Chapter 15
I sat at my kitchen table and stared at the printout: Locals welcome Rotary scholar from Italy, Roberto Fracasso. I’d been so stunned at the library, gazing at a picture of a man who looked just like me, all I managed to do was send that page to print and walk home with it. I’d forced myself to work in the restaurant prepping for tomorrow until I was done, but my mind was racing the whole time.
I sipped from a Cutters beer and read the article for the umpteenth time. It said Roberto, twenty-four, was a graduate student sponsored by the Rotary Club of Brown County, and the O’Neill family in South Lick were making room for him in their home while he studied the geology of the area. And then the story frustratingly veered off into what sounded like an advertisement for the Rotary and their international scholarship program, a story probably taken from a press release they’d sent out. Birdy munched a bite of food, jumped up onto the chair next to mine, and proceeded to wash.
Running my finger over first Mom’s light windblown hair and then Roberto’s dark curls, I tried to imagine that time. Mom must have been a couple of years younger than I was now, the same age as handsome Roberto. Who wouldn’t fall for an attractive visiting Italian? But so many questions remained. Did she even tell him she was pregnant? If so, why didn’t he want to be part of our lives? If she didn’t tell him, why not? Maybe she moved to California and then discovered she was carrying a child. But wouldn’t she contact him? It was the early days of the Internet when most people didn’t use e-mail, but she could have written him a letter. Or phoned. And Don? He looked awfully friendly with Mom, too. Did she dump him for Roberto? Or maybe I was all wrong about Roberto being my father. She could have met someone in California who reminded her of Roberto and conceived me with him.
I sliced sharp cheddar and a ripe tomato and threw together a sandwich on thick slices of sourdough for my dinner, bringing it to the table so I could obsess over the picture some more. But I put the sandwich down after two bites. Where was my brain? Adele should know the answers to all these questions. I found my phone and pressed her speed dial number. When she didn’t pick up, I left a message asking her to call. I didn’t specify why. This was way too complicated to talk about in voice mail.
As I finished my dinner, washing down the last bite with a swallow of beer, I realized the Internet might have answers for me, now that I knew what I believed was my father’s name. I headed to the desk in a corner of the living room and typed his name into the search bar on my laptop. I then groaned when a half-dozen links popped up, all in Italian. I tried looking for images of that name, but if he was still alive, he’d look different than he did almost three decades ago. I saw one picture I thought might be him, a distinguished-looking man with wavy silver hair, but I couldn’t tell for sure.
And what I really wanted to know was what happened back then. I added South Lick Indiana to his name in the search bar. Now we were getting somewhere. The three top links were to news articles from June of that year, with an article from the Bloomington Herald-Telephone of June 15 as the top link. I clicked it.
The headline read QUARRY ACCIDENT INJURES ROTARY SCHOLAR, AREA MAN. A picture showed the well-known Empire Quarry, southwest of here, near the town of Bedford, and the story described how Don had driven Roberto there to show him where the limestone for the Empire State Building was mined.
Don was quoted: “He’d heard about swimming in the quarries and wanted to give it a try. I told him he shouldn’t, but he jumped in, anyway. When he came to the surface and cried out, I dove in after him.” The story went on to describe the rescue effort, that a woman called for an ambulance, and that the Italian was hospitalized in Bloomington for multiple injuries, including possible damage to his spinal cord.
At that, my hand flew to my mouth. Had he been paralyzed? Or sustained damage to his brain? The woman who called it in must have been Mom. The article made it sound like Don came out the hero. He was noted as having injured his arm, but not seriously. I read the rest of the report, but didn’t really learn anything more except that Roberto was taken to the hospital in Bloomington. The other links were simple rehashes of the story in smaller papers, including the Brown County Democrat.
I refreshed the search, adding “accident” and “Empire” and removing South Lick. But no subsequent stories appeared, only the original three links. Odd. Maybe a quarry accident with a visiting Italian wasn’t really newsworthy in a month of local weddings and graduations. People without enough sense to read the posted warning signs were injured or killed in illicit quarry swimming all the time. Maybe those signs hadn’t been posted back then. Or maybe Roberto hadn’t understood the English. If so, Don should have done more to keep him from jumping or diving or whatever he did.
Clicking back to the images for Roberto Fracasso, I studied the older gentleman again and tried to make sense of the words in Italian. I thought you were supposed to be able to translate anything instantly, but I couldn’t find the button. And since I was a fail at foreign languages, I wasn’t going to be able to understand the text when my last language class had been second-year high-school Spanish. If he was my father, at least he was alive. And good-looking, too. Damn. Here I’d been trying to ferret out information about Don and if he was involved in Stella’s murder. Instead, it looked like I’d found my long-lost father, the one I didn’t even know I’d missed. I tried to search for an e-mail address or phone number for him, but I came up empty.
My cell rang from the kitchen, where I’d left it. I strode in and checked. Adele. I connected and skipped the niceties.
“Adele, was my father an Italian named Roberto Fracasso?”
“Good evening to you, too, Robbie.” She exhaled. “Yes, he was.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” I heard my voice crack.
“You never asked. And Jeanine didn’t want me telling you if you didn’t want to know. She did name you after him, after all.”
That stopped me. Of course she did. “You must have met him when he was here. I have so many questions about what happened—” I paced to the door and back, stopping to scratch Birdy’s head when he looked up at me like he could use a dose of affection.
“Honey, I was gone that year. I did a stint volunteering with Heifer Project International in Arkansas, when I wanted to learn about raising up animals. That was before I got my sheep. I never did meet Roberto.” She cleared her throat. “We should talk in person about this, but Vera and I are heading out to catch a show in Bloomington.”
“Okay,” I said around a lump in my throat that had sprung up from nowhere.
“You going to Stella’s funeral tomorrow?” Adele asked.
“Tomorrow? I haven’t heard anything about it.” How come I didn’t know about this? I gulped down a swig of beer and sat.
“Visiting hours are tonight. Funeral mass tomorrow at Our Lady of Springs. Eleven o’clock, with a reception following.”
“How can I go? That’ll be during the lunch hours.”
“See if Phil can help out. He wouldn’t be going. And Danna’s all broken in, right?”
I supposed she was, even though it’d only been two days. I blew air out. “Phil probably has to work, but I’ll ask him. It’d be too much to ask Danna to do it all. Or would Vera be willing to work again?”
“I’m sure she would, but she’s leaving in the morning. Has to get home to Frankfort, up north of Indy. She’s got little grandkids coming to visit.”
“I’ll give Phil a call. You’ll be at the service, I assume?”
After she said she would, we said our good-byes. After I disconnected, I laid my head on the table. My world was exploding around me and I wasn’t sure I was capable of gathering up the pieces and gluing it back together.