Page 47 of The Fall Affair

I smiled. “You look nice, but this wasn’t what I’d expect your style to be.”

“Today my brother is allowed to be grumpy. It’s the one day a year I give him. Tomorrow, I kick his ass all da way to Happyville if he’s not smiling.” She held out the bag of clothes. “I’m going to go visit a friend who makes jewelry. She has a small shop in the village. You want to come?”

I shook my head. “I’m going to finish up weeding this last bed before I close up the shop for the day.”

“I’ll make Mr. Happypants drive us Friday night. Uber isn’t a thing around here. Come by whenever you ready.”

“Okay.”

I went back to weeding, and before I knew it, the sun had started to set. I took off my gloves and sat to look at the sky for a few minutes before calling it a day. On my way up the stairs, my cell rang. The name flashing was Antonio Fanelli

“Ciao, Antonio,” I answered.

“Buonasera, Allegra. How are you?”

“I’m doing well. Finally settling in a bit and remembering what it’s like to relax.”

“Ah. Well, then I’m sorry to have to call. Unfort-unately, I have some rather unsettling news.”

“Oh?”

“As we spoke about, I submitted your grandmother’s will to the notary who handles publication of wills here in Italy. He accepted the will for filing and then deposited it with the registry, which is a centralized repository for documents. Their website is frequented by what we call ricercatori di eredi, in English heir hunters. You know this term, yes?”

I knew there were attorneys who stalked the U.S. probate website to see if they could find heirs not named in wills who might be eligible to inherit anyway. Often it was a relative who didn’t even know the decedent. I’d once had a case where the husband died mid-divorce and his biological father—a man he’d never met—made a claim for a paternal share of the seven-figure inheritance. The lawyers who sought out the potential heirs represented them and, of course, made money off the claim.

“I do. Is my grandmother’s sister Anna making a claim or something?”

“No, this is a new heir discovered. Someone your grandmother never mentioned when we reviewed her next of kin.”

My family’s tree had pretty sparse limbs, so I wasn’t sure who it could be. “What’s the relation to my grandmother?”

“She is Sophia’s granddaughter.”

I blinked a few times. “Granddaughter? But my father was an only child. You mean he had a sibling I never knew about?”

“No, Allegra.” He paused. “The child, she belonged to your father. It appears you have a half sister.”

Chapter 14

Allegra

THE NEXT MORNING, I sat at the kitchen table, scratching the bumps on my chest as I stared down at a mess of papers strewn all over. Antonio had messaged me a package of documents—genealogy report, birth certificates, affidavits. I picked up the family tree for at least the twentieth time and stared down at it. Sophia Bianchi was listed at the top center of the page. Her parents were shown off to the side with birth and death dates in the eighteen hundreds, and one lone line fed down from my grandmother—my father, Marcello Bianchi. His name traced to two more—both listed along the same vertical axis. One box had my name and the other Camilla Bianchi, born almost four years after me.

At first, I’d been in denial. Bianchi isn’t an uncommon name, especially here in Italy. Neither was Marcello. There had to be some kind of a mistake. But then I went down a rabbit hole and searched social media. And I didn’t need a DNA test to know the woman who lived in a village called Ravello was my father’s daughter. She had the same face as he did. And since I was the spitting image of my dad, the two of us looked like…sisters. Not to mention, she was a lawyer, just like my father and me.

Still, I’d run through a dozen different theories over the last few hours. My father had an estranged brother, and Camilla was his daughter! Yes, that’s it. But the family tree and genealogy study didn’t show that my grandmother had any other children.

There was a transcription error on the birth certificate! We spell Bianchi with an h. This woman probably spelled it without one, and this mess is just a terrible mistake. A typo, for God’s sake! But her social media spelled her name like ours. As did her listing with the Ordine degli Avvocati—Italy’s version of the bar association.

Fraud! It wouldn’t be the first time someone had tried to claim a share of an estate under false pretenses. The woman had probably made a fake birth certificate, or maybe she actually had the same name but had doctored her father’s name. Though that theory was quickly extinguished after my third call with Antonio, who assured me the birth certificate he’d sent over was a certified copy he’d requested directly from the Office of Civil Records yesterday.

My father had another daughter.

I have a sister.

My mind raced, replaying memories from my childhood. It had been fourteen years since my parents died, but I could still remember every smile, every conversation, every Wednesday afternoon I’d gone to my dad’s office after school and we’d hung out for a while. I searched for signs of tension at home that I could have missed—but I came up with nothing. The only thing I could think of was the few summers when I was little that I’d come to Italy alone with Dad. Mom had stayed home. She’d gone back to work when I was a toddler. How old was I when that happened? Maybe three or four? I know I hadn’t started kindergarten yet. Mom had taken a leave of absence when I was born, but when she went back to work, she couldn’t take a month off to come to Italy like my dad could. At least that’s how I remembered things.

Everything I knew had been turned upside down by one phone call. I’d lost my parents pretty young, but the time we’d had together had left me feeling anchored after they were gone—anchored to something solid, something I could trust. And suddenly I felt unmoored. My father—the man I’d held in highest esteem and had wanted to be like so badly that I’d become a lawyer—was a cheater. And all the loyalty and trust I thought we’d shared now became a lie.