Chapter 4 - THE WOMAN IN THE PHOTOGRAPH
I invited Dante upstairs because the sidewalk suddenly felt too public.
My apartment was small.
One room.
A narrow kitchen.
A bathroom with a faucet that leaked.
Dante looked around without commenting.
I appreciated that.
I set the wooden box on the table.
"Open it," he said.
"Why?"
"Because my father wouldn't let me."
I stared at him.
"You're thirty-four years old."
"He's Salvatore Gallo."
I almost smiled.
Then I opened the box.
Inside were three things.
A silver medallion.
A folded letter.
And a photograph of a young woman holding a baby.
I recognized the woman.
Not because I'd met her.
Because I'd seen her face in an old newspaper article.
Lucia Gallo.
Dante's mother.
Reported missing in 1999.
Dante leaned forward.
"Where did Pietro get that?"
I turned the photograph over.
A date was written on the back.
June 14, 1999.
Beneath it were five words.
The child must never know.
Dante went still.
"What child?"
I looked at the photograph.
The baby couldn't have been more than six months old.
Dante was born years earlier.
It wasn't him.
I unfolded the letter.
The handwriting was my grandfather's.
But the language was Sicilian.
I read slowly.
"Lucia, if you are reading this, the road is still open. I have done what I promised. The girl will have another name, and no one will know where she came from."
My hands began shaking.
Dante stared.
"The girl?"
I kept reading.
"Salvatore must never learn the truth. Not because he does not love you, but because love has never stopped him from destroying what he cannot control."
I stopped.
Dante's face had gone pale.
"What does it say?"
I looked at him.
May you like
Then at the photograph.
And for the first time in my life, I wondered whether Pietro Rossi had told me the truth about who I was.
