Chapter 2
Andrea knew he should have told them that he was the mayor right from the beginning.
He’d figured that they were just two tourists looking to get a photo of the Carlo Giuseppe Ratti painting hanging in the foyer of city hall.
And he’d been trying to finish repairing the outside wall of the town house for the last three weeks, but something always came up.
Maybe he could encourage these two women to come back later—there was no harm in that.
But once the friend mentioned that they were from New York, it was clear that free time was over.
He knew what it meant to be from New York.
He used to be from there too.
“Oh! I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you—” began Lora, a pinch between her brows.
She took his outstretched hand, shaking it.
Her hand was hot in his, the handshake an American kind of firm.
Gray-blue eyes stared at him from under a sandy-colored fringe of bangs, and a smattering of freckles splashed across her nose and cheeks.
He suddenly became aware that he probably had a nasty case of hat head and ran his hand up through his slightly damp hair again.
“Well, he didn’t actually say that he was— Did you?” Vilmari turned to Andrea and cocked her head.
“I should have mentioned, you’re right,” he said. “It’s that I’ve been trying to work on that house and I don’t get much time to focus on it. I suppose I understand being overly determined.”
“Overly determined?” Vilmari cocked her head to the other side.
“No problem, really,” Lora said, eyeing Vilmari and smiling widely.
“I will get right to it. I was accepted to a postdoctoral program at the University of Zurich and hope to start a long-term research project, which will require grant money. This is an important career goal for me and I am very excited about finally being able to make it happen. I can apply for a grant to do my research through the Swiss Scientific Foundation, which is generous, but unfortunately they will only award it to European citizens.”
“And you are not a European citizen,” he said.
“Not yet,” said Lora. “But that’s where you come in.”
“Don’t worry, she’s not going to ask you to marry her for the citizenship,” said Vilmari, laughing. Andrea blanched. “Although you’re cute. I mean, it’s not that she wouldn’t—”
“My father is from this town,” Lora pressed on. “His name was Ivo Giordano, and he died in 2000. From what I understand, that means I have rights to Italian citizenship.”
“Jure sanguinis.” Andrea sat back in his chair. “Yes. You are a citizen by blood. Your mother was not Italian, I am guessing.”
“No. She is—well, she was a mutt really. A mix of things, but all American.”
“And how far along are you in the process? Have you filed any paperwork yet? Alerted the immigration office here?”
“Oh, she’s not trying to immigrate.” Vilmari leaned forward. “She’s trying to pass through here, not settle in.”
“I am sure it’s perfectly lovely here when everything is open and all, but yes, in a way, I am really trying to make this happen as quickly as possible so that I can get to my postdoctoral program in Switzerland and, you know what they say, ‘live happily ever after.’” She smiled.
“Well, yes. I understand. However, this process can take some time. First you have to—”
“Yes, I know. I’ve done all the research, so do not worry at all.
I know that I need his birth certificate first so that I can prove he existed.
I already have my birth certificate here, and I’ve had it translated and stamped with the official apostille.
” Lora pulled a red folder out of her bag and leafed through, taking out the documents and placing them on the desk.
Andrea spun the pages around to face him.
He scanned the top page quickly, noticing that there was no “Lora Brooks” listed on the certificate anywhere. There was, however, another name.
“Loretta?” He looked up, meeting her eyes.
“That’s my birth name, yes. However, I prefer ‘Lora.’” She nodded, looking down at the papers. Businesslike.
“Your name is Loretta Giordano.”
“Lora Brooks, actually,” she said, a tense rise to her shoulders. She still would not look at him. “I legally changed to my mother’s last name. And I just prefer Lora.”
“All of the documents will have to be filed here in Italy with your birth name.”
“That’s fine,” she said, a set to her jaw.
“I will do whatever is necessary. Which leads me to asking you for a slight favor.” Finally she met his gaze.
“As I mentioned, I tried to email someone who works here to get confirmation that my dad’s birth certificate is actually on file, but I think we had some communication issues.
I knew I would have to come here personally anyway, but I am still not one hundred percent sure that the document is here. ”
“The person who wrote back wasn’t exactly friendly,” Vilmari added. “Not complaining or anything—just if there’s some, like, interpersonal-skills training you might be able to—”
“That will be Franca,” he broke in. A fixture in the comune since before he was born, Franca was technically his secretary.
She was also finance director, planning director, officer of public records, parks and recreation manager, and, yes, responsible for handling the general email in-box.
Her interpersonal skills were limited to serving up a death glare so fierce it would melt glass any time someone asked her a question.
“She’s often very busy. No worries. We do have almost everything digitized at this point.
There is only one decade that we have not been able to finish converting yet. What year was he born?”
“In 1956? I am pretty sure.”
He winced. “The years 1950 to 1959 are the only ones still on paper. Unfortunately, we had a bit of a filing problem,” he said, standing.
Of course the “filing problem” had been that he and his friend Nico had toppled the entire cabinet trying to move it aside so that he could repaint the office in his first week as mayor.
Documents had spilled out everywhere, covering the floor out to the hallway in thin sheets of paper dating back to the 1800s.
He opened the armoire and gestured to the shelves inside.
“As of right now, we do not have a way of digitizing the files, so unfortunately, this task has not been a top priority. But everything is here,” he said, looking over the mess.
Every inch of shelf space was laden with papers, folders, booklets, and ledgers.
Some files were stacked horizontally, but most of what could be seen past the doors that would not close was stacks and stacks of paper with no discernible organization whatsoever.
“How long do you think it will take you to find it?” Vilmari asked, her forehead scrunched.
“As you probably guessed, we are quite short-staffed. There’s no telling when we would be able to get to it.” He paused, noticing Vilmari winding up a very New York protestation. “But I am happy to let you come and look for yourself.”
“But not today or tomorrow,” Lora said, her tone steady.
She cast her gaze from the bursting cabinet to him and back.
She could be getting impatient with him right now, he knew.
Most foreigners struggled when faced with the myriad bureaucratic rules and regulations in Italy—in truth, most Italians struggled too.
But she was calm. And maybe a little bit sad?
It was almost like she didn’t want to be here.
Maybe he was reading into her too much. Why was he reading into her so much?
“Look, today is impossible. We have a big event tonight at the yacht club in town, and there really isn’t anyone who can stay back here and supervise you.”
“Afraid we’ll steal the furniture?” Vilmari tapped the polyester-covered armrest of her chair.
“No. However, I have some work to do and won’t mind coming in tomorrow morning if you’d like to get started then.”
“Really? That would be amazing!” Lora squeezed Vilmari’s arm. “Isn’t that amazing? Thank you, truly.” Lora gazed up at him. Those eyes—beautiful, but not only that. There was some story there that was already pulling him in.
“Andre, cosa stai facendo qui? Ti stavo aspettando giù al porto.” As usual, Nico didn’t so much enter a room as storm it—this time to ask him what the hell he was still doing in his office.
A former internationally ranked tennis player, Nico was now the reigning pro at the posh tennis club one town over.
Since he usually received tips from clients in proportion to his level of bravado, he typically led every interaction with concert-venue-level swagger.
He was a good guy, though, and someone Andrea could count on to have a healthy back in a town where the age of the average resident put them far, far beyond the point of hauling anything heavier than a bakery bag of focaccia.
He’d asked Nico to help with the setup for the annual beginning-of-summer party at the yacht club, like he did every year.
One of the few traditions still in place, the party had lasted through economic ups and downs, storms, and all manner of civic glitches.
They had only skipped 2020, for obvious reasons, but when Andrea became mayor in 2022, he did everything possible to make the party happen again.
Nico was usually in charge of table setup and wine delivery—when he wasn’t persuading his tennis clients to show up on a vague promise of a dance with the pro himself.
Last summer, so many women showed up, he should have posted a deli ticket machine and started calling out numbers.
“Yes, I’m sorry I left you waiting,” Andrea replied in English. “Ladies, this is Nico Raggi. Nico, this is Lora Brooks and Vilmari Colón. They are here from New York on some business.”
“Piacere,” replied Nico, shaking Lora’s hand. He extended his hand to Vilmari, who stood, looking up at him like she was in the Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze studying the David.