ask why Dolores allowed such vicious creatures at the castle, she asked, “Are you happy with your rooms? They are exceptionally well placed, facing Mont Blanc and the village as they do. The furniture is a bit worn, true. The last resident of those rooms was Maria, une cousine germaine of my late husband’s father. A Spanish princess. Destitute, of course. But beautiful . . .”
“The rooms are fine,” I replied. I sipped my tea. It was bitter, overbrewed. I added sugar and milk.
Dolores held up a long, bony finger, a garnet ring sitting just below the knuckle. “That expression on your face just now,” she said, narrowing her watery green eyes. “It is the very likeness of my late husband. He was more masculine, of course, a bit thinner. And your hair is a different shade of yellow, but I see an exceptionally strong family resemblance. There is no denying it.”
“Really?” I said. “I know so little about my extended family. Do you have pictures of him? Or of Giovanni?”
“There must be photographs somewhere,” she said. “I will ask Basil, my secretary, to look in the library.” Dolores took a sip of her tea, then added in a spoonful of sugar. Her hand shook, spilling drops of tea on the linen cloth. “It is rather uncommon that we should meet this way, don’t you think? Through lawyers and such.”
“Yes, strange,” I agreed, suppressing an urge to go back to the subject of the photos of my ancestors. To ask all the questions that were floating through my mind. Questions about my great-uncle and my grandfather’s relationship: Had they been close or had they had a falling-out? Was that why Giovanni left Nevenero? I wanted to know why everything in the Montebianco family had gone so wrong. Why I was the last one left. “Not the usual family reunion, for sure.”
“Indeed,” she said. “You, raised in some obscure corner of the world, without hope or resources, childless, divorced—”
I felt myself recoil. After Turin, I had come to see my relationship with Luca in a different light. “My husband and I are back together, actually.”
“Suddenly arriving here . . .” Dolores lifted her arms and opened them, embracing the whole of the Montebianco Castle. “To us.”
I felt my cheeks burn. She made it sound as if I had crawled out of some ditch. “It is all pretty astonishing,” I said at last. “I’m still trying to get my mind around it.”
“Yes, well, to tell you the truth, even after Francisco Zimmer told me of your existence, I couldn’t be sure that you were . . . one of us. But Francisco says that the test you took—what is it called?”
“A DNA test?”
“Yes, that’s it. Francisco claims that this variety of test is always correct. Ninety-nine point nine nine percent accuracy, he claims.” She looked down her regal, beaklike nose. “When it comes to family, one must be sure.”
“Of course,” I muttered, feeling even more uncomfortable than before. I didn’t like the sound of my voice—part hopeful, part ingratiating. For reasons I couldn’t fathom, I wanted Dolores to approve of me.
“I must ask,” Dolores said, leaning close, her voice falling to a whisper. “Did they really trace your relationship to this family through saliva?”
“Through a genetic analysis,” I said.
“Heredity used to be verified through church records,” she said. “Marriages and christenings.”
“Now it’s done in a lab,” I said.
A look of wonder filled her expression. Picking up her teacup, she said, “How strange the world has become.”
Dolores lifted a silver spoon and tapped the side of her china cup, summoning Greta. She hurried to the table, filling first Dolores’s cup, then mine.
I straightened in my chair, determined to get somewhere with Dolores. However unworthy she thought me, I was the heir of the Montebianco family. I deserved to know about their history. “I was hoping you would tell me more about the Montebianco family. And my role here.”
“If there is anyone who can do that, it would be me,” she said, a hint of bitterness seeping into her voice.
“My grandfather was extremely secretive about his past. I don’t believe that my parents knew anything about his family. Did you ever meet Giovanni?”
Dolores waved a ring-encrusted hand. “Heavens no,” she said. “I married Guillaume when I was twenty-seven years old and he was forty. Giovanni left Nevenero long before then. But surely you knew your grandfather?”
“He died when I was five years old,” I said. “He killed himself.”