Page 67 of The Honest Affair

Chapter Sixteen

Nina

The farm was not exactly how I recalled, a fact that confused me until I remembered it was the middle of winter. Giuseppe had brought me here in full bloom of spring, when the olive trees were thick with buds, and flowers and dew shone on the gnarled branches like a layer of glistening gold.

“Holy shit,” Matthew murmured as he steered up the drive. “What happened here?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“The trees. They’re completely bare.” He shook his head. “I’m no olive farmer, but I remember the ones in Sicily having leaves year-round. I don’t think they’re supposed to look like that.”

Immediately, I knew he was right. I had explored Tuscany several times as a student—and never had I seen its famed olive orchards like this: row upon row of desiccated, barren trees, ancient and bent as if recovering from some invisible war.

Matthew pulled to a stop in front of the farmhouse, where another small white car was parked in the dirt drive. We got out and pulled on our coats, Matthew his hat. Then we faced the stone villa.

Stout and square, its construction was similar to most of the farmhouses around the region. Its walls were a mosaic of sandstone and brick, topped with a terracotta roof. The entrance was shaded by a small porch covered in vines now twisted and bare in winter, but which I remembered flush with bright green leaves and the tiny buds that would eventually become sweet green grapes.

“Has it changed much?” Matthew wondered.

“Not like the trees,” I said, only now noticing the bits of stonework crumbling here and there, the roof shingles that needed to be replaced, and the wood fencing surrounding the house that split here and there from weathering. It went far beyond “rustic.”

Giuseppe had loved this farm. It was his family’s birthright, a place they had owned for more than four hundred years, he had told me. He would have hated seeing it like this. The disrepair, like the trees, was tragic.

The front door swung open, and a young, willowy woman who couldn’t have been older than twenty appeared. She had long brown hair and eyes to match that were deeply set above high cheekbones, a slightly hooked nose, and full lips caught in a scowl.

She looked like Giuseppe, yes, with perhaps a passing resemblance to the woman I had met only this morning. But instantly, even with the darker complexion, I felt like I was seeing an older version of my own daughter, Olivia. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe.

“Jesus,” Matthew whispered, clearly seeing the resemblance too.

“Salve,” called the girl as she approached, then rattled off a few questions in rapid Italian that I couldn’t follow.

Matthew tipped his hat and answered in kind. Yet again, I was impressed by how quickly he had adapted to the language here. He said he wasn’t completely fluent, but he seemed to communicate with ease. All I caught was our names as he gestured to himself and then to me.

“I see,” said the girl in English. “You are Americans.” She sighed, as if the very thought exhausted her. “Well, I am Lucrezia Bianchi, one of the owners. My sister, Rosina, she is inside. If you want, we can show you around. The realtor is lazy—he won’t be back until tomorrow.”

“Maybe you need a new realtor,” Matthew joked.

The girl’s mouth quirked, but there was too much bitterness there for a full smile to emerge. “Follow me. There’s some mess in the kitchen from the work, okay?”

I glanced at Matthew, who shrugged, as if to say, “What else can you do?” And so, we followed the girl into the house with the acute sense of people expecting ghosts to pop out behind every corner. And why not? Memories could be nearly as frightening.

Like a lot of houses of its kind, it looked larger than it was. The thick stone walls took up more space than one might expect, and the fact that there were so few windows meant that most of the house was cast in perpetual shadow, dependent on sconces, a few dusty chandeliers, and the occasional sunlight reflecting off the warm stucco walls.

Most of the interior was still the way I remembered it—the plain, sturdy furniture, the smooth wooden sink, the beaten tile floors. I started when I spotted the old stone fireplace at the far end, complete with the rug where Giuseppe had lain me bare in the firelight. The memories were so far away—he was nothing but a ghost. But they were powerful, nonetheless. That was, of course, the spot where my daughter had likely been conceived.

Matthew took my hand as we walked into the living room. This time, I didn’t shake it away. I wanted his solid strength close.

“When was this place built?” Matthew wondered.

Lucrezia shrugged. “It’s not so old. Only three hundred years, I think. They had to rebuild after a fire.”

Matthew gave me a sly wink. I knew what he was thinking—this was such a difference between the United States and nearly everywhere else in the world. We had such a truncated view of history, so evident in things like architecture. A hundred-year-old house in the United States would be exceedingly rare and considered absolutely ancient.

“It was profitable until a few years ago,” continued the girl. “We made olive oil. We had enough to pay the caretakers, and a good yield that we sold at the markets. But then the trees got sick. More than half of them are dead now.”

“It’s a shame,” Matthew murmured as he looked around. “It’s a beautiful place.”

“Rosina!” hollered Lucrezia from the bottom of the stairs. “Dobbiamo mostrare la casa a degli americani.”

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