Chapter 7: Giuliana
Giuliana Conti called my mother's house on a Tuesday.
I was there — I had been staying over to help sort through the blue box, which turned out to contain not just letters but a baptismal record, a photograph of Mom as an infant with her parents, and a handwritten note in Aldo Conti's unmistakable slanted script that said, in Italian, *You were always too much like your mother.
That was the problem.*
Mom had read it once, set it face-down on the kitchen table, and gone to make tea.
The phone rang while the kettle was still heating.
Mom answered it.
I watched her face.
"Yes," she said.
"This is Rose Ferretti."
A pause.
"I know who you are, Giuliana."
Another pause.
Longer.
"I see." Mom's voice was completely level.
"And you're calling me directly because—"
She listened.
Her jaw tightened once.
"No," she said.
"I don't think that would be appropriate."
She listened again.
I could hear a voice on the other end — not words, just tone.
Insistent.
Rising.
"Giuliana." Mom's voice dropped half a register.
I had heard that voice exactly twice in my childhood.
Once when a neighbor's dog bit Paul.
Once when a teacher told her Daniel was slow.
"I was born in that house.
My mother is bur*ed on that property.
I have letters from my father written in his own hand that establish exactly what happened in 1968.
I suggest you speak to your attorney before you call me again."
She hung up.
She stood with her hand on the phone for a moment.
Then she walked back to the stove and poured the water over the tea bag as if nothing had happened.
"What did she say?" I asked.
"She offered to settle.
Fifty thousand euros.
In exchange for dropping the claim and signing a statement saying I left voluntarily."
"Fifty thousand out of three-eighty."
"Yes."
"That's insulting."
"Yes." Mom brought her cup to the table and sat down.
"She also said that if I pursue the full claim, she'll make things unpleasant.
She has a son who is a journalist.
She implied he would write something."
"Write what?
That your father exiled you at eighteen?"
"That I abandoned the family.
That I was a disgrace.
That I had a child out of wedlock and ran away." Mom wrapped both hands around her cup.
"The old story.
The one that was always easier for them."
I sat down across from her.
"She doesn't know about Marco," I said.
"No."
"She doesn't know that the reason you left — the reason your father sent you away — was because you were pregnant with his child."
"No."
"If that comes out, it changes the whole picture.
It shows your father had a direct reason to hide you."
Mom looked at me steadily.
"It also means Marco's name comes into this," she said.
"His life.
His restaurant.
His son."
I hadn't thought of that.
"We'd need to tell him," I said.
"Yes."
"Does he know about the estate?"
"I called him yesterday," Mom said.
I looked up.
"You called him?"
"He gave me his number." The faintest trace of something — not quite a smile.
"I used it."
I sat back in my chair.
"And?"
"He said he has a lawyer.
A good one.
A man he's known for twenty years who handles Italian property matters for the Italian community here." She took a sip of her tea.
"He's already made a call."
I stared at my mother.
Seventy-eight years old, a cane, orthopedic shoes.
Three days ago she had been trembling in a restaurant doorway because a twenty-year-old had called her cheap.
"Mom," I said.
"When did you become this person?"
She looked at me over the rim of her cup.
"I was always this person," she said.
"I just didn't have anyone to fight for anymore." She set the cup down.
"Now I do."
My phone buzzed on the table.
A number I didn't recognize.
Italian country code.
I answered it.
A man's voice.
Young.
Warm.
Accented but clear.
"Ms.
Ferretti?
This is Luca Bellini.
May you like
My father asked me to call." A brief pause.
"I think we have a lot to talk about."
