The Girl in the Glass (35 page)

“What is so terrible about thinking you can hear a statue or painting speak to you?” I huffed.

“It’s not terrible until someone thinks you’re crazy. She can’t prove she is a Medici—even if she was Angelo’s daughter, she could not prove this. And if she comes under a firestorm of criticism, even in just the little niche world of travel memoirs, what will that do to her? This is what Emilio is concerned about. And, Meg, so am I.”

I lowered my forehead into my upturned hand, kneading my temple. This was a mess. I could probably put the brakes on the project by just telling Beatriz and Geoffrey the family could offer no proof of Medici ancestry. But I was already dreading telling Sofia that the project was pretty much dead in the water. I didn’t want to be the one to tell her we’d contacted Emilio and he had said there wasn’t an ounce of proof they shared Medici blood, that it was far more likely it was a family joke.

She wouldn’t believe me, for one thing. She could hear Nora speaking to her. Of course she was a Medici. How dare I suggest she wasn’t?

She’d be mad at me for going behind her back and contacting Emilio.

She’d be devastated at losing the book deal because I believed Emilio and not her.

It was a boatload of multiple disappointments that I was about to hand her.

Maybe we didn’t have to tell her we’d contacted Emilio. Maybe I could have Renata call him back and tell him I wouldn’t be publishing the book, so he didn’t have to worry about it, and we could just pretend we never brought it up.

I could just tell Sofia I wasn’t finding any ancestral connection to Gian Gastone de’ Medici and, as I had told her earlier, Beatriz was pretty clear on verified ancestry. We needed documentation.

I would encourage her to keep writing to finish the book for herself. I would tell her that she was a fabulous writer and that I could help her turn her chapters into magazine articles for travel magazines. We would just stick to the facts and edit the Medici stuff we couldn’t prove and the talking statues that people wouldn’t understand.

And if I could convince Sofia to do that, maybe I could convince Beatriz to look at Sofia’s chapters as insights from a Florentine native who has been a tour guide all her life. We could keep the references to her wise father intact but just ease up a little on the Medici content and include more non-Medici people. Like Raphael. And Donatello. And Michelangelo.

This could work.

This didn’t have to end with Sofia having the carpet pulled out from underneath her.

I started to spill my hastily concocted plan. “We don’t have to tell Sofia we contacted Emilio. We can just tell him not to say anything, and I won’t publish the book.”

Renata was already shaking her head. “It’s too late. He’s coming.”

“Here?”

She nodded.

“Well, tell him it’s no big deal. He doesn’t have to come. I’m not publishing it.”

“It’s not just that, Meg. Emilio told me Angelo sold the tour agency to
pay for his place at the facility. He doesn’t own it anymore. He put the money he made from the sale into an account that pays for his place at the facility and a generous monthly stipend for Sofia. Sofia doesn’t work there anymore. The new owners didn’t want to keep her on staff. She hasn’t worked there in over a year. But she has been able to pretend, even in front of her closest neighbors, that she is still employed there. She’s not well, Meg.”

Stunned, I groped for words. “She told me she took the week off. She told me she left the college students to take her tours. She …” I didn’t finish. I was beginning to connect the dots. Sofia was the queen of being able to imagine that what you want to be true is true. How hard would it be for her to imagine she went to work every day leading eager tourists around the city she loved? She walked around in her illusions every day of her simple and happy life. She wasn’t just holding tight the memory of wonderful years, she was inventing wonderful where it didn’t exist. “What is Emilio going to do?”

“Emilio wants to sell the building. He has a buyer. He says he can stipulate that Sofia gets to stay in her flat, if that’s what she wants. And he will put his half of the proceeds into a trust for her. He is a rich man. It’s not like he needs the money. This building is worth a lot. She wouldn’t have to worry about finances. Ever.”

“And he said that? He said he would give her his half?” My words bristled with frustration and fear at what I had set in motion. “You believe him?”

“I do.”

“She doesn’t trust him!”

“She thinks she still works at the tour agency, Marguerite.”

I sprang to my feet to pace the room. I wanted Lorenzo. Where was he? Why wasn’t he here?

“We didn’t do anything wrong,” Renata said.

“She was happy before I came here. And I come and her whole world is about to crumble.”

“Just because she was happy doesn’t mean everything was right. You have done her a favor. Sooner or later Emilio would have found out Sofia needed help. And what if her delusions worsen? She needs professional help. She could never pay for that kind of care with all her money tied up in this building. While Angelo is still alive, he can sign the bill of sale. Once he’s gone, his half will go to Sofia, and she will never sign it.”

I turned around. “Angelo can’t sign anything.”

“Of course he can.”

“I mean, he won’t know what he’s signing.”

“Who cares? It’s the right thing to do.”

“It’s the black-and-white thing to do!”

“What?” Her face was awash in confusion.

I sank back into my chair. “Nothing.”

My thoughts were a tumbled mess. “Where’s Lorenzo? Does he know about this?”

“We talked before we met our friends at the restaurant. He feels as I do.”

“And what if you lose your flat?”

She laughed lightly. “What idiot is going to buy a building and evict all his tenants? And besides, there are many flats in Florence. This is not the first I’ve lived in. It won’t be the last.”

I sighed heavily. “What am I supposed to do now?”

Renata shrugged. “Nothing. Emilio is coming tomorrow. He has every right to come. He owns the building.”

“What’s he going to say to her? Is he going to tell her we called him?”

“Tomorrow at breakfast I am going to tell her I called him. You didn’t. I did. I called to see if he could tell me about his family’s ties to the Medici. You are visiting Sofia about the book she is writing, and she told you she was related to the Medici family, and I was curious. That’s all.”

“That’s a lot.”

“He doesn’t care that she’s writing a book. He only cares that you don’t publish it.”

“Okay, but then why is he coming? She’s going to want to know why he’s coming.”

“He’s coming because my call simply reminded him he needed to make a trip out to visit. The rest of it is none of our business.”

Several weighty moments of silence hung between us. “I think I might take that glass of wine,” I said.

She stood, took her glass to the kitchen, and came back with two glasses. Hers and mine.

Renata folded herself back onto the couch.

I took a sip. The wine was robust and ruddy, and I tasted earth and chocolate. “When will he be here?” I asked.

“He said he was leaving Rome a little after eight. He has a car. If traffic is not bad, he will be here before noon.”

“I just don’t think it’s going to be as easy as you are making it sound.”

“Stop worrying so much.”

I stayed until nearly eleven, partly because I hoped Lorenzo would return and I could talk to him myself about all these new developments and partly because I wanted Sofia to tire and go to bed so that I wouldn’t have to talk to her and pretend everything was just peachy.

I got one of my wishes.

As I rose to leave, Renata reminded me Lorenzo was making breakfast and that Sofia and I were to come over at ten. As soon as we were done eating, Renata would tell her about Emilio’s impending visit.

I made my way back to Sofia’s. The flat was quiet. The door to her bedroom door was closed, and no light shone through.

Nurse was careful to keep gossipers and unkind courtiers from repeating in my hearing what was whispered in the dining halls and courtyards about my mother’s death. And it was easy enough to keep Virginio and me on the fringe of activity in the palace when we were young. Uncle Francesco never came to see us, even though our care had been relegated to him. But the day finally arrived when I came to Nurse with this terrible thing I had heard. It was the day before my tenth birthday. One servant had told another that my father had strangled Mama at the villa and that Francesco knew about it and had said nothing because he’d always been jealous of her.

It could not possibly be true. Could not. I ran to Nurse and told her what I had heard. She sat me down as if she had rehearsed a thousand times the conversation we were to have.

“You can’t be listening to what people say, Nora, especially when they talk about things that are none of their affair.”

“But that servant said my father had help killing her,” I wailed. “Other men waited in the room and dropped ropes from the ceiling. Why would they say a thing like that?”

She told me not to waste time wondering why other people say what they say. It is enough to pay attention to my own words.

“Is it true?” I said. “Is what they say true?”

Nurse said only the Lord God Almighty knows what really happened. The choice before me was not what did I know, but how did I want to live
the rest of my life? Did I want to live the rest of my life as if it was true or as if it wasn’t?

How does one live as if something is not true when everything suggests that it is?

I am still learning that on the canvas of my heart, I can paint what I will. The brushes are mine. The paint is mine.

My heart is mine.

28

I heard Sofia up and moving about in the morning, but I delayed getting up until after nine. I don’t possess a great poker face. If I had to pretend for more than an hour that I didn’t know Emilio was on his way to Florence, I would give myself away through pure sheepishness.

I logged on to my e-mail before even getting out of bed, took care of a few work-related matters, posted my pictures from the last couple of days, and lingered over an e-mail from Gabe. He had responded to my telling him about hearing the woman praying in Santa Croce.

He told me I had to consider the amount of sensory overload I was dealing with. It wasn’t that odd that I could hear a woman praying in a six-hundred-year-old church full of breathtaking beauty. Someone I trusted suggested I could.

It was that last line I kept rereading. It was a concept I kept falling up against. When we trust someone, we believe what they tell us is true. We experience it as being true. It’s not the experience itself that empowers us to believe it. It is the trust. I composed a reply, just to thank him for that insight, but I was soon spilling everything that was happening with Sofia. I could not lay to rest the fear that today was going to be a really hard day for her and it was all my fault. I asked him to pray for the day I was about to step into, knowing that by the time he read it, the day would be over unless he happened to be up at midnight.

I had no sooner sent the e-mail when the reply quickly came back to me. Gabe was up.

Of course I will pray for you and Sofia. I think she needs to hear it straight, Meg, as far as the book goes. And I honestly don’t know if she needs to be told everything her uncle told Renata. I wouldn’t lie to her to make the day easier for the day’s sake. Know what I mean? The truth, while sometimes hard to hear, is not usually hard to bear. You can collapse under it, and it will still hold you up. You don’t usually get the same deal with the opposite.

Miss you.

Gabe

I missed him too.

It felt good to realize that.

And he was right. There’s a time to imagine you can hear the woman praying, and there’s a time to admit she’s not there anymore. Or never was.

I got out of bed.