Chapter 6
“You find that funny?”
“She met you twelve seconds ago.”
Signora Valli looked at him.
“And you are still talking too much.”
Marco’s smile disappeared.
My mother walked inside looking pleased.
The house smelled of beeswax, old stone, and rosemary from the garden.
Nothing had changed.
Or perhaps everything had changed so slowly that memory accepted it.
The sitting room still held my grandmother’s upright piano.
The ceramic bowl beside the door still contained keys no one could identify.
A faded photograph of Alessandra and me stood on the bookcase.
I was twenty.
She was sixteen.
She had flour on her face.
I could not remember why.
Marco stopped beside me.
“I took that.”
“You did?”
“Your grandmother made us bake bread.”
Memory returned.
Alessandra throwing flour.
Marco dropping a bowl.
My grandmother insisting none of us would inherit anything if we did not learn how to knead dough properly.
I smiled.
“She cheated.”
“She always cheated.”
“She improved the rules.”
“That is what cheaters say.”
Signora Valli appeared with a tray of glasses.
“What are you looking for?”
My mother answered carefully.
“Dominic moved some of Carlo’s private papers here after my mother-in-law died.”
Signora Valli nodded.
“He brought boxes.”
“Do you know where?”
“In the blue room.”
Victor frowned.
“There is no blue room on the property inventory.”
Signora Valli looked at him.
“There is if you live here.”
Marco turned to me.
“I like her.”
The blue room turned out to be a small upstairs bedroom with pale wallpaper that had once been blue and faded toward gray.
Three archive boxes stood inside a wardrobe.
Victor looked at them with reverence.
“Original labels.”
Marco whispered, “He’s having an emotional experience.”
“I can hear you,” Victor said.
We worked carefully.
No one rushed.
That surprised me.
I had imagined tearing through the boxes, desperate for Alessandra’s missing letter.
Instead, the contents slowed us.
There were pieces of my grandfather I had never seen.
Receipts from his first warehouse.
A photograph of him beside a truck with one door missing.
Letters from suppliers written when the company could barely pay wages.
A handwritten budget where every figure had been recalculated several times.
Clara sat cross-legged on the floor, reading an old note.
“What?” I asked.
She smiled.
“Your grandfather borrowed money from my father.”
“How much?”
“Two hundred thousand lire.”
“Did he repay it?”
“No.”
Marco looked over.
“Maybe that is the real origin story.”
My mother laughed.
“He repaid it in wine for twenty years.”
“That seems fair.”
Victor pulled a folder from the second box.
“Bell.”
We all stopped.
The folder was thin.
Too thin.
Inside was one letter.
The same letter my mother already knew.
Anna Bell had written it to my grandfather in 1989, years after the company had become successful.
Victor read it silently first.
Then handed it to me.
The language was formal but not cold.
Anna acknowledged my grandfather’s repeated offers to repay the old property debt.
She declined.
Not because she believed no debt existed.
Because, she wrote, her father had entered the agreement voluntarily during a time when both families were struggling.
The debt had been between them.
Her father had died satisfied that Carlo Moretti had preserved jobs that otherwise would have disappeared.
She did not want her children receiving money from an arrangement that had never belonged to them.
At the bottom, Anna had added one sentence in a different pen.
Please do not turn gratitude into obligation.
My mother touched the page.
“That was the sentence Dominic never understood.”
I looked at her.
“And you did?”
“I tried.”
Marco leaned against the wardrobe.
“This explains why she refused the money. But not why the payments were later redirected.”
“No,” Victor said.
He looked through the folder again.
“There should be authorization records.”
“There aren’t,” I said.
Clara reached for the box.
“Then perhaps the second letter was never filed here.”
We searched the other two boxes.
Nothing.
By noon, Victor had made three separate lists.
Marco had lost patience twice.
My mother had found four photographs she insisted on keeping.
And I had found no second letter.
I went downstairs.
The kitchen door stood open to the garden.
Signora Valli was trimming herbs at the counter.
She glanced at me.
“You did not find what you wanted.”
“No.”
“That happens often in old houses.”
“You sound pleased.”
“I am old. We enjoy being correct.”
I smiled.
“Did my father ever come here with Alessandra?”
Her scissors stopped.
“Yes.”
“When?”
She thought.
“The summer before she died.”
My heartbeat changed.
“Together?”
“No. Different weeks.”
“What did Alessandra do here?”
Signora Valli resumed cutting rosemary.
“She went through drawers.”
“That sounds like her.”
“She asked many questions.”
“What kind?”
“About your grandfather. About Mr. Bell.”
I moved closer.
“You remember James Bell?”
“Of course.”
That surprised me.
Anna’s father.
The man who had owned part of the warehouse property before my grandfather.
“What was he like?”
Signora Valli considered.
“Quiet. Proud. Very kind to your grandmother.”
“Were they friends?”
“Everybody was friends then. Or enemies. Sometimes both before lunch.”
I smiled.
“Did he come here?”
“Often.”
“After the warehouse agreement?”
Her hands slowed again.
“For some years.”
“So the families remained close.”
“Yes.”
“That’s not in any of the records.”
“Records are for people who like pretending life happens in folders.”
I thought of Victor upstairs.
Signora Valli must have read my expression because she laughed.
“Your father came here looking for something too.”
“When?”
“The year before Alessandra.”
“What?”
“He did not tell me.”
“Did he find it?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because when Dominic found something, he stopped asking everyone whether they had moved it.”
That was painfully believable.
“What was he asking about?”
She set the scissors down.
“A wooden writing case.”
I frowned.
“What writing case?”
“Your grandmother’s.”
“What was in it?”
“Letters.”
My pulse quickened.
“Where is it?”
Signora Valli looked toward the hall.
“I thought your mother had it.”
“She doesn’t.”
“Well.”
“What?”
She wiped her hands on a towel.
“Then perhaps Alessandra did.”
I stared at her.
“Why would you think that?”
“Because she asked me for the key.”
We gathered in the kitchen ten minutes later.
Signora Valli placed an old brass key on the table.
Victor stared at it.
“You kept this?”
“She gave it back.”
“Who?”
“Alessandra.”
Clara leaned forward.
“When?”
“A few weeks before she died.”
My mother looked at me.
“Did she take the writing case?”
Signora Valli shook her head.
“It was already missing.”
“Then why ask for the key?”
“She said she wanted to know whether another key existed.”
“Did it?”
“Yes.”
“Who had it?”
“Your grandmother.”
Marco looked confused.
“But she had been dead by then.”
“Exactly.”
Signora Valli sipped her coffee.
“She kept the duplicate inside the piano bench.”
We all looked toward the sitting room.
Marco was first through the door.
“Slow down,” I called.
“I am emotionally invested now.”
The piano bench opened with a squeak.
Inside were old music books, a metronome, two yellowed programs from concerts, and a small envelope taped beneath the seat.
Marco found it.
He held it up.
Inside was a second key.
Not identical.
Smaller.
Victor took both and compared them.
“These are for different locks.”
Signora Valli frowned.
“No.”
She examined the smaller key.
“This one is not from the writing case.”
“What does it open?” I asked.
She stared at it for several seconds.
Then her eyes widened.
“The desk.”
“What desk?”
“Your grandmother’s desk in the attic.”
Victor looked injured again.
“There is no attic desk on the inventory.”
Signora Valli patted his arm.
“You must stop taking that personally.”
The attic was hot and bright, dust floating through narrow beams of sunlight.
Old furniture sat beneath white sheets.
At the far end stood a small walnut desk.
The key turned easily.
Inside the central drawer were ordinary things.
Stationery.
A fountain pen.
A packet of photographs.
Nothing resembling a hidden family truth.
Marco leaned against the desk.
“So we came to Trieste to discover that Grandmother owned paper.”
“Wait,” Clara said.
She reached into the drawer.
The bottom panel moved.
Victor immediately stepped forward.
“A false base.”
Marco looked delighted.
“Now he’s happy again.”
Beneath the panel lay a thin bundle of envelopes tied with green ribbon.
My mother sat down.
“Those are Anna’s.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“The handwriting.”
There were seven letters.
Not two.
Seven.
All addressed to my grandmother.
Not my grandfather.
The earliest had been written in 1979.
The most recent in 1991.
My mother untied the ribbon.
I stopped her.
“Maybe we should not read all of them.”
She looked surprised.
“Why?”
“Because not every private letter becomes ours simply because the people who wrote them are gone.”
Marco nodded slowly.
Victor said nothing.
My mother looked at the bundle.
“You have changed.”
“Apparently eight years late.”
“Still.”
She touched the top letter.
“We only need the one Alessandra meant.”
“How do we know which one?”
Victor pointed toward the dates.
“Start around the period of the foundation dispute.”
The 1989 letter we had already seen was not among them.
But one from 1990 was.
My mother opened it.
She read silently.
Her face changed halfway through.
May you like
“Clara?”
She handed it to me.
