Chapter 11: Line Two

I went in through the front door.

Nobody stopped me. The catering staff in the hall stepped aside and kept their eyes on their trays.

The study had been stripped to bare walls.

A long table stood where my father's desk had been, with a lamp pulled low over a map of the ridge.

Donata sat at the head. Ruggero stood behind her chair.

Ottavio had risen from his seat. His face had gone grey.

"Cat."

"Don't."

I looked at the paper under his hand.

Line one was blank.

Line two read: Ferri Vineyards, 6%.

"So that's the thing that wasn't small," I said.

"Caterina, let me explain."

"Go ahead. Explain it in front of them."

Ruggero smiled.

"Well. This is awkward."

"Be quiet," Ottavio said, without looking at him.

He turned to me. His hands hung open at his sides.

"My grandfather owned this hill," he said. "The whole ridge."

His hands stayed open.

"Your father bought the house at a foreclosure the year before you were born."

"I know that."

"My grandfather died two years later, in a rented room in town, still talking about the olive tree."

I looked at the courtyard through the window.

The old olive tree stood in the floodlight.

"The workers call this place Casa Ferri," he said. "They've called it that for thirty years."

He swallowed.

"I came back from the army and built my own label next door, so I could watch it from the fence."

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