Can that sort of thing be genetic? Or was it just learned?
Keep a wild animal from its natural habit and it will adjust, but bring it back into the wild, and it will come to life.
A group of children raced past, giggling and chasing, their joy lingering in the air long after they had disappeared. I pulled the bottle closer, pouring another glass. “How are you going to manage it?” I asked, my voice bitter, and took a sip.
Brando moved the bottle closer to him. So many bottles littered the property, discarded long ago, martyrs tocin cinsand drunken arias. “Explain manage,” he said.
I watched one of his cousin’s sons, a boy about eight or nine, fly by with an unlit sparkler in his hand.
“Your army. If you inherit…” I waved a hand around, encompassing everything he could possibly one day have. “Children. You don't want them.”
“Your heaven,” he sighed. “That's what I was craving tonight. Not your hell.”
The look I shot him said,How about purgatory? Nothing.
He shot back with one of his own:Try me. It'll be one or the other, but one at least.
Effing stalemate.
“It’s later,” he said. “Tell me what happened on that hill.”
“Not late enough,” I said. I still couldn’t bring myself to share with him. Not yet. Keeping it close to my heart felt like the right thing to do. Speaking it out loud felt like damning it, exposing it before its time. “But he did tell me a secret on the way back that I can share. Because it’s mine.”
I could see the thought in his head: “Hell.”
“Your grandfather knew my grandmother and her lover. The Italian painter…”
“And.” He didn’t seem pleased with my baiting. The word came out blunt.
“And, as it turns out, Maja’s affair with the artist produced a parting gift.”
Brando’s eyes narrowed, eyebrows drawn in thought. “No,” he said, scandalized, when he realized. It took a lot to scandalize Brando Fausti, but it had been done.
“Yes,” I said, nodding. “Turns out I’m Italian after all! My mother was born about nine months after Maja Resnik’s wedding to my—well, the man who raised my mother. My uncle was born two years later. My uncle looks like the man who raised my mother—well, you met him at our wedding. However, my mother does not. I don’t believe it happened on her wedding night; she told us the truth. I believe it happened not long before. Matteo alluded to this in one of his letters.”
“You rarely talk of him. Maja Resnik’s husband.”
“He was older, not really involved. We hardly knew him. He was an elusive composer.”
“How did Marzio find out?”
“Seems they were good friends—him and the Italian painter. After a time, my grandmother too.”
“Are you going to tell your mother?”
I shrugged. “I’m still in a bit of shock, to tell you the truth. I need time to process the news. Matteo was from Umbria. Not too far from here. I’m Umbrian!”
Brando laughed. “And related to one of the most famous painters in history.”
“Small detail.” I pinched my fingers together, but they touched. Instead of enforcing my words, it seemed like my fingers had turned into closed pincers.
Brando handed the bottle of Chianti to a passing man, who gladly took it with a boisterous “grazie!”
“It does explain a lot. For starters, why my grandmother told my mother that she never knew her husband’s blood type when my mother wanted to know. She didn’t want her putting two and two together. Turned out, my mother didn’t have her mother’s blood type.” I wiggled my brows.
He leaned over, examining my face, like he was seeing me for the first time.
“You have something for Maja Resnik, but your eyes—now that I know, I see his eyes. Maybe that’s why she felt so connected to you. You are the perfect combination of them both.”
