The Girl in the Glass (39 page)

31

Emilio and Lorenzo talked the entire time it took to drive back to the building. I tried to catch a word here and there that I could understand. I knew they were talking about Sofia, perhaps striking some kind of agreement with regard to her care. I heard Emilio say the Italian words for “doctor” and “institution”—they sound nearly like the English words—but I also heard Lorenzo respond with words I didn’t know but that seemed to pacify Emilio. I was anxious for Emilio to get us back to the flat and for him to leave so that Lorenzo could tell me what the future held for Sofia.

I didn’t want Emilio orchestrating that future and deciding how many delusions Sofia was allowed to have. I didn’t think black-and-white people should be allowed to answer that. They have no experience with fantasy.

When we got back to the building, Emilio pulled up alongside the curb. He said something to Lorenzo and pointed to the windows above us, specifically Sofia’s living room window. Lorenzo patted Emilio on the shoulder and said something in soothing tones.

“Approvazione?”
Lorenzo said.

Emilio looked at me and then back to Lorenzo. He nodded.

Lorenzo said “Grazie” and got out of the car. I followed him. We had barely closed the Fiat’s doors when Emilio zoomed off.

“What’s he going to do?” I asked as we watched him drive away.

“He said for now he will allow Renata and me to look for a psychologist here in Florence. If we can get Sofia to agree to see this person, then Emilio
will leave the situation alone. Renata will be able to convince her, I think. It’s not healthy that Sofia thinks she goes to work every day.”

“And what about the sale of the building? What about Sofia’s home? She’s never really lived anywhere else.”

“Emilio says his buyer is a friend who has wanted this building for years. He will agree to let Sofia stay in her flat and pay a fixed rate for rent with the condition that she can live there as long as she wants. The rent will be taken from the proceeds of the sale. She won’t ever have to write a check.”

“And Sofia’s book? Does he have conditions about that too?”

Lorenzo looked at me. “You have conditions about that, cara. You’re the one who will need to decide what to do. He is already certain you will not publish it the way it is.”

Emilio’s car turned a corner, heading south out of the city toward Rome. Lorenzo and I went inside.

Minutes later we found Renata sitting in the doorway of their flat with a clear view of Sofia’s front door, tapping away on her laptop.

Sofia hadn’t returned.

“It’s only been an hour,” she said, verbally whisking away my worry.

“Maybe we should go look for her, no?” Lorenzo said.

I agreed.

“Where do you think she went?” Renata got up and moved the dining room chair she’d been sitting in back to the table where it belonged.

“A favorite place?” Lorenzo suggested.

Renata frowned. “This is Florence! Everywhere is her favorite place!”

“A place where she feels peaceful, then.”

“A place where she is used to getting good advice,” I said, as the places she’d taken me to the last five days filled my head. She would go somewhere where Nora’s echoes would be the most prominent, where she’d heard
whispered words meant for Medici descendants to hear, words that affirmed who she was. And what she was capable of surviving.

If I were Sofia, where would I go?

I was pretty sure I knew.

Lorenzo turned to me. “Which places, Marguerite? We can split up. The Accademia? The Uffizi, the Duomo, San Lorenzo, the Pitti Palace?”

“I’ll take the Pitti Palace,” I said. “You split up and take the other places. But don’t go to San Lorenzo. She doesn’t care too much for San Lorenzo. The scumbag proposed to her there.”

“Let’s go, then.” Renata grabbed her cell phone and wallet from her bag on the kitchen counter.

As we turned to leave their flat, I thought of something I wanted to bring with me. “You didn’t lock her front door, did you?”

Renata answered that she hadn’t. Sofia had left without her keys.

“I’ll be right back.”

I stepped back into Sofia’s flat and made my way to her bedroom, asking the heavens for forgiveness in advance for the snooping I was about to do. Sofia had several jewelry boxes on the kidney-shaped vanity. I opened the first one and scanned its contents. Pendants and beads. And then another one. Earrings and bracelets. And then another one. Brooches and old name badges.

I turned to her dresser. A mirrored tray held little bottles of perfume and hand lotion. Next to that was a small wooden box inlayed with the design of a lily. I opened it and fingered the trinkets inside. And then I saw it.

The five-hundred-lire coin.

I put it in my pants pocket and replaced the lid. A moment later I rejoined Renata and Lorenzo, and we made our way down the stairs to disperse on the street.

As I walked the half mile to the Pitti Palace, I contemplated what I might say to convince Sofia that all would be well, that nothing had shattered that couldn’t somehow be pieced back together. I was fairly sure I would find her at Nora’s self-portrait. It’s where I would go if I lived where she did and now faced the crumbling of my carefully constructed world.

It’s what I was already doing.

As I paid for my ticket inside, I still wasn’t sure what I would say. What would the people I looked up to tell her? All my shades-of-gray people. What would they say?

My father would tell Sofia to believe what she wanted. It was her life. If she wanted to believe she was a Medici who could hear the wisdom and woes of the ancients, who were we to say she couldn’t?

Devon, who I barely knew and yet knew, would probably tell her what matters is the relationships you have with the people who love you most.

Lorenzo would tell her to find a place where she could manage the dreams of her heart and the waking moments of her days. That place existed for every artist. She would find it if she risked a bit of her handhold on the part of her world that was the most dear to her.

And Gabe would tell her the imagination is boundless, but truth and hope have boundaries we can trust.

As I walked the echoing halls where Medicis had walked before me, I realized I could only know these things because they were what I also had needed to hear.

When we walk away from the canvas of our imaginations to live in the world of ache and wonder and beauty and sorrow, what do we take with us from the edges of the painting?

Everything we brought to it.

I found Sofia kneeling on the tiled floor, her body up against the wall in the posture of the weary. She sat with her eyes on the brown-eyed girl with paintbrushes in her hand. A couple in front of a painting nearby were staring at her and whispering. I walked past them and then knelt to sit beside her on the ancient ground of her ancestors.

“Hi,” I murmured.

No response. I went on, praying for wisdom.

“When I was little, my grandmother would take care of me on those weekends my parents spent trying to glue their marriage back together. I used to sit in front of her painting of Andromeda. You know, I fell in love with Florence looking at that painting. It seemed like a place where anything was possible. Every kid needs to believe there’s a magic place like that. Even when I got off the plane a week ago, I still believed it was.”

She turned her head slowly to look at me. “And now you don’t?”

I trained my eyes to the painting, searching for words to express what I had come to realize. “No. I still do. Magic influences how we see reality, makes us step back in wonder. That can happen anywhere, Sofia. And I’m really glad it does.”

She was quiet for several seconds. Then she spoke.

“Emilio told me my father lied to me about many things. That I am not a Medici. That there’s a reason there are no baby pictures of me.”

“Sofia—”

She faced me. “Papa told me my baby pictures were stolen. He said a thief came into our flat and took all my baby things. Papa said the thief was probably a desperate father who needed my baby clothes and toys and books. He didn’t want the pictures, of course, but thieves don’t have time to sort through what they can use and what they can’t.”

“I … I suppose they don’t.”

“There was no thief, Meg. Thieves take money and jewelry and silver. They don’t take toys and baby clothes. Only a child would believe that.”

“But—”

“There was no thief.”

Sofia turned her head to gaze up at Nora. She was quiet for several seconds. In the moments of silence, her eyes grew misty. She shook her head gently. “For the longest time, I thought … something wasn’t quite right with me. A woman appeared in my dreams and in my memory. A mother.” Sofia’s voice tapered to a whisper. “And … and there was a man. A father. I remember being afraid of that man. I remember this mother had bruises. I remember her sad face. I remember hiding in a museum. And I remember the day she kissed me and told me she’d be right back.”

Again Sofia turned to face me, her eyes imploring me to listen. “I’ve always remembered those things, Meg. And I have never known what to do with them. They didn’t fit anywhere in my mind. Who remembers a different mother? A different father? I couldn’t ask my papa or my mama about it. I was afraid they would think that I didn’t love them or that something was wrong with me. I thought something was wrong with me! I had such terrible nightmares for such a long time. But they gradually eased away when Papa told me that if I let her, the beauty of Florence would speak healing to me.”

Sofia leaned toward me, pulling my gaze into hers as though she was about to divulge a long-kept secret. “The first time I heard Nora whisper to me, I actually felt the shattered parts begin to pull together. When I learned Nora’s father had killed her mother, in my heart I knew something powerful bound us together. I didn’t know why then, but I think maybe now I do. I think something terrible happened to the mother who bore me. I think my parents tried to help that mother that I see in the haze of my earliest
memories and they couldn’t. But they could help me. Papa and Mama rescued me by pretending I was theirs.”

Tears that had welled up on Sofia’s eyes spilled down her cheeks and dotted her knees. I wiped my own eyes.

I didn’t know what to say to her.

“I think Emilio knows who that other man and other woman were,” Sofia said, after a long pause.

“I think he does too,” I murmured.

“And I think I know why my papa and mama said what they did. Why my papa never told me I had another mother and another father. He was such a good papa. He didn’t know I remembered. He was like the thief who stole my baby clothes for his little girl. When you are a desperate man who loves his little girl, you will do whatever you must to protect her.”

In my mind I could hear Angelo saying this to Sofia. And I could see her as a young girl taking it all in. “Of course that’s what you do,” I said.

Her shoulders slumped then, and she inhaled heavily, pondering something new. “But if I am not Angelo Borelli’s biological daughter, I guess I am not a Medici.”

For a moment I thought perhaps she would collapse into despair, the words sounded so final and hopeless. I quickly spoke. “There are thousands of Medici descendants, Sofia. You told me that. They just don’t know it. Right?”