“The Montebianco family.” Enzo pulled out a second report. “This shows your relationship to your now-deceased great-uncle Guillaume Montebianco. The match is indisputable.”
I stared at the papers. I couldn’t argue with a DNA report, but I didn’t quite trust it either. It was like watching a magic act. You know it’s all sleight of hand, but the trick is so smooth you accept it as real. I finished my drink, all of it, in one gulp.
“You okay, Bert?” Luca asked, touching my hand.
“It’s just a lot to take in,” I said, wanting, suddenly, to go back in time to that morning in the kitchen, when the premonition of danger had been so vivid, and dump the envelope in the recycling bin.
“I’m sure this is all quite disorienting,” Enzo said, taking the DNA reports and sliding them back into his briefcase. “But it doesn’t have to be. The estate will go over everything with you in Turin. I assure you, there is nothing to worry about. It will all be clear soon enough.”
He snapped his briefcase shut and stood to go.
“I can’t believe my family kept so many secrets,” I said quietly, speaking more to myself than to Luca or Enzo.
“Every family has its secrets,” Enzo said. “But nothing reveals the truth like DNA.”
Five
We flew to Italy that night.
Enzo Roberts went to get dinner in town, giving me time to talk Luca into coming with me. I explained about my grandfather’s suicide and what I had learned at the Vital Records office. He must have sensed how much I needed him, but he also must have realized that if ever there would be a moment of reconciliation between us, this was it. When he presented the trip in this light to his father, Bob was more than happy to cover at the bar, as it meant giving us time to work things out. We packed a few essentials—pajamas, a few changes of clothes, toothbrushes—turned down the heat, locked the front door, and left everything behind.
At Teterboro Airport, a chartered plane waited on the tarmac. It was impossible to mask my astonishment at the whole thing—the car that ferried us out onto the airfield, the sleek, shining jet, the simplicity and ease of it all. It took all of ten minutes to board. We didn’t have to go through security. We didn’t wait in lines. There was no taking off of shoes and jackets. No uncomfortable pat-downs. We just showed up, walked up some steps into the plane, and that was that. This, I realized, was the world in which certain people lived, a place where those with money were exempt from the rules.
Once in my seat, a uniformed air hostess poured us each a glass of champagne—the Cristal 2008 label peeking out from behind her fingers—gave us each a bowl of cashews, and assured us that dinner would be served as soon as we were in the air. “But of course, if you’d like anything before then, please let me know.”
I leaned back into my huge leather reclining chair, wishing my mother were there. She would have loved the fancy champagne. My father had died in a car accident when I was nineteen, and while his death had been a painful shock, losing my mother had been harder. She had been diagnosed with throat and lung cancer when I was twenty-one, and had lived four more years, each year filled with a Ferris wheel of progress and reversals—she would climb to a state of remission only to fall back into the illness, as if taken down by a sinister gravity. The end was terrible, for her as well as for me. I raised my glass and, pushing aside my feelings about Rebecca and John, and everything else that had been left unsaid, made a silent toast to her.
I was on my second glass of champagne when a TSA agent stepped on board.
“What does he want?” I whispered to Luca, feeling my stomach sink. Surely, they were going to tell me that Enzo was a criminal, had entered the country illegally, and this would all be over.
“Passport control,” Enzo replied as he stood and headed to the front of the plane. “Let me take care of it.”
I watched Enzo, my face growing hot, sure we would be escorted off the plane any minute. But when the TSA agent asked for our passports, Enzo handed him three maroon booklets. The agent opened them up, glanced at me, then at the passport. I watched this interaction with my stomach in my throat, sick with the tension. But he didn’t seem to be finding anything wrong with the situation. He even asked Enzo what the weather was like in Turin.
“Have a nice trip,” the TSA agent said at last, giving the passports back to Enzo. Then he turned around and left.
“What just happened?” I asked, as Enzo sat across from me and picked up his glass of champagne. He handed me one of the passports. I opened it. My photograph stared back at me, and the name Alberta Isabelle Eleanor Vittoria Montebianco was typed out clearly on the page.
“Is this a fake?” I whispered.
“No, it is not a fake,” Enzo said, smiling slightly.
“But this is me,” I said, turning the passport to get a closer look at my picture. It definitely was me.
Nome: Alberta Isabelle Eleanor Vittoria Montebianco
Sesso: Donna
Luogo di nascita: Poughkeepsie, New York (USA)
Data di nascita: 20 Marzo 1988
Cittadinanza: Italiana
“Because of your ancestry, the Italian government recognizes you as an Italian citizen. We began the paperwork after we learned of your identity. The estate has some connections that proved useful to speed things up.” He gave Luca a passport. “We got a spousal citizenship for you.”
“Wow,” I said. And because I could hold the passport in my hand, see my photo, and read my name on the laminated page, for the first time since learning of my inheritance, I believed that all this life-changing business, this Alberta the countess stuff, was really happening.
We landed in Turin the next day. I knew nothing about Torino, and so Enzo explained that it was a northern industrial city in the Piedmont region, famous for the Fiat 500 and the ancient House of Savoy, of which I was (as it turned out) a distant relation.
A car picked us up at the airport and delivered us to a boutique hotel at the historic center of the city, where we were ushered up a wide marble staircase to a spacious, elegant suite. There was a king-sized bed, a plush carpet, a bathroom with more marble than a monument, and a balcony overlooking a narrow street filled with shops and cafés. I fell into a deep sleep the minute I climbed into bed, a bottomless, disoriented sleep without geography, and woke to fresh flowers on my night table, a bouquet of white roses that filled the air with a rarified fragrance, one that I would thereafter associate with privilege. Tucked into the flowers was a card from the manager: Welcome, Countess Montebianco. Please call my personal number if you should need anything at all.
I doubted we would. The place was incredible, so large I almost forgot that Luca was there, sleeping on the couch across the room. I told myself that I shouldn’t get too excited. We would meet the legal team, hear them out, and be on our way back home in a day or two. Even then, after having seen the DNA report, I was sure that there was a catch, something that would prove the whole thing to be a mistake.
I was still in my pajamas later that afternoon when a knock came at the door. Enzo Roberts, handsome and composed as ever, stood in the hallway. I stepped aside as he breezed into our room, all efficiency. He carried his briefcase, as usual, but in his other hand he had a fistful of shopping bags.