And Lauro needed him still.
Gazing out over the mountains, Nino considered her words. “In the Andes grow plants with healing powers unlike any others I’ve seen. I found my destiny here.”
She grew more anxious. “By becoming a hermit and not sharing your findings with others? Ernesto told me you only treated the Quechua.”
“I didn’t want to be found. I felt safer that way, so I could dedicate myself to research and testing.”
“You saved Lauro’s life with your knowledge. Surely you can imagine that there are people out there who need what you know right now. You hold their future, their destiny, in your hands.” She opened her palms to him. “You hold Lauro’s fate, too. If you don’t help your brother off this mountain, I fear he’ll lose his will to live.”
When Nino didn’t reply, she said, “If you have the temerity to call yourself a doctor, then you will do what’s best for your patient.”
“I’m no doctor.”
“Ernesto called you el doctor de milagros.”
A corner of his mouth turned up. “His young daughter was gravely ill. I helped her, that’s all.”
“Then help your brother. Lauro risked death to find you. He still needs you.” Anxiety tightened her chest like a vise. She tried again. “Your parents are good people. Please don’t let them lose a second son.”
Nino turned toward the mouth of the cave. Finally, he nodded. “I will go with him.”
Relief coursed through her and left her weak with gratitude. “Mille grazie,” she said, brushing her cheeks against his.
When Nino told her he had to trek back to his home to retrieve his research and materials, she prayed he would return.
Thankfully, he did.
Celina was so grateful that Nino agreed to come with them. The return journey was fraught with difficulties, and their pace was slow. Lauro leaned on Nino for physical support much of the way. After expressing their appreciation to Ernesto and his men and handsomely compensating them for their assistance, Celina, Lauro, and Nino set off for Lima. Once they arrived in the city, Nino guided them to a modern clinic.
After Lauro described his accident and Nino relayed details about his treatment and condition, the medical staff began their examination. They were visibly impressed with how Nino had cared for his brother.
Physicians cleaned and dressed Lauro’s leg, and prescribed penicillin to ward off the possible return of the infection. “You saved his leg—and his life,” one doctor told Nino.
As soon as they found a telephone, Lauro called his parents to tell them the good news and put Nino on the line to talk to them. She could hear their jubilation over the phone. His parents’ joyous elation brought fresh tears to her eyes. Celina was so thankful they’d found Nino and that she’d fulfilled her promise. After a few minutes, Sara put Marco on the phone. Clutching the telephone receiver, Celina told him they’d be back soon and that she loved him very, very much.
To let Lauro rest, Celina contacted a travel agent who booked a return flight to Rome and found a hotel for them. Exhausted from their ordeal, Celina and Lauro checked in with Nino, and they all slept soundly. Upon rising, Celina savored a warm bath before she helped Lauro wash his hair and clean up without getting his bandages wet.
She dressed hastily in her lightweight gray suit and pumps, which now felt foreign after wearing mud boots and khaki pants for such a long time. Glancing at the clock on the dresser, she noticed they didn’t have long before their flight. “Is Nino ready? Did he call while I was in the bath?”
“Can’t reach him. Probably bathing, too. First bathtub he’s seen in years.” Lauro chuckled, but Celina could tell he was concerned.
Half an hour later, Celina knocked on his door. Growing worried, she checked with the front desk. To her dismay, he’d checked out early in the morning.
Nino had fulfilled his promise to help Lauro off the mountain and make the trip to Lima. He’d met with doctors and made sure Lauro received treatment. In his mind, he had executed his duty. Celina was furious that Nino had reneged on his promise to return with them. Didn’t he care about the family that had risked so much to find him?
Celina marched back to their hotel room in a haze of anger and disappointment. How would Lauro take this, and how would it affect him?
As soon as she opened the door, Lauro looked up. “He’s gone, isn’t he?”
Celina nodded and went to him. “I don’t know what happened. Nino assured me he would return with us. He’d even brought his research material.”
Crestfallen, Lauro stared from the window. “Last time he left, it wasn’t only because he couldn’t bear to face our parents or me after Isabella died.” He grimaced. “I sent him away. I was to blame, and I regret that.”
“You were both angry and hurt, but that’s all in the past.”
He ran a hand through his still damp hair. “Maybe he’s been here too long.”
Celina drummed her fingers, anxiously wondering where he could have gone. “We haven’t much time before the flight. Soon we’ll have to go without him.”
Furrowing his brow, he shoved his hands into his trouser pockets. “We can wait a little longer.”
The clock beside the bed ticked, marking the minutes until finally, Celina ceded defeat. She picked up her purse in resignation and went to Lauro. Smoothing her arm around his shoulders, she felt the tension in his body.
“We should go.” She spoke as gently as she could. “We’ll leave word at the front desk. Maybe he’ll meet us at the airport.” Hoping against the odds, she clutched his hands in hers, knowing that his sorrow was even greater than hers.
“Well, we gave it all we had, didn’t we?” Lauro said, blinking back his heartache. “I’ll tell Papa how wonderful you were. I wouldn’t be coming home if it weren’t for you. Or Nino.” He heaved a sigh and limped toward the door. “Let’s go.”
“Wait, I forgot my hairbrush.” She had just stepped into the bathroom when a knock sounded at the door. Please let it be Nino.
Lauro let out a whoop and a whistle. “Celina, you’re not going to believe this.”
She snatched the brush and raced from the bathroom.
A different version of Nino stood before them—freshly shaven, hair trimmed, new suit. Lauro hugged him and led him inside.
“We were beginning to think you’d changed your mind,” Lauro said, visibly relieved.
“I promised your wife I’d be on that plane,” Nino said. “I couldn’t go looking like I did.”
Celina and Lauro exchanged glances. “We’re not married.”
Nino looked baffled. “At the front desk, you gave your name as Savoia. Are you related to our family?”
Celina shot Lauro a look. That question remained to be answered.
“She is,” Lauro replied with confidence. He placed his hand on Nino’s shoulder. “I have to say, you look really nice. A lot like the older brother I always admired.”
A corner of Nino’s mouth tugged up. “He changed a lot.”
“We all did, brother.”
Nino caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. He looked slightly startled, as if encountering a stranger. Ill at ease, he loosened his tie, tugged his pants legs, and adjusted the lapel on his sports coat. “Haven’t worn clothes like these in years.”
Gazing at Nino in the mirror, Celina blinked at his familiarity. The clean-shaven face now fit the voice that had seemed vaguely familiar in the cave. As she stared at him, an old memory sparked to life. Doc. She gave him a warm smile. “Suits you, Doc. Even more than your old uniform.”
Nino gave her a long look. “No one has called me that in years.”
“You were in San Francisco after the war.” Celina smiled. He’d never asked how they had located him. Nino was older and leaner than the man who had visited her, but now he looked much the same.
Nino narrowed his eyes in thought. “Have you ever made truffles?”
“At a little chocolaterie called La Petite Maison du Chocolat.”
His eyes lit at the memory. “Raspberry infused, dark chocolate ganache. One of the best truffles I’d ever tasted.”
Lauro was looking between them now, still mystified by their connection.
“The last day you visited the shop, you had a friend named Tony with you.”
“I had just met him that day.” Nino shook his head at the old memory. “Befriended him, showed him my favorite places, offered him a place to sleep.”
Celina quirked an eyebrow. “He stole something from you, didn’t he?”
“My military identification and dog tags,” Nino said with surprise. “To his credit, he was a thief with a conscience. He didn’t touch my cash or passport. And he left a Saint Christopher’s necklace. That one,” he added, pointing to the silver medallion that Lauro now wore.
Lauro clapped a hand to his forehead in amazement.
“How do you know about this?” Nino asked, furrowing his brow.
“He went by the name of Tony Savoia,” Celina said. “And we married a few months after you left.”
Nino rubbed his smooth chin. “So that’s how you became a Savoia.” Pointing between Lauro and Celina, he asked, “But how did you meet?”
“Tony died,” Celina said. “Almost a year ago now. He never told me what he had done. While we were married, he refused to talk about his family, although once, early on, the connection with Cioccolata Savoia came up in discussion.”
“I’m sorry to hear about your husband.” Nino tapped his temple, recalling the night. “At dinner, he asked about you, and we talked a lot about chocolate. I must have told him about our family.”
The final puzzle pieces were shifting into place in her mind. “My husband suffered a heart attack and died. So I contacted his family, or who I thought was his family, to let them know he’d died. And that he had a son.” She glanced down, fidgeting with her fingernails. “I didn’t know I had been living a lie.”
At that, Lauro put his arm around her. “You didn’t know, and it wasn’t your fault.”
Celina nodded and turned back to Nino. “It wasn’t until your mother showed me your journal of your trip to South America that I realized Tony wasn’t the son they had lost. Your handwriting was so different from my husband’s. And he wasn’t left-handed.”
“That must have been a shock,” Nino said, his voice rich with empathy.
“It was, but your mother had figured it out, too.” She quickly told him about the strawberry allergy and the clues she pieced together from Tony’s uncle with Nino’s journal.
The corner of Nino’s mouth twitched with a grin. “And then you and my brother fell in love.”
Lauro kissed Celina and checked his watch. “We’ll tell you about that on the way to the airport. We have to hurry now.”
“Mommy!” As soon as Marco spied his mother at the Rome airport, he broke loose from Sara and Carmine and launched himself at Celina.
Having cleared customs, she raced toward him, catching him and whirling him around. At turns laughing and crying, Celina rocked her son tightly in her arms, reveling in his sweet little boy scent that she had missed so much and, at one point in the cave, feared she might never know again.
“How I’ve missed you, my sweet little prince.” She peppered his face with kisses, marveling that his little heart was pounding even faster than hers.
Sara and Carmine hurried behind him, and Celina stood to hug Sara, whose eyes were rimmed with tears. “I cannot thank you enough for looking after Marco.”
Sara was shaking so with nervous anticipation, Celina thought she might collapse in her arms. “Are both of my boys with you?”
With her arm around Sara to support her, Celina turned around. Sara stifled a cry.
Through the crowd, Lauro appeared, still limping from his excruciating ordeal and leaning on the lanky man beside him.
As Nino and Lauro approached their parents, Celina could feel love vibrating between them all. They were oblivious to the travelers who raced around them.
Nino wrapped his arms first around Sara, and then he greeted his father. Carmine—the powerful head of their family—broke down in Nino’s embrace, his shoulders heaving with emotional relief.
Celina smiled through her tears. A son, returned from the dead. They had mourned Nino only a few months ago.
Hope.
As she watched the family reunite after enduring so many years of tragedy and uncertainty, Celina marveled over the power of hope.
Hope had driven her to contact the Savoias after Tony’s death—the hope of connecting with a beloved family for her son’s sake. Hope had driven her in California as she searched for clues to Tony’s motives. And hope had sustained her and Lauro in the mountains, just when their circumstances could not have been more tenuous and dire.
Did she have the right to hope for a future with Lauro? On the mountain, Lauro had promised that if they made it down alive, nothing would keep them apart. He would defy his father’s mandate to be with the woman he loved.
As she stood watching the family come together after so many years of tragic separation, she suddenly knew the answer—though it was not the one she wanted. In searching the depths of her heart, she knew that no matter how much Lauro loved her, she could not—in good conscience—come between Sara and her son. For if Carmine continued to impose his decree against her due to her deception—however innocent it had been—Sara would suffer a rift in her marriage. In banishing them from his life, Sara would lose her relationship with Lauro. The woman had endured the traumatic loss of one son; Celina would not inflict such pain on her again. In being separated from Marco for even a short time, and not knowing if she would return, she could imagine the heartbreak. Sara’s would be multiplied by many years.
Celina couldn’t do it. Her humanity wouldn’t allow her to, not even to Carmine. No, if she had any decency left in her at all, she would march straight to the Pan American ticket agent and purchase two tickets for San Francisco. She knelt and hugged Marco, preparing herself to break this to her son, who would be devastated once again.
She heaved a great sigh. No matter which path she chose, someone would be hurt. But neither could she bear to return to the Savoia villa and see the family reunited, sharing food and wine and rejoicing, when she knew that she would have to break Lauro’s heart—and hers and Marco’s—by leaving.
Yet, glancing back she saw Lauro smile at her, a smile that rekindled the fuse of determination within her. She had come to love him more than she ever thought possible to love another. His smile held the hope for a better tomorrow.
She swung her gaze back to Sara and Carmine.
What parents, in looking at their children, have not felt hope encapsulated in the promise of their children? A hope often bound up in pride and duty.
Whatever the circumstances, one constant remained, and that was love.
Straightening her weary shoulders, she weighed her choices.
Today, she would choose love. Tomorrow, choices might be made for her, and she would have to accept those, but today, she would decide. And every day after that.
In the last year, she had earned the right to write the story of her future. Actually, she realized, the power had been within her reach all along.
Grasping Marco’s hand, she took her place beside Lauro.
Lauro brought them into his embrace and kissed them both on the cheeks. “Without you and your willpower, neither one of us would be here greeting our parents.”
Turning to his parents, Lauro motioned to his leg. “When Celina heard about the doctor de milagros, she was unwavering in her quest to find him.” With a smile playing on his lips toward Nino, he added, “Even when he refused to see me, she was unrelenting.”
“In fairness,” Nino said. “I didn’t know the injured was my brother.”
Lauro chuckled. “That was fortunate, because then I know he wouldn’t have seen me.”
Everyone laughed. Celina was happy to see the brotherly bond between Lauro and Nino developing again.
Gazing at the small gathering, Nino went on. “And Mamma, had it not been for you, sharing my journal with Celina, I would not be standing here today, asking for your forgiveness. And Papa’s, and Lauro’s.”
As the family embraced one another, Celina pressed her hand to her mouth, choking with joy. The fissures and wounds of the past seemed to heal right before her eyes.
Marco felt the love, too. He tugged on her skirt. “I love you, Mommy.”
Celina knelt to hug her son. “I love you, too, sweetie. Forever and ever.”
Watching them, Lauro smoothed his hand over her shoulder. “We all owe a debt to Celina. Her commitment to doing the right thing by contacting her husband’s family put the final act of this saga in motion. She did that not for herself, but for her son and his family.”
“To add to that,” Nino said, “I knew Celina’s husband in San Francisco. Although I didn’t know him long, he was an intelligent man of principles.” When Marco beamed up at him, he mussed his hair. “You can be very proud of your papa, son.”
“Thank you,” Celina said, grateful to Nino for sharing this with his family and Marco. Who would have thought that one chance meeting could have changed the course of so many lives for the better? Tony would be proud. She couldn’t think of a more fitting tribute to him. “He would have appreciated that,” she said. As well as the irony of it all. Tony had always liked a good story.
Sara grasped Celina’s hands in hers. “You saved Lauro’s life. And you brought Nino back to us. Had you never called us to tell us of your husband’s death, we would not have the joy of welcoming Nino home.” She kissed Celina on the cheeks. “Thank you for bringing my boys back to me.”
Carmine stood next to his wife, stroking his chin as he registered this information. In his eyes, Celina saw the depth of his love for his family. At this moment, she also saw his pliant heart, void of pride.
Celina could bring them all together right now. If she had the courage to act, she could bring happiness to Marco, Lauro, and Sara. Even Carmine. If she let fear or pride hobble her, the chance would pass, the opportunity forever gone.
Reaching out to Carmine, Celina kissed his cheek. “Stiamo tornando a casa anche noi.” We’re coming home, too.
With shoulders heaving with emotion, Carmine wrapped his arms around her. “Grazie mille,” he managed to say, before breaking down. When he’d recovered, he took her by the shoulders. “You are welcome in our family. I might be the last one to express that, but let me be the first to give you and Lauro my blessing for a long and happy life together.”
Celina kissed Carmine’s cheek, grateful for his acceptance, and understanding the selflessness it had taken for him to get there.
Love and courage. That was all it took to bridge a chasm of the heart.
As Lauro gathered her and Marco in his arms, Celina saw Sara fold her hands over her heart in gratitude.
“Let’s go home,” Lauro said.
Holding Lauro and Marco, Celina smiled. “We already are.”