Page 40 of Summer Rush

“Nico! What are you doing here?” Alyssa’s smile was enormous. “I just realized you called me fifteen times! Sorry, I didn’t have my sound on.”

Nico strung his fingers through his hair. “It’s okay! It is.” He swallowed. “I have something to show you. To show all of you, if you’re willing to come back to the Mauricio Gionnocaro House.”

“The what house?” Nancy asked.

“What is it?” Alyssa demanded, her tone shifting. “What did you find?”

But Nico shook his head. “It’s easier to show you.”

Alyssa locked eyes with Janine, who nodded. “Let’s go.”

When they reached the Mauricio Gionnocaro House, the same museum employee, Nico’s friend, Barbara, greeted them. This time, perhaps armed with her assured love for Nico, Alyssa didn’t seem jealous at all. She even kissed Barbara twice on the cheek as though they’d become friends.

“Nico was texting me this morning about what happened,” Barbara said. “And it triggered a memory! I knew you needed to see this.”

Barbara led them again through the thick wooden door, behind which Elena continued to sew and sew at her machine, her brow furrowed. Janine pitied her, all alone in that room. Then again, maybe that’s exactly where she wanted to be.

Toward the back of the room, near the thick, black curtains that protected the museum archives from direct sunlight, were racks and racks of paintings.

“They’re unorganized,” Barbara said, tugging at the top of her shirt. “Which freaks me out a bit.” Quietly, she added, “In a museum, we’re trained to organize, organize, organize. But when Paradiso Terrestre was destroyed a couple of years ago, we simply didn’t have the time to organize everything they brought to the museum.”

Janine’s jaw dropped. Beside Alyssa, Nico’s face glowed with pride.

“They brought things here from the villa?” Nancy asked.

“Of course,” Barbara said. “That villa was designed by Mauricio himself, around the time he stole the actual painting— which, as you probably know, was returned by his daughter many years after his death. The villa was a known meeting place for the secret society.”

Nobody knew what to say. Alyssa gaped at Barbara in disbelief.

“In any case, when Nico told me about your grandmother, I remembered something within the mess they brought us,” Barbara said, reaching forward proudly to flip over the first painting in a stack. It was clear she’d brought it out of the chaos, front and center, so that she could do the big reveal like this— as though she were a magician.

The painting was of Teresa as a young woman, perhaps in her mid-twenties. In it, she sat at a mahogany desk in a black dress, a pen poised over a piece of paper, and her face was pale and unsmiling. Around her neck was the same crest she’d worn in the photograph of her as a pre-teen.

“What is she writing?” Janine whispered.

Barbara gestured toward the corner of the desk, where an envelope sat. “I was curious, so I already looked into it. That envelope is already addressed to the United States. And Nico tells me Teresa married an American man?”

“And had his child. Our father,” Alyssa said softly.

“It’s impossible to know, but maybe she’s writing to her son,” Barbara said.

“I’d like to think that,” Maggie said. “Thank you.”

Janine crossed her arms over her chest, studying the sorrow in Teresa’s eyes. It was true that her age in the portrait dictated she’d already left her young son in the United States, that she’d already gone through so much loss, even in her mid-twenties. Janine’s heart went out to her.

“Can I look at something? Something on the back?” Alyssa stepped forward, eyeing Barbara.

Barbara hurried up to help Alyssa turn the painting gently so that the back was facing them again. Alyssa’s fingers fluttered gently along the edge of the painting, searching for something. There had been a key hidden behind the photograph. Why not also behind the painting?

“You think there’s something hidden?” Barbara asked.

“It’s our last clue,” Alyssa said. “I have to make sure.”

Barbara nodded and began to search as well, rubbing nails, feeling at the hard, old canvas that stretched along the back. Just when Janine wanted to suggest they give up, that the train ended here, Alyssa shrieked, “I think I found something!” And then, from between two nails that kept the canvas attached to the wood of the frame, she tugged out a folded-up piece of yellow paper. Yet again, Janine’s jaw dropped. There was no end to Alyssa’s brilliance.

Captivated, they watched as Alyssa unfolded the piece of paper, wordless, until she said, “It’s a birth certificate for someone named Giovanni Cacciapaglia.” Her voice wavered as she added, her eyes thick with tears, “His mother’s name was Maria Cacciapaglia, and his father’s name was Leonardo Serrano.” Alyssa frowned, studying the certificate a moment more. “I don’t know what some of these words mean.” She passed it over to Nico.

Nico nodded as he read, looking very grave. “Maria died in childbirth. Leonardo was already dead when the baby arrived.”

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