“Thanks,” I said. As she walked back to the copy machine, I remembered why I had come there in the first place. “Hold on a sec,” I said, pulling my grandfather’s Certificate of Death from the pile and taking it back to her desk. Giovanni Monte, born 1931 in Nevenero, Italy. Died July 1993 in Milton, New York. Running my finger down the page I found what I was looking for. Cause of death: suicide.
Four
I knew I was being followed the moment I pulled out of the parking lot. There was the same prickling sensation at the back of my neck that I’d felt at the Monastery, the same eerie presence lingering behind, only now I could identify it: a black Porsche with New Jersey license plates.
The car arrived like a sheet of fog sliding over the moon: there was a sudden darkening of the atmosphere, a tremor in the air. It pulled out after my Honda, slowed, and drove carefully, too carefully, behind me. I checked the rearview mirror, saw the car trailing me, noted its tenacious proximity, and continued onward, trying to ignore it. But a new Porsche in the hamlet of Milton was an anomaly nearly as great as a letter from noble relatives in Italy. I fixed my eyes on the road and drove, determined to get home without having an accident.
A parade of emotions had marched through me that day, but for the first time I was really, truly angry. What in the hell was going on? Why had my parents kept Rebecca and John a secret? Or the other eight stillborn Monte babies? Hadn’t they thought that maybe one day I would discover the death certificates and figure out that there was some kind of medical issue in our family? What hurt the most was that my mom and I had spent so much time together when she was sick, so many afternoons watching television, so many mornings walking by the river, talking about everything under the sun, and she had said nothing. Not one word about Rebecca or John. Not one peep about the name Montebianco. Not a whisper that Grandpa Giovanni’s family had a fancy title and a castle and probably a shitload of money.
By the time I pulled up at home, I was fuming. I jumped out of the car, ready to confront whoever was driving the black Porsche, but I found—as I looked behind me, my headlights cutting voluminous sculptural shadows in the snow—no one. I was alone. My house was dark, the driveway empty. I started to tell myself that all of this was nothing to get worked up about, but of course, it was something to get worked up about. With the arrival of the House of Montebianco’s letter, the cogs and wheels of an unstoppable machine had been set in motion. I wanted to pretend that it was just another day, and that I could go on as I had before. But I couldn’t have ignored the letter, or anything else I had learned that day, even if I wanted to.
My head was throbbing. The sooner the day was over, I thought, the better. It wasn’t even six o’clock, but I wanted dinner, a hot shower, and bed. Tomorrow, I would look at the world with fresh eyes and a clear mind. Tomorrow, everything would make sense.
I made my way up the icy drive, keeping my balance the best I could, when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the black Porsche parked down the street. I stopped, a lightning bolt of fear bursting through me, and ran to the front door. My heart racing, I slipped the key into the lock and pushed the door open. I was nearly inside when a shadow fell across the entrance. I caught my breath, and terror, sharp as a spike of ice, slid up my spine. They had, as Nonna Sophia had warned, found me.
From Nonna Sophia’s description of Nevenero, I had imagined the home of my ancestors as a place in a fairy tale, a cursed village hidden in the mountains. In my mind, I envisioned ice-glazed gingerbread houses, a haunted castle, a ring of spiked granite peaks looming at the periphery. I imagined the Montebiancos as a cruel Italian Mafia family whose vicious crimes had pushed the villagers to flee. The one thing that never crossed my mind was that the House of Montebianco would send someone after me and that this someone would be