In Italian, he asked him, “Is she your daughter?”
Giulio responded, “What are you saying?”
“Now I understand. You don’t want kids because you already have one!” Dante screamed.
“Dante, per favore…” Giulio looked so devastated that I pitied him.
“He doesn’t know, Dante.” I interrupted them. My hands were shaking as I opened my dresser and took out the photos before handing them to him and saying, “Here.”
Giulio looked me in the eyes as he grabbed them, his entire face frozen apart from a slight twitching in his jaw.
“Remember her?” I asked in a near-whisper. He nodded almost imperceptibly. “Daria’s my mother. She got pregnant the same summer you were in Madrid.”
Dante asked, “Giulio, who’s Daria?” But he ignored the question. His eyes opened wider, his pupils dilated, and a flood of contradictory emotions crossed his face.
“She told you I was your father?” Giulio murmured.
“No. She always said she didn’t know.”
He laughed bitterly. “Then why do you think it’s me?”
“She’d kept these photos hidden, and the dates coincide, and…we look alike.” I pointed to the mole on my brow. “See? It’s identical.”
I felt so stupid when I said that aloud. All of a sudden, nothing made sense. It was all so ridiculous, a castle in the air, with a foundation of dreams and walls made of my neediness and inadequacies. Afantasy I had built up day after day and had somehow allowed to turn into a certainty. Now it was crumbling. I could see the cracks getting bigger, the light filtering in.
“Impossible,” Giulio whispered.
Dante, on the verge of breaking down, asked in Italian, “You want to tell me what’s going on?”
“Do you think I know?” Giulio replied.
“She says she’s your daughter. È possibile?”
“No!” he shouted. “No… I don’t know.”
“You don’t know, do you? Did you sleep with her mother?”
Giulio raised his hands, as though asking for space, for time to think. I tried to tell what he was thinking, what he was feeling behind that look of panic. But I couldn’t. Dante asked again, and Giulio told him to shut up, and finally he confessed. “I was eighteen years old! I thought it would fix me!”
“Babe,” Dante said compassionately, “you were never broken.”
“I didn’t know that then.” He turned to me. “Maya, I don’t know what makes you think I could be your…” He couldn’t bring himself to say it. “It’s just not possible,” he continued. “It isn’t. I don’t have children. I don’t want children. It’s not who I am.”
“What about the photos, then?” I asked, feeling the cold claws of doubt digging into me.
“You’re wrong.” He looked cruel now, and I wasn’t sure I how much longer I could take this. “A mole doesn’t make you my daughter. Not even close.”
He stared through me as if I were no one, as if I wasn’t even there, and I was so overwhelmed that I didn’t know what to do. He chastised me. “You showed up here with that crazy story in your head, didn’t you? I was so stupid. There were too many coincidences; I should have known. For weeks, you’ve been faking with me and my family…”
“I didn’t know how to tell you!” I protested. “One minute I would say to myself it was time, but then it all struck me as so…”
“Ridiculous?” He cut me off contemptuously. “Because that’s what it is. And another thing: it’s over. This issue doesn’t leave this room, and I don’t ever want to hear another word about it.”
“Giulio, please…”
“Shut up. You’re not mine.” He barely pronounced those words, but the desperation in his tone cut through me like a hatchet blow.
He stared at me for a moment longer, then turned around and disappeared. Dante followed after him and I heard their voices echoing in the stairwell.
