had smiled in the same manner, as if daring the world to show him something new and unexpected. I remembered how my parents had always noted the cleft in my chin had come from him. I touched it then, feeling the proof of my unoriginality.
In the portrait, Giovanni wore a military jacket and stood near a horse, a gun in hand. Although the portrait must have been painted just before he left Nevenero, I had a hard time imagining this man, who appeared so similar to the other Montebiancos, leaving the castle and traveling to New York City with the villagers of Nevenero. How had he related to people who were so very different? He must have had trouble finding his place among them. The military uniform, the horse, and the look of steely confidence in his expression—he had changed so much by the time I knew him.
“He looks just like the rest of them,” I said at last.
“Well, he should. Giovanni was raised to carry the family forward. Lessons in comportment, elocution, French and German, etiquette, horses—his formation was extensive, his father made certain of that. The same went for Guillaume.” Dolores twisted the rings on her fingers. “After Giovanni left, the family title went to Guillaume. Being a younger son was a problem, of course. But not as big a problem as having no heir at all.”
I shifted my gaze to a nearly identical portrait of my grandfather’s brother, Guillaume. “Did something happen between Giovanni and Guillaume?”
“If you consider abandoning one’s family something, then yes, something happened between them. Something irreparable.”
“He must have had a good reason to leave,” I ventured.
“Good reason?” Dolores gripped the arms of her wheelchair. “He was weak. Weak and afraid. That was his reason.”
My grandfather stared from his portrait, his eyes trained on Dolores, and for a moment I imagined him stepping down and joining our conversation to defend himself. He would tell me the real story, rather than Dolores’s bitter version.
Dolores tapped my arm and pointed ahead. I pushed her forward.
“You may have noticed that there are no portraits of women in this gallery,” Dolores said. “You would think there were no Montebianco daughters, no wives, no matriarchs. Of course, this was not the case. The portraits of the women of the family are all hung in the salons, bedrooms, and sitting rooms—the domestic areas of the castle. There is just one exception. There, along the corridor.”
I pushed Dolores past innumerable sets of glistening eyes, to the far end of the room, where a curtain separated a chamber from the rest of the gallery. Pausing, I looked back over my shoulder, as if the great chorus of my ancestors might bolster me, then swept the curtain aside, revealing a small, enclosed space filled with candles, like a chapel. Two chairs sat at the center, positioned before an enormous oil painting framed in gold.
“You asked why Giovanni left,” she said. “This is your answer. She is why he left.”
I glanced at the copper tag: Vittoria Isabelle Alberta Eleanor Montebianco, 1931.
“Go on,” Dolores said. “Take a good look.”
I sat down and gazed up at a canvas almost entirely devoid of color. Vita wore a black silk dress, its fabric arranged around her in layer after folded layer, opening like a black rose around her hips. A hundred tiny onyx buttons climbed from waist to bosom, glossy as the backs of beetles, terminating at a high collar at her neck. Her hair and ears were covered by a black veil. Her skin was pale, almost deathly white, and the background was little more than a wash of gray.
I stared at the portrait, transfixed. Tall and wide-shouldered, she was as strong and commanding as any of the men in the gallery. This strange mixture of elegance and dominance found expression in a cool, supercilious gaze. There was something about the figure that held me captive. I couldn’t look away, even for a second. It was not the light glinting from the jewels in her white hair or the piercing, unearthly blue of her eyes that made my heart beat. It was the expression frozen upon her face, an expression of absolute power.
“She was beautiful,” I said.
“As a matter of fact, she was not beautiful,” Dolores said. “This painting looks nothing, nothing, like her. Nothing at all! Vita has always had a pale, frightening complexion and an overbearing appearance. She was just as awful when she was young as she was as an old lady. Despite various