Family Tree
One
To discover you are the heir to a noble title in the twenty-first century is like winning a fortune in the lottery, the Mega Millions or a Powerball jackpot, only to find your prize will be paid out in francs or liras: suddenly you are rich, but rich in a currency that has no value in the modern world.
Or so it seemed to me upon learning that I was the last living descendant of the ancient house of Montebianco, a family whose power, from the Middle Ages to the unification of Italy in the nineteenth century, was immense; whose sons—because only sons mattered in those unenlightened times—had fought religious wars and married minor princesses and sired noble children, but whose fortunes (and fertility) had diminished as the modern world rose, leaving me, Bert Monte, a twenty-eight-year-old American woman with few social graces and zero knowledge of European history, the sole blood heir to an ancestral domain in the mountains of northern Italy.
It all began early one Saturday morning just before Christmas. I was living alone, although Luca’s things were still at the house. He’d been taking clothes to his new apartment slowly, week by week, a pair of jeans here, a T-shirt there, in an effort to keep our lives intertwined. His plan was working: we saw each other often, and had even gone out for dinner and a movie the month before. While we’d been separated for six months, and it had been my idea for him to move out, I found it comforting to have my husband around. We’d been together for nearly ten years, and despite the problems—which were mostly my problems, as we both would agree—it was hard to imagine life without him. My parents were both gone, and I had no brothers or sisters, aunts or uncles or cousins. Luca was the only family I had.
Until, that is, the letter arrived from Italy. A knock came at the door, and I left off decorating the Christmas tree—a three-foot fir festooned with tinsel and blinking lights—to answer. It was a cold, sunny December morning, the sky so bright that the envelope glinted like a mirror in my hand. I signed my name on an electronic pad, wished the delivery man “happy holidays,” and was back inside before I saw that the envelope was addressed not to me, Bert Monte, but to someone named Alberta Isabelle Eleanor Vittoria Montebianco.
I sat down at the kitchen table, pushing aside tinsel and glass bulbs, so that I could get a better look. The return address was from Torino, Italia. A parade of bright Italian stamps floated at the top right corner of the glossy envelope. The words “Alberta Isabelle Eleanor Vittoria Montebianco” scrolled across the center. Although everyone called me Bert, my given name was Alberta, so that part made sense.
I was hesitant to open something that might not belong to me, but Alberta was my name, after all, and the address was my address, and so without further debate, I ripped the envelope open. A sheaf of thick, A4-sized pages fell into my hand. The top page was covered in calligraphy, and in the bottom right corner, gleaming like a first-place medal, shone a golden seal of a castle floating above two mountains. The paper alone was something to behold—heavy bond linen stock, creamy and thick, with an ink signature pressed into the fiber by the nib of a fountain pen. The text was dense and entirely foreign. Turning the pages, I tried to find something I could understand, but aside from the name Montebianco, which appeared about every other line, it was entirely incomprehensible. Holding up the envelope, I said the name out loud, “Alberta Isabelle Eleanor Vittoria Montebianco,” fumbling over the syllables as if I were a child learning to read.
My first thought was to call Luca. He always knew what to do. Logical, reliable, sane—these were the qualities I loved about him, and the qualities that bound us still, even after all the rough times we’d been through. I’d known Luca most of my life—we had attended the same schools; we had practically grown up together—and he knew me better than anyone. He had grieved with me after the last miscarriage, and he was the one who suggested we go to therapy, volunteering to join me, even when it was clear that I needed it more than he did. Luca had always believed that with a little work and preparation, we could survive anything. But one thing was certain: neither of us could have prepared for a letter like the one from the Estate of the Montebianco family.
I remember sitting there, in my kitchen, turning the envelope over in my hands. A strange feeling came over me then, clear as a voice in my ear. It was a warning, a premonition of danger. I wonder now, after all that I’ve learned about the Montebianco family, and all that has happened since that snowy December day, what my life would be like had I tossed the envelope into the recycling bin with the junk mail and old newspapers. But I did not throw out the letter, and I did not pay attention to the creeping sense of danger slithering up my spine. I simply slipped the papers back into the envelope, grabbed my jacket, and went out into the cold, bright morning to find Luca.
My husband owned a bar called the Miltonian, a local hangout on Main Street in the hamlet of Milton, New York, a river town of about two thousand people two hours north of Manhattan. I’d made the drive to Luca’s bar a thousand times at least, marking the way by the rolling hills and apple orchards, the pumpkin patches and cornfields, the nail salons and roadside fruit stands. Milton had not been hit with the great Brooklyn migration that had revitalized Hudson or Kingston or Beacon in recent years. It was small, the population static, which was fine with those of us who grew up there, but difficult for business owners like Luca, who needed city traffic.
I parked on Main Street, in front of the Miltonian. My husband’s bar was a short, squat brick saloon with a neon beer sign in the window. Inside stretched a long, polished nineteenth-century bar, an antique pool table with gryphon claws gripping the hardwood, a jukebox full of old jazz standards, and a series of low-hanging Depression glass light fixtures that cast a soupy glow everywhere.
I went inside and sat on my favorite barstool. Bob, my soon-to-be ex-father-in-law, had just finished eating lunch. He slipped into his coat and gave me a quick smile. “He’s in the back.”
“Thanks, Bob,” I said, giving him a kiss on the cheek on his way out. Luca’s mother had died when Luca was in fifth grade, leaving him and his father to fend for themselves. Bob felt Luca’s disappointment about the state of our marriage as much as Luca did, and I loved him for it.
“Hey,” Luca said, returning from the backroom with an armful of bottles—Hudson Baby Bourbon, Catskill Curious Gin, and others I couldn’t name.
He was surprised to see me there; I hadn’t been to the bar since our separation.
“Want some lunch?” He hadn’t shaved in a while, and a thin blond scruff covered his chin and cheeks, giving him a disheveled look I’d always found sexy.
“A drink,” I said, sliding the envelope onto the bar. “Gin and tonic, extra lime.”
In the past, I wouldn’t have had to tell him. Luca knew what I liked to drink and usually had it ready before I could order. But lately, this man I had known most of my life looked at me as though I had become a different person and all the things I used to like—black coffee, and long walks by the river, and suspense novels, and a strong gin and tonic with extra lime—might change as easily as my mood.
As he mixed my drink, I spread the pages out on the bar, smoothing down the edges, trying (and failing) to understand a word or two of Italian. They looked like official documents to me—at least the top one did, with its large golden seal and colorful calligraphy.