Chapter 8: Agnese's Terrace

I drove out to my aunt's farmhouse the next afternoon in a rental car.

I hadn't called first.

She was on the porch with her shawl and a pot of tea, looking at the vines.

She saw the car and put down her cup.

"Caterina. You didn't eat."

"I'm not here about food, Aunt Agnese."

I sat across from her and put four papers on the table, one at a time.

The restructuring draft.

The lease for the hill house.

The resignation from the board.

A bank statement with a freeze notice stamped across the top.

My aunt looked at them without touching them.

"Your signature is on every one of these," I said. "As my attorney-in-fact."

"Donata brought them."

"Did you read them?"

"I read what she told me they said."

"Did you know the hill house was going to be a club?"

Her hands shook a little.

"She said it was a use for the winter. Only for buyers."

"And the resignation? Did she tell you what that was?"

"She said you were unwell."

I waited.

My aunt looked at me, and I saw how small she had become.

"She said you came back from Milan in January and collapsed in a restaurant."

She twisted the edge of her shawl.

"She said you weren't sleeping or eating, and that you were ashamed of being afraid of the accounts. She said she was protecting you."

"I've never collapsed in a restaurant."

"She said the doctors had been told."

"What doctors?"

My aunt's face crumpled.

"I thought I was doing what your father would have wanted."

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