The Girl in the Glass (29 page)

“Odd.” Renata tipped her glass toward me. “Sofia told me once she hears them speak. Like there’s a ghost inside them. It is odd.”

“Yes. Odd.”

“Odd is sometimes good. Odd is sometimes what sells a book, no?”

Renata had a point. Odd can sell a book. Odd can tank a book. I half-nodded in half agreement.

“What other little troubles?” Renata continued.

“Well, Beatriz and Geoffrey want to authenticate Sofia’s claim that she’s of the Medici line. We might need to do some digging.”

“What?” Renata’s face was a blank stare.

I looked at Lorenzo. He rubbed his stubbled chin in thought. I knew Sofia hadn’t told very many people she was a Medici. I just figured if Lorenzo knew, then Renata did. But it was obvious she didn’t.

“Oops,” I whispered.

Lorenzo shook his head gently as if to say it wasn’t that big a deal. He turned to his sister. “Sofia says her family is in the Medici bloodline. Direct descendant.”

“Verità?”
Renata looked from Lorenzo to me and then back to her brother. “Why has she and her papa not told anyone?”

Lorenzo shrugged. “I don’t know. Sofia only just shared this with me. When I read her first chapters before I sent them to Marguerite; that is the first I heard of it.”

“It’s why she says she can hear some of the paintings and statues talking to her,” I said. “It’s because she’s a Medici. She hears a Medici ancestor inside them: Nora Orsini.”

“Who is Nora Orsini?”

“Isabella de’ Medici’s daughter.
Isabella.”
Lorenzo drew a finger across his neck.

“Oh, her.” Renata appeared to ruminate on that for a moment. “So what is the little trouble with that?”

“We need to authenticate her claim that she’s a Medici. Geoffrey and Beatriz want me to get the records that prove it.”

Renata frowned slightly. “Why? So they will believe she hears statues? That’s what will make them believe she hears statues?”

“Do you believe she hears statues?” I asked.

Renata shrugged. “I like thinking she does. Don’t you?”

I hesitated before nodding. “Yes. I do.” I did.

“I think Beatriz and Geoffrey find it compelling that Sofia is a Medici,” Lorenzo chimed in. “It is a selling point. Right, cara?”

Of course it was a selling point. “Yes. Yes it is.”

“And Sofia doesn’t have proof?” Renata asked.

“No. And we went to see her father today, and he … he won’t be able to be of much help. He’s not … He won’t be of much help. I think we’re going to have to do the digging on our own with city records and ancestry websites.”

“What about Emilio? Why doesn’t she just ask him?”

“I asked her about her uncle. She said he won’t help her.”

Again, Renata’s lovely eyebrows puckered. “Of course he will help her. Why wouldn’t he help her? He is family. If Sofia is a Medici, then so is he.”

“Sofia told me that he doesn’t like her. That he doesn’t like anybody. And she said he wouldn’t help me either.”

Renata set her empty wineglass down on the table by her feet. “Sofia is like a little child sometimes. Emilio is not like her father. But that does not mean he does not care for her. He is not all smiles and sunshine, but that does not mean he doesn’t like her. He is a businessman. He likes solitude. He doesn’t need people the way Sofia does.”

I was taken aback by how much Renata seemed to know about Sofia’s uncle. She must have read my surprise on my face.

“I dealt with Emilio when Lorenzo and I wanted to take out the wall between the kitchen and the living room. He handles all of that, you know. The management of the building. I never got the—what do you call it?—
impression
he does not like his niece. He just does not need closeness. Not important to him. I think he would help you.”

Hope began to percolate in me. I really didn’t want to have to spend hours on Italian websites that I could barely read trying to piece together Sofia’s family ancestry. But I didn’t know how to convince Sofia we should give her uncle a try. And I couldn’t call him myself unless he knew English. I said as much to Renata.

“He speaks only a little English,” she answered but then quickly followed with, “Want me to call him for you? I have his number in Rome.”

“Yes!” I answered, without hesitation.

“You should ask Sofia first,” Lorenzo said. We looked at him, and he took a sip of wine.

“Why?” said Renata. “Sofia is a child about this. If Meg asks and Sofia says no, what then? Meg can’t have me ask? Stupid. That is stupid. Besides, I will ask Emilio. Not Meg. This will be between me and Emilio.”

“I think you should ask.”

Renata frowned at him. “And what if she says no?”

Lorenzo shrugged. He had no good answer.

“I really need to get to the bottom of this, Lorenzo,” I said. “I’m not asking Emilio for any dark family secrets, just if he knows how we can verify that his family is in the Medici line. That’s all.”

“This is silly. I will call him right now.” Renata stood and sailed back into the flat. Lorenzo and I followed her.

She pulled her cell phone out of a leather purse on the dining table, scrolled through her contacts, and landed on the one she wanted. She held the phone to her ear.

I looked at Lorenzo. He looked unconvinced that Renata should be doing what she was doing. But he said nothing.

A moment later Renata spoke into her phone. She was leaving a message. I don’t know what she was saying, but I heard the word
Medici
and the word
Sofia
.

“Ciao.” Renata slipped the phone back into the purse and then slung it over her shoulder. “Had to leave a message. Maybe he will call back while we eat. Let’s go. I’m hungry.”

Lorenzo was quiet as he closed the balcony doors and locked them.

Renata began to describe the trattoria we were walking to even before
we were out the door. With the front door locked, we headed for the stairs that would take us out into the night. Renata fairly ran down them.

“You really think I should ask Sofia before Renata talks to Emilio?” I whispered to Lorenzo.

He inhaled a contemplative breath. “It is too late to think about that now, cara. Renata has already talked to Emilio.” He smiled at me, but it was a loose smile, the kind you tend to offer when someone naively asks you to predict the future.

I don’t know what happened between my mother and my uncle Francesco that made him turn against her. My cousin Maria has told me her father was always jealous of Cosimo’s affection for Isabella and Giovanni, the favorite son who died. She said she saw bits of a letter my mother wrote to her father concerning Virginio and me and her own financial welfare. Something that Francesco had promised at my grandfather’s deathbed, he was now taking back. And apparently Francesco had no such desire to see my mother, Virginio, or me remain in Florence, and he expected my mother to at last join my father in Rome. But Nurse was never instructed to pack my things or Virginio’s. My mother kept putting it off, as she had for many years, but this time, Nurse said, it was for more reasons than just wanting to stay in Florence; she needed to win over Francesco.

In the late summer of 1575, I fell ill. I remember only that Nurse held me while I lay hot with fever and my mother paced the floor as Virginio cried outside my door. He was not allowed in.

After I recovered, everything changed.

23

The food at Renata’s favorite restaurant was insanely delicious. For our antipastos we had prosciutto and honey-roasted pears that had been filled with goat cheese and drizzled with a balsamic glaze, then grilled octopus with a saffron aioli. The pasta course was
pappardella
with leeks and sausages, and the main dish, beef Carpaccio with parmesan and truffle oil. Renata insisted on ordering the chocolate
panna cotta
with orange and candied hazelnuts for dessert, though I could barely breathe by this point, my stomach was so full.

I thought Renata and Lorenzo would want to talk about ideas for future books, but Renata said from the get-go that she didn’t want to talk Crowne & Castillo business at her favorite restaurant. Instead, she seemed intensely interested in me, asking me a thousand questions about my life and dreams and hopes and fears. She found it peculiar that I had waited until now to come to Florence when I’ve wanted to come since I was twelve.

“My father kept promising he’d take me, and I just kept thinking he would,” I answered.

“And so you waited—all this time?”

I nodded.

Renata shook her head. “If my papa promised me something, I wouldn’t let him rest until he came through for me. You are too patient.”

“You probably grew up with your father right in the next room. Mine was always a hundred miles away,” I said. “When your parents are divorced and your father lives two hours away, you learn to expect distance between what you want and what you have.”

She thought about this for a moment. “I wouldn’t let him rest.” She slid a spoonful of panna cotta into her mouth.

“Renata is not one for compromise,” Lorenzo said to me, but loud enough for his sister to hear.

“Renata is not one for nonsense.” Renata toasted the air in front of her with her cappuccino.

I sipped my own cappuccino, letting its frothy smoothness linger in my throat. I wanted to be done talking about my father. And we were.

When Renata got up to use the rest room, I asked Lorenzo what was up with all the questions. He merely shrugged my concern away by reminding me that his sister was the research half of their writing team; she was filling her mind with details. I was a fresh resource.

When she returned from the rest room, Renata moved on to my love life.

“So you haven’t been married before, no?” Renata asked.

“Um, no.” I set my cup down. “Just engaged.”

Stupid answer. She might’ve forgotten that detail if I hadn’t said anything.

“Ah, yes. You didn’t marry him. I remember this.”

Lorenzo, who had appeared mildly interested in our conversation to that point, turned his attention fully onto me.

Lorenzo knew what had happened between me and Miles. I hadn’t made it a point to bring it up with him; it had just come up after I’d broken my engagement. A few months had passed since Lorenzo and I had talked, and he remembered I was supposed to be married at that point. I had sent him an e-mail about some edits we needed to make on the book he and Renata were writing, and he responded by congratulating me on my marriage and asking me why I hadn’t changed my last name. I had to tell him that I had called off the wedding. I suppose professional courtesy prevented him from asking for the pathetic particulars. Or perhaps he really did only
care about me—as a friend—and not the details. He asked me how I was, not what happened. And I had told him I was going to be okay, that I had done the right thing, and soon I would feel only relief, not the crushing weight of having hurt someone.

Renata now asked the next logical question—the kind of question a research addict would ask.

“Why didn’t you marry him?”

I thought perhaps Lorenzo might say something like, “That’s kind of a personal question, don’t you think?” But he said nothing. His attention was on me as he waited for me to answer. I had seen that waiting look often. When a wedding is called off, sympathies and curiosities are aroused like you wouldn’t believe.

“I knew I didn’t love Miles as much as he loved me,” I answered. “He deserved someone who did. It was the right thing to do.”

“But you accepted his proposal.” She didn’t frame it as a question but waited for an answer as if she had. Lorenzo did too. And as I sat there in the middle of the noisy restaurant with words flying about me that I didn’t understand, I realized no one had ever asked me why I said yes when Miles proposed.

“I wanted to be engaged to him. Later I realized I just didn’t want to be married to him. It wouldn’t have been right.”

“Because you didn’t love him.”

It still hurt a little to hear my own indictment thrown back on me. “Not enough.”

“This is why I have never married.” Renata sat back with her cup. “Too complicated, no? Love should be easy.”