Chapter 23: The Letter

I read my father's letter alone on the terrace wall.

My bare feet hung over the drop, and the sea shone below.

It was four pages, in his big, impatient hand.

Ilaria, my girl, it began.

By now you have found out what I did. You are angry, and you are right to be.

Six years ago I stood outside a burning warehouse in Philadelphia.

I watched a young man carry his father out of the fire on his back.

The old man was dying already. The son did not put him down until the ambulance came.

I asked a man in the crowd who the son was.

He said, Dominic Ferraro, and the family had a week left.

I had a daughter who was twenty-two and bored of Naples. I had an oath I could ask for.

I won't pretend it was all love. I wanted the Ferraros tied to us.

I also wanted a man at your side who would never need to be told to kneel.

But I swear to you, Ilaria, on your mother's life, I never wanted you married to a signature.

I read that line three times.

I sent you across the sea and told you nothing, because a girl who is told whom to love will hate him.

If you came to love him on your own, then the oath is his shame to carry.

You may keep it in a drawer for life.

If you did not, then it is a sword. Use it, and take the Ferraros apart.

Nobody alive will tell you that you were wrong.

Either way, the choice is yours. It always was.

Your mother says I am a meddler. She says I should have told you.

She is right. She is always right. I hope you have forgiven us both.

Below that, in a different hand, small and neat and a little crooked, there was one more line.

Eat something, tesoro. You are too thin.

I put the pages in my lap and cried for the first time since the funeral.

Dominic found me there an hour later.

I held out the letter without a word.

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