35
Florence
I sink into the couch, my legs suddenly weak, the infamous ring in my hand. I look up at Josie. "Nonna's wedding ring," I murmur, reading the inscription. The one she unconsciously reaches for, even now, eighty years after it was taken. "It's real. You helped it to find its way home."
"I want to return everything," she says softly. "But I need your help to do it right. I don't want to cause her any more pain."
Overwhelmed by her gentle heart, I pick up the matching locket. I don't remember Nonna ever mentioning this, or the silverware. "Let me call Joe and Hettie. We should talk to Catalina, too. She knows more of the old family stories than any of us."
Within an hour, Joe and Hettie are here. We set up the big screen for a video call with Catalina so everyone can see her. When we finally connect, she's sipping vino rosso from a crystal glass.
"I always forget you're seven hours ahead of us," Hettie laughs. "Come stai?"
"Bene. Tutto bene." Her forehead crinkles. "Is this your new woman, Florence?"
"Josie," I say. "Josie, meet my other sister, Catalina."
"Nice to meet you, Josie." Catalina singsongs, smirking. "I'm glad to see my sister is living again." She looks at everyone. "Why are we having a family meeting? Is Nonna okay?"
"She's fine, Cat." I see the tension drop out of her shoulders. "I need to show you something. All of you. And I need your advice."
Catalina's eyes light up. "Is it a wedding ring? Are you getting married?"
Josie snorts.
I glance at her, hiding my amusement. "No. Well, yes, it is a wedding right. But not mine." I take a deep breath. I have no idea how they're going to react to this. "You know Josie's been going through her grandfather's estate."
"Karl," Josie interrupts me. "I won't claim him as my grandfather after what we found."
I nod.
"What did we find?" Catalina and Hettie say, echoing each other across thousands of miles.
"You remember Nonna telling us about the night the Germans came and looted their home? Back during the war?"
"It was December 1943," Catalina says. "They took her wedding ring. It was less than a week after she found out that Nonno Vittorio had died."
"My grandfather—" She stops herself. "Karl. Karl was one of the Nazis there. He took your grandmother's wedding ring. The painting on the wall. You know that one in the picture she has of her with Vittorio and Roberto?"
Hettie gasps.
"Dio mio," Catalina breathes. "Are you saying you found them? They've been lost for more than eighty years."
"Stolen," Josie corrects her. "They weren't lost. They were stolen."
"What matters now is that they've been found," I remind them. I take Nonna's ring out of the box and hand it to Hettie.
"I always wondered what it looked like," Hettie murmurs in awe, inspecting the ring in her hand. She looks more closely. "It's engraved. Vittorio and Elena."
"I want to see," Catalina says, disappointed. "She hasn't talked about it in years," she sighs quietly, "but she cries out in her sleep for it. She still dreams of it."
I upload the close-up pictures of the ring Josie and I took earlier and send them to her.
Hettie hands the ring to Joe, who murmurs in amazement.
"Josie found this?" Catalina asks. "How did she know it was Nonna's?"
"It's a complicated story," I say, looking at Josie. "Do you want to tell it?"
She sighs. "My grandfather. I didn't even know he was still alive. My mom cut off ties with him when I was four. Thirty years ago. When I got a letter from the lawyer about my inheritance—everything he owned—I was dumbfounded. With everything, it's worth more than a billion dollars."
"I'd pee myself if someone told me they were giving me a billion dollars," Catalina laughs.
"That's the one thing I didn't do." Josie chuckles. "I stormed into my parents house and demanded to know how he could have been living only a few miles away for my entire life and I didn't know about it." She sighs. "Mom just told me to leave it alone. Then I found a letter in the bank deposit box, describing his one regret. Taking that ring from a young, pregnant woman. I think he spent eighty years trying to find her."
"Ironic, since she lived in the same city as him for three-quarters of a damn century," Hettie points out.
"I didn't have any idea it was your grandmother that he'd been looking for, but when I was at your parents house the other night for dinner—"
"You got invited to a family dinner?" Catalina squeals. "Then it's official. Wait—" She frowns. "Who takes whose name when lesbians get married?"
"We're not getting married," I interject strongly, before adding more quietly, "at least not yet."
Josie gives me a look I can't decipher.
"When I was at your parents," she continues, ignoring Cat's question, "I saw your grandma's picture. The painting on the wall behind them in that picture—it's the same painting that covers Karl's wall safe at the penthouse. I've been going through a lot of the documents there, and I recognized it immediately."
"She almost fainted," I remember out loud. "She might have, if I hadn't followed her because she was overwhelmed."
"Overwhelmed with what?" This time it's Joe. He's been quiet today.
Josie raises an eyebrow at him. "Your family is wonderful, but they're a lot."
Hettie laughs. "Stick around. You'll get used to us."
Joe clears his throat. "That's why you got quiet. You were unsure of yourself with us at first, but you were starting to warm up. After dinner, you seemed more introspective."
Hmm. I never thought of my brother as the observant type.
Josie nods. "It's a lot. All of this." She glances at me. "I wasn't sure how you'd all take it. If it would change things."
"Why would it change anything?" Catalina asks. "It's not like you did it. You can't change what he did."
"Josie?" It's Joe. "Did you find other things of hers, besides the ring and the painting?"
Hettie elbows him. "It's enough, Joe. Nonna will be tickled to see them again. To put her wedding ring back on her finger."
"We found her wedding silverware—Josie did, I mean. It's engraved. I remember her talking about it when we were kids." I look at Catalina on the screen. She's the one who's most connected with the past, with Italy. "Do you remember a locket? It's gold. It matches the design on the wedding ring. It's engraved, too." I send her a close-up of it.
"She hasn't talked about that in a long time." Catalina looks closely at the picture before looking back up at me. "If memory serves, Vittorio got the locket when he ordered the wedding ring. He gave it to her as an engagement gift."
Josie clears her throat. "We also found documentation of coins he took from your family's home." She passes Joe a list of the items. "The bastard was meticulous, if nothing else."
Joe studies the document, seeming to understand it better than I did. He looks up at her. "I always thought Nonno Roberto was exaggerating what we had. "The coins your grandfather took that night—they weren't just currency. They were part of a collection passed down through generations of Pietras. Some were from medieval times. Many were from the time before the Black Death when Italy was full of prosperous city-states and kingdoms."
"I'll return everything," Josie says firmly. "All of it belongs to your family.
Hettie, practical as always, leans forward. "We need to be careful how we handle this. Nonna's not as young as she used to be."
"She's stronger than you think," Catalina argues through the screen. "She survived losing Vittorio, losing her home, building a new life there. She deserves to choose whether she wants the pieces of her past back.
"I vote we talk to Mom and Dad first," Joe says. "They've spent decades protecting her from these memories."
Two hours later, we're all gathered around my living room, Catalina back on the screen. Mom paces while Dad sits quietly on the couch watching her. I've never seen her this agitated.
"Show me again," she demands, reaching for the ring. Her hands shake. "All these years… He was right here in Delmont."
"Lucia." Dad's voice is gentle. "Siediti, tesoro. Sit."
She sinks into the couch beside him. "Do you know what that night did to her? She was eight months pregnant with me, and he took everything she had left of Vittorio."
"I want to make it right," Josie says quietly. "I can't undo what he did, but I can return what he took."
Mom studies her for a long moment. "You're nothing like him."
"She's really not," I say, taking Josie's hand.
"The ring isn't just about Vittorio," Catalina adds from the screen on the wall. "It's about everything she lost—her home, her history. Her sense of safety."
"Which is why we need to be careful," Dad argues. "She's lived without these things for eighty years. Why open old wounds?"
"Because they never healed," Joe counters. "You've seen how she still reaches for that ring. How she talks about the painting in her sleep."
"What do you think, Florence?" Mom asks suddenly.
I think about how Nonna's eyes still light up when she talks about Vittorio, how she insisted I learn to make his favorite dishes even though he died long before I was born. "I think… I think she'd want to know. Not just about the ring, but about all of it. She's spent her whole life wondering what happened to those pieces of her history."
"But it needs to be her choice," Josie adds softly. "We can tell her we found these things. Let her decide if she wants to know more."
Mom wipes tears from her cheeks. "You know she'll ask how we found them."
"Then we tell her the truth," I say firmly. "About Karl, about Josie inheriting everything, about her choosing to return it all." I look at Josie. "Love can heal broken wounds."
Josie's eyes shimmer with tears as she squeezes my hand.
We spend the next hour planning how to approach Nonna. Catalina suggests Sunday dinner. She'll fly in to be here. Mom insists on cooking all Nonna's favorite dishes.
"What about the coins? Hettie asks practically. "There are over a hundred pieces that were stolen that night."
"I'd like them," Joe admits quietly. "At least some of them."
"They're rightly ours, and they would be in your hands right now if they weren't stolen," Dad says.
"I could sell a few if anyone in the family needs money."
"Guiseppe," Catalina chides, "I think we all have enough to take care of ourselves. You should have them."
"I want to set up a foundation," Josie says, "with money from the assets. I don't want any of it. I'm going to sell everything and use the money to fund research into other families' lost treasures—to help more people recover their heritage."
"Perfetto," Catalina declares. "Turn something ugly into something beautiful."
As everyone starts gathering their things to leave, Mom pulls Josie into a fierce hug. "Thank you," she whispers. "Grazie mille, for giving her back these pieces of her heart."
After everyone's gone, I glance at Josie. "Are you okay?"
She nods, her eyes distant. "I keep thinking about how much pain he caused—not just your family, but how many others?"
I cup her cheek. "You're nothing like him," I repeat my mother's words. "You're bringing together what he tore apart."
"We are," she corrects me, bringing my hand to her lips. "Together."
I lean into her, brushing my lips against hers. When we break apart, she leans her forehead against mine.
"Stay tonight?" I whisper.
"Always," she promises.
I send up a silent prayer that dinner goes well.