Unforgotten (10 page)

Lance dropped his gaze to the table. He didn’t want congratulations, only to know that he had made a difference. And he had. Pop might not see it. He hadn’t grown into the same kind of man as Pop or Tony, but in his wandering he’d found his way. Especially with Nonna’s quest. He’d gone in, brash and expectant, and learned that life didn’t work like that. But still his heart was expectant. He didn’t seem capable of dousing hope. He glanced toward Rese’s door. He hoped, but sometimes what happened was out of his hands.

————

Sitting in her chair the next morning, Antonia sighed. Lance was going to force it. Make her remember what she didn’t want to. Make her speak aloud the things that haunted her sleep. He wanted answers, but she had none. Only sadness. Only shame.

Too well she remembered the cat claws up her spine, the nerves pinching and seizing with doubt and apprehension. Papa’s dead-ofnight escapades, pushing the car to the end of the drive so she wouldn’t hear him leave …

I tell Nonno my fear, but he says only, “Trust what you know, Antonia,” and presses his hand to his chest.

But the love I have for Papa is trapped in fear. Two men have been murdered over the last months, and the police found nothing. Something dark has come to Sonoma. I know inside it’s Arthur Jackson. Why can’t Papa just make loans at the bank? Why has he accepted the personal position he now seems to hold?

“I’m afraid, Nonno. I feel it inside.”

He nods, standing at the edge of what vineyard we have left. “Everything ends, cara. Life is letting go.”

I shake my head. “I don’t want to. I won’t.” I stomp my foot.

He smiles, his eyes in the past. “You’re so like her, sometimes I forget you’re not.”

Though I am fair and she was dark, I know what he sees when he looks at me with those distant eyes. Nonna Carina would not have stayed silent. “If she was here, she would tell Papa to stop it.”

“She would tell him, but he wouldn’t stop. A man has to make his own way.”

“Why? Why can a man do anything, even when it hurts his family?”

Nonno drops his chin. “Vittorio doesn’t mean to hurt you, Antonia. You are everything to him.”

“If that were true he would listen to me. He wouldn’t deceive me.”

“Because he doesn’t tell you everything doesn’t mean he deceives.”

I ball my fists. “Sneaking out at night? Pushing the car?”

Nonno smiles. “He doesn’t want you to hear and worry.”

“Why won’t he tell me what he’s doing?”

“It’s not your business to know.”

I huff. “It’s not my business. It’ll be my business when we lose this.” I sweep my arm over the view before us. “When I can no longer hold my head up.”

Nonno frowns. “Are you ashamed of your papa, Antonia?”

I draw breath but can’t answer.

“Then you don’t know him.” Nonno turns on his cane and walks slowly away… .

Antonia jolted. The rap on the door was soft, but still it set her teeth on edge.
Go away. Leave me to my shame
. “Come.”

Lance opened the door, but he had Rese with him. Surely he wouldn’t bare her secrets in front of a stranger, no matter what the woman meant to him. Lance would not be so callous, so insensitive. That wasn’t his nature. Or was it?

“
Buon giorno,
Nonna.” He kissed her cheek. Judas betraying her.

She looked into his face. His eyes were bright in spite of their midnight hue. They’d always had a shine, something alive in their depths as though the zeal with which he looked out could not be dimmed. It hurt to see that he thought what he did now was good and right.

She wanted to lash out, tell him to keep what he knew to himself. Why drag her through it again? But then she noticed what he held. Her eyes fixed on the box, her box from long ago, a stationery set Papa had given her for her fifteenth birthday. It had once held papers and pens and a small lap desk. She had used them to write letters to her cousin Conchessa in Liguria, who sent Lance to Sonoma. All she’d wanted was for him to find Nonno, to give him the burial he deserved.

With the box tucked under his arm, he pulled a chair over for Rese, then one for himself. “Is Sofie here?”

Antonia shook her head.

He laid the box on the table next to his chair, and in spite of her resistance, anticipation soared as he worked the lid open. She’d put nothing in the box that compromised Papa. Maybe there was nothing to fear… .

At the angle he propped the lid, she couldn’t see inside but waited, hardly breathing, as he reached in. He handed her two photos; her mother and Nonno Quillan. She had not looked at Momma in so long. A beautiful woman with the fashionable blond bob of the time. A woman who turned heads, who turned Papa’s head and never stopped turning his heart, but who had not much use for a daughter, as though there was a competition between them from the start.

It was to Nonna Carina she turned when the woes of life put her in need of comfort. It was at Nonna’s knee she learned the things she would come to value, a language different from the one she spoke at school, an appreciation for beauty—not the useless trinkets her mother desired—the beauty of song and words and nature, the beauty of love. She learned to speak for herself, to hold her own in any situation.

It was from Nonna she learned the give and take of love. In her grandparents’ relationship, Antonia saw what had been lacking in Momma and Papa, and she vowed only to bind her heart to one that surrendered likewise to hers. Bald hatred could not be worse than misaligned desires, two lives constantly tugging. Looking at her momma’s picture, she felt no loss, only regret that she hadn’t known her, hadn’t been known.

Then she turned her gaze to Nonno’s photograph, striking with his mane of hair that put Samuel Clemens to shame. Nonno’s was a face both noble and fierce. The picture didn’t capture the warmth in his eyes, the deep capacity for tenderness, or near the end, the unfathomed grief. Without Nonna Carina, he waited only, ready for death, and found it in more grief.

She closed her eyes, remembering.
Nonno
. His last concern for her. And she had obeyed his wishes. She had not been found, not been destroyed as everything she cherished had. She opened her eyes, and Lance handed her letters she recalled saving in the box.

One letter Nonno had given her from Flavio, accepting his charge as godfather. When they came home from the grave that day, he had handed it to her and said, “Know that every choice you make ripples the lake. My Carina wanted it,” he said with a shrug. “Maybe to appease her conscience or to help Flavio find his way. He never married; how could he after loving Carina? So Vittorio was like a son to him. And he never stopped vying with me for his heart. Is it any wonder Vittorio is split?”

Antonia lifted the next, a letter from Papa on her birthday. A warmth spread over her as she read his words. She had never doubted his love, only his—Antonia stifled a sob. It had risen up from nowhere and caught her by surprise. She didn’t feel the emotions coming sometimes. They attacked from the shadows of her mind. She set that letter down with a trembling hand.

The last was the note from Marco saying he was up to the task of winning her. A new warmth scented with the bloom of love. She drew a shaky breath and looked at the two young people before her. Rese’s presence no longer seemed wrong. She was one with Lance’s heart, even if she didn’t know it yet.

“You might recognize this.” Lance took out a book.

She gasped. “M … y di—”

He handed it to her, and she rubbed her palm over the cover. How had he found it? Where? Questions clogged her mind.

“It was kept safe for you with this.” He laid a paper atop. “It’s a deed to the property that Ralph Martino held in trust for you.”

Antonia stared at the deed as tears flooded her eyes. Martino. Ralph must be related to Joseph, dear Joseph, who buried the trapdoor in dirt to hide Nonno’s resting spot, the foolish demand of a distraught girl who hadn’t seen any other way. He must have found her diary wherever it fell and kept it for her. Had he thought she would return?

“Nonna? Do you know anything about this deed?”

She looked at the paper again and shook her head. Nonno must have given it to Joseph to keep for her. Had he known, after all, that trouble was coming, made provision with a man he trusted more than his son? Why else give Joseph the deed, unless he knew they would flee? But Nonno hadn’t gone with her. He had stopped his heart rather than leave the home he had shared with Carina. She swallowed the pain.

Lance said, “Rese bought the property in good faith. She’s renovated the villa, restored the damage of age and vandals. She intends to run it as a bed-and-breakfast. None of us knew about your deed, and I don’t know which one would stand up in court.”

What was he talking about, court? Antonia looked at Rese, a strong face, competent. She looked at the hands, callused and strong, the defined and developed forearms. She had restored the villa? Maybe, but could she begin to know what that place had meant to the young woman forced to flee? How it had symbolized a life lost?

“Nonna.” Lance covered her hands with his. “Rese and I are partners in the business. With your blessing, I want to go back to that. Make it work.”

Rese startled as though she hadn’t expected to hear it, and her calm fractured enough to show the underlying strain. Ah. So her strength lay in disguise, hiding the fear and insecurity. She was not sure of Lance, not sure at all. And who could blame her when he was so unsure of himself?

They wanted to make her home an inn, her sanctuary a dormitory for strangers. She closed her eyes and pictured the place she and Nonno had treasured. The vines heavy with fruit, the walls steeped in life, love, and laughter. And grief and death. Waves of sorrow washed over her. Was it possible her grandson, the one she loved so well, would reclaim the property lost to her?

If this was all they wanted, maybe they didn’t know. Maybe … She picked up the deed and pressed it into his hands. Rese might have bought the property through some fluke of fate, but Lance would have this deed from her hands. She laid his other hand atop and said, “Y … ours.”

Lance met her eyes. “Thank you, Nonna. But technically it belongs to Rese.”

Why wouldn’t he let that go? He was stubborn, this man. As stubborn as she.

“She paid one point eight million dollars for it. And that was in its ransacked condition. She’s put a lot into it since then.”

Rese turned. “How do you know what I paid?”

“Public record.” He half smiled.

One point eight million dollars? Antonia couldn’t comprehend such a sum. But then, she’d never accorded things a monetary value. It was what it meant to her that mattered. And that villa meant youth and innocence, love and pain. Did she wish that on Lance? She looked from his face to Rese Barrett’s. Whether she wished it or not, they were in it already.

Antonia took Rese’s hand and put it on Lance’s holding the deed. “Yours.” And if they thought she meant the deed,
bene
. She would give what was no longer hers to give, and they would bless her for it.

Rese said, “Thank you.” And there was a hint of tears in her eyes. Eyes that would not tear easily, that kept the world back. Something had wounded her. But then, that was life.

“There’s more, Nonna.”

Lance’s words pulled her spine stiff.
No
. The rest should be left in peace. “No m … ore.”

“I don’t want to buck you.”

But he would. He thought he knew what was right, and like David he would fight any giant. Including his feeble nonna, who, he knew well, was not feeble in spirit. She gave him the sharp look that transmitted her displeasure. Even as a small boy he had resisted its sting; now as a man he brushed it aside.

“I know you don’t want to talk about this, but I don’t understand why.” An attempt to cajole.

She glared. “L … eave it.”

He set the deed on the table and took from the box a bundle of money. “I found a stash of these in the cellar with Nonno Quillan. Silver certificate bills. They’re worth a lot.”

Money in the cellar?
“Antonia, under …”
Was it Nonno’s savings, or had Papa hidden it there for some underhanded purpose?

“I also found these.” He took a stack of envelopes from the box and laid them so that she saw the names written on each; some she recognized though she didn’t want to, men affiliated with Arthur Jackson, some who’d been taken in as Papa had, others as distasteful as he.

A raging geyser shot up inside.
Stop it! Stop!
Wasn’t it enough that Papa was killed? Did he have to be dishonored in her grandson’s eyes as well as her own?

Lance sat back. “How come Nonno Marco never said he was a federal agent?”

The geyser died as quickly as it had spouted. Marco a Federal agent? “What?”

“I have a letter that says Marco Michelli was a federal agent and your pop, Vittorio, was working undercover with him.”

Antonia sank back, weak in every cell. It wasn’t possible.

But he took the letter from the box. “I got this from Arthur Jackson’s great-granddaughter.”

Hearing the name spoken nearly stopped her heart. She refused to take the paper he extended. Nothing tainted by Arthur Jackson would touch her fingers.

“I think this is why Vittorio was murdered.”

Her hands trembled. Her lips shook. Her face hung slack. He knew it all, then. Pain coursed through her.

“Nonna? You okay?”

She could hear him, but she couldn’t respond.

“Nonna? Rese, get Momma.” Lance took the diary from her lap, chafed her hands. “Talk to me, Nonna. Please. I’m sorry I upset you.”

Her vision blurred. Her body felt stiff. Her head was a buzzing hive.

Lance dropped to his knees and took her in his arms. “Please, Nonna. Don’t do this. I’m sorry.”

She wanted to comfort him, to tell him this hurt had nothing to do with him. That he was her joy. That he made everything she’d lost worth it. But no words would come.

Then Dori hovered over her. “Momma?” Doria, her daughter-inlaw who had moved into their world when she married Roman, who now took responsibility for the old woman who was no longer able to feed herself, to dress or move about. How bad would the damage be this time?