“Thank you,” I managed to say and headed for the door.
“You could try asking Francesco,” Sofia said at the last second. “He might know something.”
I stopped and turned. “Who’s Francesco?”
“The great-uncle of my friend in Florence. He was Anton’s driver when he first bought the winery and a close friend. He retired many years ago, but they stayed in touch. That’s how I met Anton, when I went with my friend to visit her aunt. Anton was there at dinner. He brought the best wine I’d ever tasted in my life.” Sofia stared at the empty space in front of her, her thoughts filtering back to the day she’d first met Anton, while I stood gazing at her with astonishment. “He hasn’t been well. He couldn’t come to the funeral.”
“Do you have Francesco’s phone number?” I asked.
Wrenched back into the present, Sofia pulled her cell phone out again. “I don’t, but I will ask my friend.” Quickly, she sent a text, and almost immediately, a reply came in. “Here it is. His address and phone number. I forward to you.”
As soon as I received the contact information, I began to feel the first traces of hope—that I would finally learn something about what really happened between Anton and my mother thirty-one years ago.
At the same time, I experienced a tremor of unease as I thought of my own father back home in Tallahassee, innocent of my whereabouts. Whatever truth I was about to uncover, I feared he would be devastated by it.
Francesco Bergamaschi lived with his wife in a stone villa in the coastal town of Piombino. When I spoke to his wife on the phone, I learned that he had just been discharged from the hospital after a serious bout of pneumonia. Marco was kind enough to drive me there the following morning.
“Thank you for agreeing to see me,” I said to Francesco’s wife, Elena, who answered the door with a friendly smile and invited me inside to a wide entrance hall with a rustic wrought iron chandelier overhead. “What a lovely home you have.”
“Grazie. Benvenuta. Francesco is just outside, resting on the back terrace. Can I get you anything? Espresso? Wine?”
“Espresso would be very nice. Thank you.”
Elena led me into the kitchen, where she stepped through a back door onto a white stone terrace overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea. The sunlight sparkled blindingly upon the turquoise water.
Seated at a small bistro table, an old man with thick, wavy white hair swiped at the screen of a tablet on his lap.
Elena touched his shoulder. “Francesco.”
He jumped and pulled out his earbuds. “Cosa c’è?”
“She’s here.”
With a bony, blue-veined hand that trembled, Francesco set the tablet on the table and slowly managed to rise to his feet.
“Please, you don’t have to get up,” I said, but he did so anyway.
He was tall and slender with a slightly hunching posture. At first, he appeared angry. His bushy eyebrows pulled together into an intensefrown. But then he regarded me with wonder, and his eyes filled with warmth.
“Miracolo.” He reached out and kissed me on both cheeks and gestured toward the other chair at the table. “Sit,per favore.”
“Grazie.”
He stared at me in awe, and I felt like a colorful fish in a glass bowl.
“You look so much like him,” Francesco said. “In his younger days. Your eyes ... like his. It’s extraordinary.”
My heart began to race, and I looked down at my lap. “You’re not the first person to say that to me.”
He sat back slightly, seeming out of breath from the exertion of getting up. “I never imagined I would meet you. If only Anton could see us now, God rest his soul.”
Astounded by Francesco’s familiarity with me—and feeling completely in the dark about the nature of my conception or the reason for my existence in the world—I set my purse on the terrace floor and forced myself to face Francesco directly. “I’m sorry to hear that you were ill.”
He waved a hand dismissively. “That was nothing. I’m fine now, as you can see. But I was sorry to miss the funeral.”
“Me too,” I replied. “I didn’t get here in time for that.” We sat in silence for a moment or two, then Elena appeared with two small cups of espresso. “Thank you so much,” I said to her and took a careful sip before setting the cup down in the tiny saucer. “So you’ve known about me?” I said to Francesco. “For how long?”
“Many years. I knew about you before you even came into the world.”
