The Girl in the Glass (42 page)

Hot tears were forming at my eyes and several slipped out. One landed on the
A
.

“Devon hung it,” my mother continued nervously, as if my raw emotion at my father’s gift was too much for her too. “I thought you’d like it here. I hope that’s okay. I didn’t want it to be just sitting propped up against a wall when you got home. I know how much you love it.”

More tears slipped out of my eyes, and I fingered them away. I had no words to express what I was feeling.

“Okay, time for us to go,” Devon interjected.

“Will you call me?” my mother said over her shoulder as the four of us made our way down the hallway back to the living room.

“Tomorrow,” I said, feeling like it already was.

I hugged her good-bye and assured her we’d talk more.

I turned to Devon. “Thank you,” I said and he nodded. He seemed to understand I was thanking him for more than just hanging a painting. I stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek and felt nothing but gratitude. “The porcini mushrooms were divine.”

He smiled so wide the crook disappeared.

“Dinner tomorrow?” my mother said as she stepped out on the porch.

“Maybe. I’ll call you,” I said.

Gabe and I stood at the doorway as my mother and Devon got into his car and closed the doors. They drove away.

Gabe turned to me. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

Something in the way he said those words that way—as if I was someone who needed help and his compassion had answered that need—stopped me. I just stood there staring at him, feeling strangely relieved. I felt a place open up inside me where my longings are kept—a vacancy. Gabe was the best kind of friend. A true companion. Dependable.

But I was not in love with him.

I felt a pang of heartache, an itch to see Lorenzo. “You’ve done so much already,” I said quickly as emotion swelled in my throat. “I owe you one.”

He waved that idea away. “It really wasn’t a big deal. You’d do the same for me.”

Because that’s what friends do.

“You all set, then?” he asked. “I know you’re probably tired.”

All set. “Yes, I think I am.”

I hugged him good-bye, and he hugged me back.

But he didn’t kiss me, and I didn’t want him to.

A kiss already lingered within me. And as Gabe drove away, I instinctively reached up and felt for that bit of Florence that still clung hours-old to my cheek, reminding me that the man who gave it to me told me the rules for love are made in heaven. Not here on this broken planet, not here. Here is where we learn how to live them, how to honor them, how to risk loving the way God intended; completely, singularly, and with courage.

After Gabe left I sat in the quiet of my living room and read the letter from my father. I read it three times, amazed by the idea that my love had somehow rescued my father, empowered him to be the man I already believed he was.

I had saved him.

Sometimes Andromeda is the one on the horse.

I reached for my phone to call Lorenzo.

My dear angel,

I trust that you are on your way to Florence while I am writing this letter. I hope you have the time of your life and get to see everything you and Nonna talked about seeing. I hope you will forgive me for not being there with you. It was for your safety that
I sent you away the way I did. I made some bad decisions, angel, and I owed some money. The people I owed aren’t patient people. They know I have a daughter in San Diego. I couldn’t take the chance that they would use you to get to me. I wanted you far away from here while I settled this. You don’t need to worry now that you are home. I’ve taken care of it.

I’ve broken a lot of promises in my lifetime. I did not want to break the promise that I’d get you to Florence. I promised my mother I’d take you, but I also promised you. And the most amazing thing to me is, you always believed I would. You’ve always believed in me, Meg. I owe you so much for that. No one else did. Or does. Not Allison. Not my sisters. Not your mother. Not even my mother. Only you.

I found the painting of the statue at my second cousin Tito’s house in Phoenix. His wife was rather attached to it, and I had to pay her off to get her to let it go. Tito said I should just take it; it belonged to my mother, after all, but I paid her anyway.

And about the money. By now you know what I’ve done. I am not proud of it. I got in over my head, and I needed to get out. Allison and I don’t see eye-to-eye on the money thing; we never have. And I know I did wrong by her. I am sorry for that. I’m working on a plan to pay her back. And after I can do that, I will come back.

It might take a while. But I will do it. Knowing you believe in me is what keeps me from cashing it all in, Meg. I want you to know that. You have saved my life so many times.

You are my guardian angel.

I love you, Dad

MEDICI DAUGHTER
by Sofia Borelli

Foreword
by Marguerite Pomeroy DiSantis

The first time I saw Florence, I was a little girl standing in my grandmother’s living room looking at a painting of a Renaissance statue of Andromeda. My love for Florence begins there, while standing in sneakers on the tiled floor of my immigrant grandmother’s house, more than twenty years before I breathed Florentine air and gazed on her beauty.

Sometimes the memories you make from a place you’ve longed to visit begin before you ever get there. Sometimes they are meshed with the memories others have of that same place, and sometimes your memories find their meaning only in the memories of others.

Florence is a destination, a landmark, a repository, a window to the past, but it is also the canvas on which I found my childhood dreams coming true in surprising ways, within all the treasures of this city. When you can imagine a reality that transcends ugliness, you nurture the hope it takes to see past what perhaps you cannot change.

Imagine for a moment, that you are Medici-born, that in your veins flows the resilient pulse of the Renaissance. Imagine that you can hear the echoes of Michelangelo’s chisel and the pounding of the hammer falls on the sweeping curve of the emerging Duomo, and the tiny whispers of horsehair brushes dipped in paint.

Imagine that you’ve been empowered to believe
Renaissance
isn’t just a word; it’s the essence of rebirth; it’s what happens when you dare to believe what is isn’t what it has to be; it can be remade.

Medici Daughter
is the imagined story of Nora Orsini, about whom so little is known, the granddaughter of the great Cosimo I, but it is also Sofia Borelli’s story, and hers and mine together as our stories collided on the streets of this beguiling city. It took two years for this half-memoir, half-fictionalized account to find a publishing home, but I believe the wait was worth it.

I met Sofia Borelli on the pages of her memoir of Florence. And then I met Nora Orsini in the very person of Sofia herself. And while learning their stories, I fell in love with their city and with the man I would marry.

Through these two Medici daughters, I learned to imagine what could be, might be.

And that what might be is worth risking to have.

Marguerite Pomeroy DiSantis

Florence, Italy

Readers Guide

1. Do you think there is significance in Meg’s living in a borrowed cottage?

2. Was there a place you wanted to visit since you were a child? What was it like when you finally went? If you haven’t been yet, do you think you will go?

3. Meg’s connection to her Nonna’s painting and that feeling she had in her home fuel a great deal of her emotions connected to Florence as well as a deeper longing. Can you identify a memory from your childhood that invokes in you a response like Meg’s?

4. How would you describe Meg’s father? Do you think he loves his daughter? If you were Meg, would you have waited as long as she did for her father to take her to Florence?

5. Why was Meg’s parents’ divorce so devastating? Can you relate to her sense of loss?

6. What did Meg find compelling about Devon? What was the basis of her attraction to him? On the other hand, why do you think Devon was attracted to Meg’s mother?

7. Were you surprised or not surprised that Meg’s father was not in Florence when Meg arrived? How would her trip have been different had he been there?

8. In Nora Orsini’s narrative, the nurse tells Nora, “You see that girl in the glass? You are the one who will say who she is, Nora. You decide who she will be.” Was that good advice?

9. Were the actions that Sofia’s parents took when she was a child justifiable? Did Sofia’s father equip her to deal with heartache and loss, or did his actions merely cripple her ability to deal with reality? How did Nora Orsini deal with life’s hardships?

10. At dinner, Lorenzo tells Renata that the rules for love are made in heaven, and Renata responds that is why the rules don’t work on Earth. Lorenzo says, “I could not live up to the rules. And you could not. The rules are fine. It’s us who are broken.” Is Lorenzo right? Why do you think Lorenzo felt that he’d failed at love?

11. Lorenzo tells Meg that it’s good there are people like Renata who see everything in black and white because “they remind us of what stays the same, no matter what.” Do you agree? Are you a shades-of-gray person, or do you see things as black or white? Are you more like Lorenzo or Renata?

12. When Meg finally sees the statue, she is disappointed that it doesn’t match the one she has in her memory. Have you ever visited something that was part of a vivid childhood memory
only to have it seem small and underwhelming when you saw it again as an adult? Why do you think that is?

13. Do you think Sofia should be allowed to keep her delusions? Why or why not?

14. What gave Meg the courage to call Lorenzo after she read her father’s letter? How do you think Meg convinced Lorenzo he was worth the risk of being loved?

Author’s Note

One of the lovely things about writing fiction is the freedom to manipulate reality, to create people who seem real but aren’t, endowing them with a past that doesn’t exist and giving them desires that resonate in us even if the people themselves are imaginary. There is much about
The Girl in the Glass
that is real, much that I concocted, and much that is as real as I can imagine it.

Nora Orsini was indeed the granddaughter of the great Cosimo I and the daughter of the murdered Isabella de’ Medici Orsini. But there is very little written about Nora in any historical records. While we can’t know for certain what her childhood was like after her mother was killed and her father disengaged himself from her, it is possible to imagine it. The narrative in
The Girl in the Glass
is how I imagined it.

Nora did indeed marry Alessandro Sforza, and it was a marriage arranged by her uncle Ferdinando Medici. There is no evidence that she was an artist, that she left behind any paintings, that she had a nurse who was kind to her, that she left Florence believing she could overcome heartache by drawing from wells of inner strength. But there is likewise no evidence to the contrary, which of course allowed me to wonder and speculate and suppose. I attempted to craft as believable and accurate a tale as possible. Any inaccuracies were for the sake of story.

If you get to Florence someday, please do find a trattoria that serves porcini mushrooms. They really are as soft and sweet as marshmallows.

If you would like to know more about the Medici family, or Florence, or Isabella de’ Medici, I recommend these books:
The House of Medici—Its Rise and Fall
by Christopher Hibbert (William Morrow Paperbacks, 1999),
The Stones of Florence
by Mary McCarthy (Mariner Books, 2002),
Brunelleschi’s Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture
by Ross King (Penguin, 2001), and
Murder of a Medici Princess
by Caroline P. Murphy (Oxford University Press, 2009).

Acknowledgments

A novel is never the work of just one person. I am tremendously grateful to my editorial team at WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group, including Shannon Marchese, Lissa Halls Johnson, and Laura K. Wright, for opening my eyes to deeper and grander possibilities with these characters. Their insights sent me back to the drawing board more than once, but I am so glad they did. I am also grateful to my agent, Chip MacGregor, for steady encouragement, especially when the task at hand seemed far bigger than my ability to meet it.

Special thanks to Molly Kim, Emily Cates, Jody Cates, Katie Kuhl, and Jennifer Lyn King for sharing their memories, impressions, and photographs of Florence, and for loving this beautiful city like I do.

My Zip It! Book Club gals, and special friends Kimlee Harper, Pam Ingold, and Kathy Sanders prayed me through the tough days of the writing process. Their cheers from the sidelines kept me going. I am beyond grateful.