Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2
Baird and Associates made its home in a tall, steel-and-glass building in the heart of San Antonio. I’d passed it many times, not knowing, of course, that one day life would take me here in such an unexpected way. Bracing myself, I made my way into the immaculate reception. My hands were shaking, I’d been awake since dawn, and all the coffee I’d downed since then was churning in my stomach. Looking around at the marble lobby, the men and women in suits and heels, I regretted wearing jeans and trainers. I had to steady myself before I approached the receptionist’s desk.
“Hi. My name is Callie DiGiacomo,” I began, and leaned lightly on the cold marble counter. “Anthony Baird – his firm – I guess this place? – sent me a letter. He said to make an appointment, so I thought I’d come here in person.”
The receptionist – a tiny face peeping out of hair extensions rigid with hairspray – looked up from her computer screen, offering only a sigh in response. She clicked away at the mouse, then slid her eyes to me. “The first available appointment is next week. Monday, three o’clock?”
“Monday? That’s days away.”
“I know. Are you going to take the appointment?”
“Well, I understand Mr. Baird is very busy, but it’s quite urgent.”
“Everything is urgent in this office.”
I bit my lip. “Are you sure you don’t have anything earlier?”
She didn’t bother to look at her computer again. “I’m sure.”
“But I?—”
“Excuse me,” a voice interrupted. “Did you say you were Callie DiGiacomo?” I turned around to see a man walking toward me. He was gray in every way – hair, suit, tie, eyes. On a foggy day, this man would disappear entirely.
“Yes.”
“I see.” He looked at me kindly, as if he knew who I was, more than just knowing my name. “I’m Anthony Baird. Come on up. And morning, Marissa.”
“Good morning. Mr. Baird, it’s appointments back to back this morning?—”
“Just ask them to wait a little. This is important.”
I stopped myself from giving the lovely Marissa a triumphant look as we walked towards the elevator. Mr. Baird was older than I’d first noticed, and I saw warmth in him. A touch of… sympathy , maybe? Not at all what I was expecting. He certainly didn’t look like a con man. But then, con men should look trustworthy, shouldn’t they? My mind was going in circles.
“Thank you,” I managed, stepping in beside him, “for fitting me in. I appreciate it.”
“It’s no problem, Callie. Your situation is quite… unusual. And it must have caused you quite a lot of grief. I’m going to try and make it easier on you.”
I swallowed.
His office was exactly how I’d imagined it: dark wood; old prints on the walls; papers strewn across the desk, some organized into piles while others fanned out in one long line.
Mr. Baird pointed to the chair on the opposite side of his desk. “Please, take a seat.”
I lowered myself onto the leather-upholstered chair and took the letter out of my bag. “So. This.”
“Yes.” He sank into his chair behind the desk. ‘First of all, my condolences on the deaths of Mr. and Mrs. DiGiacomo. I’m very sorry. We had no idea.”
The force of their loss hit me all over again, so strong even after all this time. The concept of death connected to my parents still had the power to almost break me. I cleared my throat, and Mr. Baird waited patiently for me to be ready to speak. “Thank you. But I don’t understand… how come you didn’t know they’re… gone? When did they give you these documents?”
“Your adoptive parents entrusted the papers to us when you were born, with a legally binding agreement they would only be given to you when you turned twenty-one. Had they survived, they might have decided to give them to you earlier, but sadly…”
Hearing him use that word “adoptive” was like a stab in my heart. “Mr. Baird, they were my mom and dad. My biological parents. I was never adopted.”
“Miss DiGiacomo” – his voice was soft; he wanted to break it to me gently – “according to Mr. and Mrs. DiGiacomo, you were. They told me themselves, in this very office,” he said. That look again: pity. I’d seen it so often in people’s eyes, ever since I’d been orphaned. I loathed that look.
My fingers curled around the letter, crinkling it. It was a huge effort to keep myself calm. I looked for something to say, and couldn’t find anything coherent, only a helpless, “It can’t be true.”
“Your parents said they didn’t want you to know you’d been adopted until you were old enough to deal with it.”
I closed my eyes for a moment. “They told you themselves?”
“Yes. I can’t believe we are in this situation now.”
“ We …? I assume you know who your parents are,” I snapped.
“ Were . But yes, I do know, and I understand how distressed you must be. I’m so sorry. I don’t think Mr. and Mrs. DiGiacomo dealt with this the best way, but here we are.” In saying that, he bent down to take something out of his briefcase – a tiny key – and stood to open a dark wood filing cabinet. He searched for a moment, then produced a box from the cabinet’s highest shelf. Attached to the box with a rubber band was a blue cardboard folder. Box and folder were placed in front of me, and sat there like living things, calling me and yet repulsing me.
“Yes. Here we are,” I said, only just managing to speak.
Seamlessly, Mr. Baird opened a drawer in his desk and took out a packet of tissues, which he handed to me. I took one out of politeness, but I had no intention of sobbing. I tried to make a joke. “Do people often cry in this office?”
“Sometimes.”
I smoothed down my hair and tried to compose myself. “So… inside that file are my real parents’ names?”
He tapped the blue file. “I don’t know. It’s sealed.”
Both of us looked down at the box and the cardboard folder: thin, a bit faded, secured with a rubber band; inside there was my history. The box gave out a strange energy, almost pulsing to the rhythm of my heart. In all my hardest times, I’d clung to the fact that I didn’t have a terrible past, unlike so many other children in care. My parents had loved me, and the tragedy that had befallen us had been nobody’s fault, just a terrible accident. I had a legacy of love to keep me strong. But whatever was in there might change that.
Mr. Baird cleared his throat and snapped me back to reality. “Maybe you will allow me to open it for you? I can read it and give you the gist? It might be easier for you.”
“You’re very busy. That… Marissa downstairs said. I should go.” I extended my hands to take the box. I was trembling so much that it almost fell out of my hands.
“Callie, take your time. Stay for a moment,” Mr. Baird said.
I hesitated.
“When you know about your past, then you can look at the future, knowing the whole truth,” he continued, and convinced me.
“Yes.”
I placed the box on the desk again and removed the rubber band, my hands still trembling. Suddenly, I became hyper-aware of my surroundings: the smell of wax wafting off the furniture, voices outside the door, the light, rhythmic tap of Mr. Baird’s foot under the desk. Little did I know that all those details would forever be burned in my memory.
With trembling hands, I opened the folder and took out the pages nestled inside. The first was a letter.
My dearest daughter,
I clasped my hand over my mouth.
I write this to you in English because you will grow up in America. I was called to be your mother.
I have no family anymore and your father is gone. But surely now you want to know my name. My dearest girl, my name is Malva Stella. Stella means “star” in Italian. I was born in a little village in Italy where the mountains are very high, they almost touch the sky. It’s called Montevino. Not many people live there, and we all know each other. Up on the hill there is a castle and there are four churches at the four corners of the village, to protect it.
I cannot explain in English all the beauty of this place. I wish I can take you back there. I also wish I can go, but it is not possible. I love you very much, and I wanted to be with you forever, but I can’t.
We are all on this earth, under the sky, and we must make the best of what we have. Sometimes families bring you love, sometimes pain, but most often they give you both. Now that you know that I am your mother, you must know that I kept a house for you, Casa delle Lucciole . Our family lived there for a long time, and now the house is yours. I hope you will love it as much as I do. I hope that one day you’ll go home.
Ti voglio bene . I love you.
Your mother in heart,
Malva
I read the last word, and suddenly the tears I was holding back overwhelmed me, and I found myself sobbing. This couldn’t be a joke. It felt too real. I cried because I was angry that my parents had kept this from me, and I cried for Malva and the years we didn’t have together. What had happened to her?
I was barely aware of a hesitant hand on my shoulder, and of Mr. Baird’s voice coming from far away. “Marissa? Tell Jack I’m very sorry, but he needs to wait a little more… Yes, I know. But they’ll have to wait.” A pause, and then: “Callie? Are you okay?”
“Yes. Yes. This is from my biological mom, apparently,” I managed to say. I handed the letter over to him. The far-left corner was wet with tears.
“She sounds very loving,” he said, after reading. “I’m so sorry.”
“She doesn’t say why ? Why she had to leave me?”
“There’s more,” he said, and gestured to the open folder and the box. I dried my tears and looked at the other papers. They were all formal documents; I handed them to Mr. Baird. “Would you mind?”
“Not at all. Let me see. It’s all copies of stuff – in Italian, with an English translation. This is… Oh. It’s the deeds of a house. The house talked about in the letter, presumably.”
I was too shocked by everything to register that. All I could think about was the woman who had written the letter… my birth mom.
“Here. It says you need to make everything official with a local lawyer’s in your mother’s… Oh.” He looked up to me.
“It’s okay. I suppose ‘mother’ is the only word I have to call her by, at the moment.”
Mr. Baird nodded. “The lawyer’s in… Montevino. Yes, that’s the name of the place. The law firm is called Studio Tava. They’ve been entrusted with making it all legal. They’ll probably have you sign some papers; feel free to call me before you sign anything, of course.”
“Sign? Papers?” I said.
“Yes. That’s what it says.”
“But that means I’d be going there.”
“Well… I suppose that was taken for granted. That you’d go to this… Montevino… place, and sort it all out.”
Suddenly, I felt very hot. “I think I’m going to faint.”
“No, no. None of that, please. Here, have some water.” He handed me a glass from somewhere. “I’ll open the window. Do you want me to call someone?” He seemed panic-stricken, and for some absurd reason, I found it funny.
“I have a few things to think about, I guess!” I sipped from the cup and almost spluttered as the water risked going down the wrong way.
“To say the least,” Mr. Baird replied. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Just lost it a bit.”
“Please… drink some more.” He let himself fall into his leather chair.
I obeyed, and then, a sudden thought hitting me, I looked up. “I might still have a family. I mean, I thought there was nobody left but me.”
The wish I’d made earlier at the Windmill: Not to be alone in the world . Could it be…?
“Callie. As you can imagine, with the job I do, I’ve heard a few stories. And I just would like to give you a piece of advice, if I may?”
I waited.
Mr. Baird’s eyes met mine, and for the first time I saw a hard expression on his face. It was the expression of a man who’d seen a lot, and lost quite a few illusions. “Don’t have too many expectations. Circumstances might be different from what you imagine. I would say, if you can, don’t have any expectations at all.”
“I’ll try.”
Go tell that to my heart.
Malva Stella . Her name rang like a bell in my mind. A couple of times I even whispered it under my breath. Malva , my birth mom.
I was kneeling on the floor in my apartment, the noisy street buzzing outside, going through the documents again, trying to work out what they said, trying to digest everything that had happened.
I’d read the letter from my birth mom a million times now. It was the moment to open the box. Time stood still as I lifted the lid – its contents were covered in a linen cloth. An aroma of forgotten things – compact powder, mold and old books, together with a gossamer scent of dried flowers – filled my nostrils. It was the fragrance of memories. Lost voices whispered in my ear .
Reverently, I laid my hands on the heavy, hand-woven linen cloth that covered the box’s contents. In the center were two initials, embroidered in burgundy thread: ES . I took it off slowly, gently, and folded it on my lap, my eyes drawn to the contents of the box: a notebook with a dove-gray leather cover, a tiny black ribbon peeping through the pages, to mark the place, and a pouch made from the same linen as the cloth. I lifted the notebook: it was heavy, and thick, and smelled of old paper. There was a beautiful inscription on the first page. Flowery, cursive letters: Elisa.
Elisa – maybe that was why there was an ‘E’ embroidered on the cloth? I thumbed through pages covered in the same neat, small script, and then the notebook fell open to an inserted photograph of a dark-haired young woman with glasses, and a man with his arm around her waist; they stood beside bicycles, leaning against a stone wall.
“Elisa,” I whispered.
Inside the pouch was a set of keys – one big, one small, bound together by a metal ring. Attached to them was a label encased in plastic, written in old-fashioned sepia: Casa delle Lucciole … Firefly House. I translated it in my mind. Well, Fireflies’ House, literally, but Firefly was a more accurate translation.
The keys to the house that my mother had left to me.
It was real.
I could feel it, it was real. I held the keys tight against my chest; maybe, if I tried hard enough, I would see the house in my mind’s eye, I would see my mother waiting for me…
I jumped up and almost grabbed the framed photograph of my parents –the only people who had been loving parents to me – which I kept on a shelf by the couch so that I could see it at night in the light of passing cars.
Adoptive parents.
It was still so, so hard to believe.
Nearly all our belongings had been lost in the fire, but the photograph I had in my hands now had been protected from the flames by its silver frame. It was slightly browned on one corner, but otherwise intact. I’d carried it with me everywhere, pinned on the wall beside or behind my bed in the different homes I’d lived in, tucked under the pillow in strange beds I’d slept in as the nobody’s child I’d been. That photo had been my anchor.
The three of us, my parents and I, were on a day out along the San Antonio River Walk; I must have been around three at the time. Little did I know I only had seven short years left with them. That was the time before – an impossible era of love, peace and calm, almost forgotten but not quite, floating on the horizon of all my memories.
On the left was my dad, holding me up. He was smiling at the camera, squinting into the sun. He wore a football jersey, and it was clear he was in the early stages of balding. On his shoulder, I clutched an ice-cream cone covered in sprinkles, most of which were around my mouth. My mom, on the right, was turned toward me, caught in the act of trying to clean my face. She was smiling too, a big straw hat dipped over her head. She had short, plump fingers, and I thought I remembered the feeling of them, soft on my skin – or maybe it was just my imagination. Whenever I saw her smile, her scent came back to me – a scent I couldn’t quite identify, I couldn’t describe with words. I closed my eyes briefly and ran my fingers over the photograph, as if I could touch them again that way.
I’d looked at the picture so many times, I knew all its intricacies. But this time it was different. Did it make sense to still think I looked like them? Everyone always said I had my father’s tall frame, my mom’s dark hair. Her smile… How could they believe that keeping the truth from me for so long was a good idea?
They didn’t know they would die young, of course – a spark in a faulty plug, a tiny, unexpected event that had led us to disaster – but they’d left no official record of my adoption, no trail I could follow. How was the adoption done? An informal agreement? Maybe my parents and Malva had known each other before I was adopted. Maybe they were friends, and they had organized the whole thing between them, which was why there was no record of it. Had my biological mother not left that letter, I would never have known…
I placed the photograph back on the shelf.
It suddenly seemed inevitable that I should go to Montevino and find out the truth for myself. My heart told me there was no other way. I needed to discover who I really was; I needed to follow this strange thread, wherever it led me, otherwise, I would never know.
Happy birthday, Callie .
***