We flew to Italy that night.
Enzo Roberts went to get dinner in town, giving me time to talk Luca into coming with me. I explained about my grandfather’s suicide and what I had learned at the Vital Records office. He must have sensed how much I needed him, but he also must have realized that if ever there would be a moment of reconciliation between us, this was it. When he presented the trip in this light to his father, Bob was more than happy to cover at the bar, as it meant giving us time to work things out. We packed a few essentials—pajamas, a few changes of clothes, toothbrushes—turned down the heat, locked the front door, and left everything behind.
At Teterboro Airport, a chartered plane waited on the tarmac. It was impossible to mask my astonishment at the whole thing—the car that ferried us out onto the airfield, the sleek, shining jet, the simplicity and ease of it all. It took all of ten minutes to board. We didn’t have to go through security. We didn’t wait in lines. There was no taking off of shoes and jackets. No uncomfortable pat-downs. We just showed up, walked up some steps into the plane, and that was that. This, I realized, was the world in which certain people lived, a place where those with money were exempt from the rules.
Once in my seat, a uniformed air hostess poured us each a glass of champagne—the Cristal 2008 label peeking out from behind her fingers—gave us each a bowl of cashews, and assured us that dinner would be served as soon as we were in the air. “But of course, if you’d like anything before then, please let me know.”
I leaned back into my huge leather reclining chair, wishing my mother were there. She would have loved the fancy champagne. My father had died in a car accident when I was nineteen, and while his death had been a painful shock, losing my mother had been harder. She had been diagnosed with throat and lung cancer when I was twenty-one, and had lived four more years, each year filled with a Ferris wheel of progress and reversals—she would climb to a state of remission only to fall back into the illness, as if taken down by a sinister gravity. The end was terrible, for her as well as for me. I raised my glass and, pushing aside my feelings about Rebecca and John, and everything else that had been left unsaid, made a silent toast to her.
I was on my second glass of champagne when a TSA agent stepped on board.
“What does he want?” I whispered to Luca, feeling my stomach sink. Surely, they were going to tell me that Enzo was a criminal, had entered the country illegally, and this would all be over.
“Passport control,” Enzo replied as he stood and headed to the front of the plane. “Let me take care of it.”
I watched Enzo, my face growing hot, sure we would be escorted off the plane any minute. But when the TSA agent asked for our passports, Enzo handed him three maroon booklets. The agent opened them up, glanced at me, then at the passport. I watched this interaction with my stomach in my throat, sick with the tension. But he didn’t seem to be finding anything wrong with the situation. He even asked Enzo what the weather was like in Turin.
“Have a nice trip,” the TSA agent said at last, giving the passports back to Enzo. Then he turned around and left.
“What just happened?” I asked, as Enzo sat across from me and picked up his glass of champagne. He handed me one of the passports. I opened it. My photograph stared back at me, and the name Alberta Isabelle Eleanor Vittoria Montebianco was typed out clearly on the page.
“Is this a fake?” I whispered.
“No, it is not a fake,” Enzo said, smiling slightly.
“But this is me,” I said, turning the passport to get a closer look at my picture. It definitely was me.
Nome: Alberta Isabelle Eleanor Vittoria Montebianco
Sesso: Donna
Luogo di nascita: Poughkeepsie, New York (USA)
Data di nascita: 20 Marzo 1988
Cittadinanza: Italiana
“Because of your ancestry, the Italian government recognizes you as an Italian citizen. We began the paperwork after we learned of your identity. The estate has some connections that proved useful to speed things up.” He gave Luca a passport. “We got a spousal citizenship for you.”
“Wow,” I said. And because I could hold the passport in my hand, see my photo, and read my name on the laminated page, for the first time since learning of my inheritance, I believed that all this life-changing business, this Alberta the countess stuff, was really happening.
We landed in Turin the next day. I knew nothing about Torino, and so Enzo explained that it was a northern industrial city in the Piedmont region, famous for the Fiat 500 and the ancient House of Savoy, of which I was (as it turned out) a distant relation.
A car picked us up at the airport and delivered us to a boutique hotel at the historic center of the city, where we were ushered up a wide marble staircase to a spacious, elegant suite. There was a king-sized bed, a plush carpet, a bathroom with more marble than a monument, and a balcony overlooking a narrow street filled with shops and cafés. I fell into a deep sleep the minute I climbed into bed, a bottomless, disoriented sleep without geography, and woke to fresh flowers on my night table, a bouquet of white roses that filled the air with a rarified fragrance, one that I would thereafter associate with privilege. Tucked into the flowers was a card from the manager: Welcome, Countess Montebianco. Please call my personal number if you should need anything at all.
I doubted we would. The place was incredible, so large I almost forgot that Luca was there, sleeping on the couch across the room. I told myself that I shouldn’t get too excited. We would meet the legal team, hear them out, and be on our way back home in a day or two. Even then, after having seen the DNA report, I was sure that there was a catch, something that would prove the whole thing to be a mistake.
I was still in my pajamas later that afternoon when a knock came at the door. Enzo Roberts, handsome and composed as ever, stood in the hallway. I stepped aside as he breezed into our room, all efficiency. He carried his briefcase, as usual, but in his other hand he had a fistful of shopping bags.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I stopped by a boutique down the way,” he said, gesturing to the bags. “Neither of you had time to pack properly. Try them on and let me know if they are acceptable.”
I peered into the bags and saw stacks of new clothes. It was true that we hadn’t packed much, only carry-on suitcases. There was a black silk dress, a pair of black suede boots, some brown wool trousers, a white silk blouse, and a charcoal suit jacket. I glanced at the price tags and almost choked. The dress alone cost more than my mortgage payment. And the charcoal suit jacket? It could have paid a good portion of my college tuition. Later, after I saw Italians walking in the streets near the hotel, I understood that the clothes were a necessary gift. What we had brought—a few sweaters, jeans, and tennis shoes—would be wildly out of place. If we were to go out wearing such attire, we would be visibly foreign. Enzo had bought the clothes in an effort to help us feel comfortable.
“This is beautiful,” I said, pulling the black silk dress from the first bag. I held the dress out at arm’s length. It was silk crepe with a low V in the front. The tag read size 46, the Italian equivalent to size 10. “Looks like it will fit.”
He looked me over with an appreciative gaze. “I have an eye for beautiful things.”
I gave him a sidelong glance. Could it be that Enzo Roberts was flirting with me? I glanced at Luca, who was too busy looking at a new leather jacket and some dress shirts to notice.
“Thank you,” I said, folding the dress carefully and setting it on the edge of the bed. I picked up the trousers. “I’ll wear these at the meeting. The estate won’t know what hit them.”
Enzo walked to the center of the room, stopping under the chandelier.
“Did you sleep well?” he asked. He met my eye a moment too long, and I wondered if he knew that Luca had slept on the couch. I had no idea how aware he was about our marital problems. “Are you happy with the room?”
I looked around at the ridiculous opulence of my suite. It was hard to believe he was serious. He’d seen my lackluster living room and my sad Christmas tree. This hotel was nicer than any I’d ever seen; the sheets were thick buttery cotton, almost liquid against my skin. “Everything is perfect. Beyond perfect.”
He looked relieved. “Wonderful,” he said, as he set his briefcase on a table and opened it. “Because you will be here for the next few days. The estate would like to set the meeting for tomorrow afternoon.” He pulled a leather pouch from his briefcase and handed it to me. “Which gives you a little time to rest and see the city. If you are up for it, of course.”
I unzipped the pouch and found a phone, a room key, and a wad of euro bills. I kept the phone—my phone had died and I didn’t have an adapter for the charger—and handed the pouch to Luca. He looked inside, his eyes wide with surprise at the sight of all that cash.
“I’ve programmed my number, as well as the number of the hotel, into the phone. There is no passcode—you can create one if you want, of course. I’ve also added a list of places you might want to visit—the Egyptian Museum is amusing—as well as some of my favorite restaurants. It might snow, which will be a treat, as we rarely get snow at Christmas. I’ve downloaded the Google Translate app, in case you get stuck ordering dinner. I’ve called already, and they are aware that you might drop in. Just mention my name and they will take care of you.”
That evening, the manager sent up a complimentary bottle of wine—a dry prosecco that smelled of apricots and ice. We drank it on the balcony, watching the people below: an elegant woman in high heels and a tight, tailored overcoat; an old man reading the Corriere della Sera under the light of the bus stop; a child walking with her grandmother. Everyone was as elegant as Enzo Roberts. It was my first time away from home, and perhaps I was easily impressed, but I could have spent the whole night like that, watching the passersby on the street.
It had been dark for an hour when it began to snow, flakes drifting down over us and melting on the wrought-iron balcony. Luca slipped his arms around me, and it seemed, suddenly, that I had been summoned home.
I glanced at my watch. Twelve o’clock. For a moment, I was confused—was it dark at noon? Or could it be midnight already?
“We lost six hours,” Luca said, noting my confusion. “It’s lunchtime for us, dinner here.”
“You hungry?” I asked.
“Let’s go out and do something fun,” Luca said. “Something totally new.”
“It feels like forever since we did that,” I replied.
“Well, it’s been forever since we’ve been happy,” he said, which was an understatement.
“I’m happy now,” I said, pulling him closer, taking in his scent.
He leaned over and kissed me, and it was as if we were who we used to be, unguarded, me and Luca with the whole of our future ahead of us.
“I’m sorry about asking you to move out,” I said, resting my head on his shoulder, feeling the scruff of his beard against my cheek. “I just didn’t expect everything to be so . . . difficult.”
“It isn’t your fault.” A bus stopped on the corner below, its brakes squeaking. “But maybe we should think about adoption.”
“Of course, yes, we should,” I said, closing my eyes and feeling the snow on my cheeks. We kissed again, and I felt, suddenly, that I could be happy with the life I had then and there and could forget about the futures that might have been.
Back inside, we fell into bed together and made up for the months of separation. As I lay in Luca’s arms, I thought back to the moment I had opened the letter and the sharp feeling of foreboding that had fallen over me. If the letter had not arrived, we would never have had this time together. The premonition of danger had been wrong: the letter had brought me and Luca back together.
We showered and changed into the clothes Enzo had left. Luca put on a new shirt and the leather jacket, while I zipped into the silk dress. Everything fit except the black suede boots. This was no surprise. I had inherited my grandfather Giovanni’s feet, wide and flat, and it was never easy to find shoes that fit. I sat on the bed and looked at them, wiggling my long second toe. My ugly feet had caused me no small amount of embarrassment growing up. I never allowed anyone to touch them, and aside from Luca and my parents, no one had ever seen them. As a child, I had avoided swimming. In the summer, when I wore sandals, I always kept my socks on, something Tina, who knew how much I hated my feet, had teased me about. Luca always said I was too sensitive, that nobody would even notice, but I had never been able to feel good about them. I slipped on my boots from home, glad the dress was long enough to cover them.
“That dress is perfect,” Luca said. “You look beautiful.”
As we left, I paused before a full-length mirror. Luca was right: the clothes had the effect of transforming me. From the liquid reflection of the mirror, I saw someone else, the kind of person I’d always imagined I could be one day, after graduating and getting a job—tailored, elegant. Powerful. Alberta Montebianco. It wasn’t vanity, but recognition: I knew this woman. She had been waiting for me there, in that hotel room in Italy.