Page 68 of The Honest Affair

There was a clattering of footsteps, and another girl appeared who resembled Giuseppe even more strongly than her sister.

“Perché?” she demanded. “Quali americani?”

Beside me, Matthew cleared his throat. “That would be us,” he said, in English for my benefit before repeating himself in Italian.

“Oh!” said the girl. “Hello.”

“This is my sister, Rosina,” said Lucrezia. “I’m sorry she is rude. She loves the farm very much. We both do.”

The younger girl broke into a sudden spat of angry Italian, and Lucrezia immediately started snapping back at her. I couldn’t follow most of it, but it was clear they were mostly fighting about selling the house.

“Excuse me,” I broke in suddenly. “But there’s been a misunderstanding. As much as I’d love a tour of the grounds, I’m not here for the house. I’m here to meet, well, the two of you.”

The girls immediately stopped squabbling to stare at me.

“Us?” repeated Rosina, shoving a messy lock of brown hair out of her face. “Why are you here to meet us?”

“Your mother sent me,” I said. “She—I met her this morning. I, well. I knew your father, Giuseppe, a long time ago. My name is Nina de Vries.”

Their expressions didn’t change, but something else, something much more subtle did. A tiny shift in posture, a slight movement of chins. Whatever it was, it was palpable and frosty. And told me that, like their mother, they understood exactly my connection to Giuseppe Bianchi.

“Our father?” Lucrezia asked. “When did you know him? He died almost ten years ago.”

I nodded. “Yes, I know. I was very sorry to hear it. I was a student of his at the university the year before his death.”

The frost turned to ice.

“Lo sapevo,” Rosina muttered to her sister, which I did understand as “I knew it.”

I took a step forward, hands held out as I reluctantly dropped Matthew’s. “I know what you must be thinking.”

“That we’re surprised our father had an American lover?” snapped Rosina. “No, not such a surprise. Four of you came to his funeral. And you all looked like whores.”

“Rosina!” snapped Lucrezia.

I swallowed. “No, it’s all right. I—it’s all right.”

“Well,” said Lucrezia, who was, like her mother, a bit slower to speak but maybe more intimidating than her sharp-tongued sister. “What do you want, then? A keepsake? Forgiveness? We don’t have either. Babbo left us nothing but this old farm, and now it isn’t worth anything. With so many dead trees, it can’t even earn enough to pay the taxes.”

Once again, Rosina burst into a torrent of Italian and looked like she might cry. It only lasted a few seconds until she remembered she had an audience. Then she stomped over to the mauve-colored sofa and flopped down, arms crossed.

Lucrezia sighed, then turned back to me. “Well?”

I swallowed, then pulled out my phone. “I wanted to show you this. I…” I glanced nervously between the girls. “You’re not wrong about the nature of your father’s and my relationship. And I apologize for any pain I may have caused. But I can’t say I regret it completely, because if I hadn’t known him, I never would have had my daughter. Olivia.”

I held out the phone, and Lucrezia took it. She looked like she wanted to throw it back to me until she got a good look at Olivia’s school picture from this year. All resentment was replaced by complete and utter shock.

“Cavolo,” she whispered to herself. “Rosina. Vieni qui. You need to look at this.”

Rosina pushed herself from the couch, muttering grumpily in Italian.

“What? What did she have to—figlio di puttana!” she snapped when she saw the photograph.

Matthew snorted beside me. “Technically, it should be figlia, no? Daughter of a bitch would make more sense.”

Both girls looked up from the phone.

“Ha!” Rosina barked a terse laugh.

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