EPILOGUE
“Via della Repubblica,” Sammie read from the street-sign.
“So we’ve found it.” Nick’s expression sat halfway between expectation and terror.
He’d chosen clothes he hoped looked impressive but casual, successful but artlessly put together. After all, it was his previously unacknowledged mother he hoped to meet. Only one chance to make a good first impression—right?
“And we’ll find her too,” Sammie assured him. “Even if she’s not home today, one of the neighbors will know about her. Or the local priest, or someone else.”
“Number sixty-three.” He stared up the steep and pretty incline. “Near the end.”
They walked hand in hand up all the shallow steps, past centuries-old houses, until they reached the final property. It sat close to the street—a double storied stone building with a smoky-mauve front door. Mossy pots crammed with yellow and purple pansies and deep blue trailing lobelia crouched in colorful welcome, and a whimsical topiaried tree sat a little apart from them.
“Here goes nothing.” Nick pressed his lips together and raised his other hand to the iron doorknocker. Sammie gripped his fingers even more tightly.
He rapped twice, and the noise echoed through the house. His heart thumped at least as hard.
A few seconds later the door swung open and a dark haired woman in a soft grey dress and pearl-drop earrings looked at them enquiringly. Then her serenity crumpled.
“Niccolo?” She gasped, and clutched the bodice of her dress, pressing it against her heart.
“And Sammie,” he said, wondering what to do next.
Silvia’s big eyes darted from him to Sammie, from Sammie back to him. It was almost fifteen years since he’d last seen her. The quiet drab woman he remembered from boyhood had acquired polish and style. Was this really her?
Sammie stepped closer. “I brought your son to meet you.”
“Niccolo,” Silvia repeated, leaning on the doorframe for support. “I never think...entrare, entrare, come in.”
Her accent was strong, but her English was fine after so many years at the orchard.
She reached out a graceful olive-skinned hand with nails painted deep red and laid it on his arm to draw him into the house.
“I never think, expect, see you again.” Tears slipped down her cheeks. “Sammie—hello. You brought my boy. Grazie, grazie.”
Her eyes fastened avidly on his again.
“How handsome, you. A mother can say this, yes?” Her hand curled around his arm.
Nick shrugged and grinned—pleased, scared, thrilled, lost, found. “How beautiful, you. A son can say this in return?”
“Niccolo.” She murmured his name and pulled him along a shadowy hallway to a large sunny room filled with books and plants.
He gulped a fast breath, suddenly speechless. He’d expected Aunt Felicity’s shy housekeeper to be way over sixty. Remembered her in no detail at all, despite the few photos Sammie had given him. Now, in the lighter room, he saw she was much younger. She must have been pregnant with him while still almost a girl.
Sammie filled the gap by saying, “We didn’t know if we’d find you today, but there was a postcard in one of Grandma’s old diaries with your address.”
“She always writing, writing,” Silvia agreed. “Sit. I make you coffee?”
But she sank instead onto a sofa with Nick, still clutching his arm and drinking him in with her big soft eyes.
“I suppose we shocked you,” he finally said.
“Good shock. Nice shock. Ah Niccolo, I wish for this day long time. I never think it come.”
“I didn’t know I was adopted until a few weeks ago. No-one told me. Never knew you were my mother until Sammie did some detective work.”
“Old, old secret,” she agreed. “I wish...I want...tell you why. Keeping my baby, non e possibile.”
More tears spilled down her soft cheeks, and she buried her head in her hands. Her shoulders shuddered as she wept. Sammie came to his aid, producing a small travel pack of tissues from her bag and placing them on Silvia’s lap.
“All in the past now,” she soothed. “And you must have been very young.”
“Twenty-two,” Silvia murmured. “Studenti—me and Dante.”
She blotted her eyes and sighed heavily. Then she stood and walked over to an antique bookcase topped with a collection of silver-framed photos. Her fingers danced across them and stopped. She brought him back a young man straddling a motor cycle, head thrown back laughing. “Your Papa. Dante Niccolo Giordano. You are Niccolo Dante for his memory.”
Nick blinked several times so he could focus on the man who looked so like him.
I’m not Nicholas David. And my parents were married.
He swallowed hard. Silent seconds ticked by. “Memory?” he croaked.
“Si. He love that machine but one day it do not love him.” She shrugged and reached across to touch Nick’s face, brushing at tears he hadn’t registered. “No be sad. Long time ago.”
Nick took the photo from her with trembling hands and just stared. His own dark wavy hair. His own long legs supporting the motor cycle. His own smile.
Sammie had seated herself again, and while he lost himself with the father he’d never meet, he dimly heard her engaging Silvia in quiet conversation about a book on the low marble table between them. A sumptuous big book full of botanical paintings. Finally he glanced up from his father’s photo.
Sammie seemed to know it wasn’t time to pry. “Look, Nick—your Mom’s a painter.”
Relieved, he bent forward to examine the work and saw the artistry of the small butterfly painting Sammie had given him, but multiplied a thousand times.
“All yours?” he asked in a choked voice.
“Si—is what I do.”
“So I have a famous mother?”
Silvia sent him a shaky smile and a ‘maybe/maybe not’ waggle of her hand.
“A very clever one, for sure,” Sammie said.
“Better than when I paint with your grandmother,” she agreed. “I had plant degree so I could stay in New Zealand. Help her. Learn my painting. See my boy.”
Somewhere deep inside, Nick felt steel bands unhinging, and the desperate grip they’d had on his soul starting to relax. So he truly hadn’t been deserted? His mother had watched over him as best she could, never giving in to the no-doubt terrible temptation to reveal who she really was and disrupt his life. How much strength must that have taken?
He passed the silver-framed photo across to Sammie. She examined it intently for a few seconds, then smiled at him as she set it down beside his mother’s book.
“You’re so like your Dad, Nick. This could be you. Now by some miracle, you’ve solved two mysteries—found both your parents. That’s more than we expected.”
Something in Sammie’s tone must have turned Silvia’s maternal radar on, because her eyes brightened with enquiry and a mischievous smile tweaked at her lips. She’d detected something stronger than friendship between him and his childhood friend.
“You and my little Sammie?” she teased, looking from one to the other of them.
“Me and Sammie—and now you—against the whole damn world,” he agreed, stretching his arms across the table and reaching for the hands of both his women.
The End