33
Florence
I can't breathe. The painting has been here, only a few miles away, all these years. He took—stole—everything from her. While her husband was fighting and dying for the Allies. While she was still carrying my mother, growing and nurturing new life and grieving her lost love, this despicable human was cataloging her stolen treasures.
"The coins." My voice sounds hollow. "Are there records of the coins?" The legendary family wealth.
"There's a list, Florence. Your family will get every piece of it back. I swear it." Her eyes are filled with tears.
"How many?" I ask.
"Over a hundred pieces." She pulls another folder out of the safe on the wall. "They're all listed, and they're all yours."
I sit down hard on the leather chair, countless family dinner conversations suddenly making horrible sense. How Nonna would get quiet when Joe talked about his coin collecting. It was always Nonno Roberto, her second husband, who was obsessed with coins. I wonder if he thought he had any chance of recovering them—a needle in a haystack the size of the universe. And they were hiding in our own backyard.
"Florence." Josie kneels beside my chair. "I'll return everything. I need your help to do that the best way possible. I want you to give your grandma back her wedding ring yourself. Did you notice how she unconsciously fiddles with it, even though it's not there?"
She notices more than I give her credit for.
I stand up abruptly, needing space. "I don't understand. If he knew we lived in Delmont, why didn't he return them? He said in his letter that he wanted to find her, right?"
"I don't think he knew." Her eyes are troubled. "I got the impression from the letter that he looked for her. Extensively." She purses her lips together, pulling up an image on her phone. The letter.
"He had to know who she was," I argue. "Her name is on the ring. He knew she came to the United States."
She zooms into the letter on her phone screen while I look over her shoulder. "Maybe he went back to the town after the war and asked after her. I don't think he knew her last name."
"It would have changed, anyway. She and Nonno Roberto got married before they left Italy. All their paperwork would've had her new name on it."
She glances up at me. "What happened to her parents?"
I shake my head. I don't know the whole story. "They both died during the war. Not that night, though."
She releases a long breath. "Thank God. I don't think I could live with myself if—"
I cover her lips with my index finger. "You didn't do any of this." I shake my head, looking at the painting against the window. "This is insane. You know that, right?"
She closes her eyes as I turn away from her. I need space.
"If you want me to walk away," she says, "from the contract, from us, from all of it—I will. But I care about you, Florence. That part isn't pretend. Not anymore."
Something in her voice makes me turn around. She looks devastated.
"The ring," I say finally. "It was her last connection to him—to Vittorio. She never even got to bury him." My voice cracks. "She couldn't even keep his ring."
Josie takes a tentative step toward me. "I want you to give it back to her. I want to make this one small thing right."
I close my eyes, remembering how happy Nonna looks at dinner every Wednesday night, surrounded by her family—how she's managed to build a beautiful life despite everything that was taken from her. Will giving it back to her just bring back all the memories of the past? Or will it give her the closure she so desperately needs?
"I need time," I tell her. "I need to think about how this will affect her—how much she can handle."