hesitated.
“Wait,” she said. “A moment. I don’t know how to say it. I want to talk more. Will you come to see me?”
“Yes, if you’d like.”
“It’s strange, you know, but there’s no one else. I mean, we’re not family, but we might have been. So it happened to you too, this death. Death-murder,” she said. “Murder,” she said again. “They won’t even say it. No one else will care the way we do. You’re the only one I can ask.”
“Ask what?”
“For your help.”
“My help?”
“To find the murderer.”
I stared at her. “But the police-”
“Ouf, Cavallini. Filomena’s husband, that one.”
“He’s still the police.”
“They’ll never find out. They’ll look and then they’ll stop.”
“But you won’t,” I said quietly.
“Never,” she said, her voice Gianni’s again, sure. “I can’t. I’m the son.” She looked at me. “And you.”
“The way she looks at you,” Claudia said later, in bed.
“Like a sister.”
“Ha.”
“Jealous?” I said, smiling at her.
“No, careful. One slip, you say, but who’s talking? The priest, then the daughter. I thought I would scream. I thought we’d never leave.”
I smiled again, but my mind was elsewhere, in the polished high room with the gilt furniture. Not a fortune hunter.
“But we did,” she said, putting a finger on my chest, bringing me back. “So it’s over, yes?”
The largest landowners in the Veneto.
“Everyone saw us. That was the point,” I said.
“Everyone saw us at the ball.”
When I got home, my mother was looking through the photographs, the brown envelope next to her on the couch. I turned on a lamp and went over to the sideboard to make a drink.
“Want one?”
She pointed to her half-filled glass on the end table.
“You know, I don’t remember wearing my hair this short,” she said, peering at a snapshot, “but I suppose I must have.”
“What businesses did Gianni own?”
“Oh, darling, I don’t know, a little of this, a little of that. Wines. He was always talking about that. Why?”
“Giulia mentioned the family businesses. I was just wondering what they were.”
“They own part of a bank. I expect that’s what she meant. And bits of things. He said it was safer that way, spreading out your chips.” She looked up. “Not munitions, if that’s what you mean. He wasn’t that.”
“No, I didn’t mean that. Just curious.”
“Well, the wines he used to mention. He said there was no such thing as a bad year during the war. So much demand. But I think it was more a hobby, really. The rest was through the bank.”
“But he was rich?”
“Darling, what a question. What’s this all about?”
“Cavallini said he was one of the richest men in Italy.”
“Well, the family. They always had pots.”
“But he was the family.”
“After his brother, you mean. Yes, I suppose. But darling, you knew all this. Anyway, what does it matter now?”
“It doesn’t, I guess,” I said, sipping my drink. “But you knew?”
“Well, of course I knew. He always had money. I don’t know how much exactly. I didn’t ask to see his bank balance. I’m not Peggy Joyce yet.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You might as well.” She looked away. “I admit I thought about it. Well, who wouldn’t? But I was fond of him, you know. I really was. It wasn’t just the money.”
I hesitated, taking this in. “I didn’t know it was the money at all. I thought you were in love with him.”
“I never said that,” she snapped, annoyed. “I said I was fond of him. Though why any of this should matter to you now, I haven’t the foggiest.” She put the photographs aside, unfolding her legs, restless. “I must say, you pick your moments. I’ve just buried the last husband I’m likely to have and you want to talk about his finances. Accusing me of I don’t know what. All right. So we’re crystal clear. I was never in love with Gianni. I’ve told you this. I was in love with your father. But Gianni-well, after all these years, I never expected that. And then there it was, and yes, I thought, Well, this is lucky, everything will be all right now. But I was fond of him. I never deceived him about that,” she said, her voice finally breaking. She reached for a handkerchief. “Now look. I get through the whole funeral and now I start to puddle.”
I stared at her, my mind racing, connecting dots. “What do you mean, everything will be all right now?”
“What? Oh, the money. That’s what we were talking about, isn’t it? Anyway, that’s gone now. It really doesn’t matter how much he had, does it? I won’t see any of it.” She sniffed into the handkerchief.
“So what? You have your own. We’ll go back to New York.”
But she was shaking her head. “It’s not going to stretch there. I can do it here. Why do you think I came? You can still live here. You have no idea what New York is like now, just the simplest things.”
“Stretch?” I said, looking at her, trying to follow. “What about Dad’s money?”
“I’ve been living on it. I’m still living on it-I never said anybody was starving.” She moved away. “I don’t know how much you thought there was. Those last years, when he was sick, it just went through your fingers. All the nurses, everything. It goes. And every year there’s less. So you have to be careful. Look, I can do it. It’s just I can do it better here. And I thought, well, you have that little trust from your grandfather-and you were always so independent anyway. I’m not going to be a burden, you don’t have to worry about that. But New York just eats it away. You get worried. You just keep hoping something will turn up.”
“And something did.”
“Yes, something did.” She looked at me. “I didn’t plan it. I went to Paris, not here.”
“I know.”
“But the way you look. So I came and it was lucky, and shall I tell you something? We would have been happy. We would have taken care of each other. He wanted to marry me so much. Why? I don’t know, but he wanted it. We would have been happy. It wasn’t just the money. I was fond of him.” She fingered the brown envelope on the couch, then turned to me. “But you never saw that. Always so-” She cut herself off, then shook her head. “You made it difficult, Adam, you really did. We didn’t deserve that, either of us.” Her voice dropped, finally out of steam, and she moved toward the door. “What shall I tell Angelina? Are you in tonight?”
“Yes, all right.”
“Not for me, I hope,” she said. “I don’t want that, Adam. I don’t mind being alone.” Her shoulders moved, a small shrug. “Anyway, I’d better get used to it.” Almost casual, making peace.
“No,” I said, trying to reassure her with a look. “Something will turn up.”
She nodded, smiling weakly. “Twice.”
After she left I went over to the couch and picked up a few of the pictures. On the beach, with her short hair, in a group. Gianni as a teenager, grinning, then as a young man, sitting with people in cafes, posing in San Marco, in a racing car with his brother, in front of the hospital-all smiling. Giulia must have raided the family album to find Gianni as my mother would have known him, young, unattached. Even in the later pictures his wife was missing-at home, or maybe just outside the frame. Smiling, happy, exactly the man my mother described. Not the one I knew. But they must at some point have been the same. When had everything turned inside out? If it had.
