The Woman in the Photograph

"Where did you get this?"

My voice sounded so unlike mine that Sophie looked up.

Alessandro followed my gaze to the photograph.

"It belonged to my wife."

The other woman had dark hair, an elegant posture, and a hand resting lightly against my mother's arm. They stood close enough for their shoulders to touch.

My mother was laughing.

Not her polite smile for photographs. The real one, with her eyes nearly closed and her head tilted sideways.

I hadn't seen that smile in years.

"That's Margaret Bennett," I said. "That's my mother."

Alessandro looked at me.

For the first time since I had met him, I watched certainty leave his face.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

Sophie hugged Button. "I told you."

I knelt beside her and smoothed her curls, mostly because I needed something familiar beneath my hands.

"You were right, sweetheart."

She knew my mother through the little album I kept in our bedside drawer. On difficult nights, we turned the pages together. Sophie liked the photograph of Grandma eating a melting ice cream and the one where I had lost both front teeth.

She had never met Margaret. My mother had died before Sophie was born.

But she recognized that pendant because I still wore it on Sundays.

Alessandro lifted the frame from its hook.

"Come into my study."

I almost told him I needed to start work.

Then I remembered that he was the person who gave me the work.

His study was warmer than the rest of the house. There were books on the tables instead of just on shelves, a worn leather chair beside the fireplace, and a chessboard with a game abandoned halfway through.

He put the photograph on his desk.

"Did your mother ever mention Isabella?"

"Never."

"Isabella Santoro."

I shook my head.

"Or this house? My family?"

"No."

Sophie climbed onto a sofa and began smoothing Button's bent ear.

I looked down at the photograph again.

"When was this taken?"

Alessandro removed the backing. Beneath the edge of the frame, someone had written a date and a short line in blue ink.

Margaret and me. Finally together.

The date was nine years earlier.

Two years before Isabella died.

"That's her handwriting," he said.

I touched the glass. "My mother never told me she knew your wife."

"I didn't know they had met."

"But you had their photograph."

He glanced toward the door.

"Teresa put some of Isabella's pictures in the corridor after the funeral. I didn't ask about every face in them."

There was no defensiveness in his voice. That made the admission feel worse.

I had been imagining hidden motives, a connection he understood and I did not. Instead he stood on the other side of the desk looking as unprepared as I felt.

A knock came at the door.

Teresa entered with a tray, followed by Marco, whom I knew as the man who could arrange anything in the house without appearing to raise his voice.

"Breakfast has become portable," Teresa announced. "Since apparently we are all eating in here."

She gave me a long look. "And you and I will discuss that suitcase later."

I lowered my eyes.

"I'm sorry."

"You should be. You almost deprived me of a perfectly good assistant."

She placed a small plate of pancakes in front of Sophie.

Then she saw the photograph.

Her hand stopped above the tray.

"Oh," she said softly.

Alessandro looked at her. "You know Margaret?"

Teresa sat down without being invited.

"She came here three times. Isabella asked me to make lunch in the garden."

I moved to the chair opposite her.

"My mother came here?"

"Yes. I didn't recognize you, Clara. You don't look very much like her until you smile."

I couldn't remember smiling at work.

"Why was she visiting?"

Teresa folded her hands.

"Isabella had been looking into her family. She was raised by an aunt after her parents died. There were things she didn't learn until much later."

"What things?" Alessandro asked.

Teresa looked between us.

"I don't know the whole story. But I know Margaret mattered to her. Very much."

Sophie held out her plate toward Alessandro.

"Can you cut this?"

All three adults stopped talking.

He looked at the fork in her hand.

"Your mother is sitting beside you."

"She's listening."

I reached for the plate. "I can do it."

He took it first.

His large hands looked absurd around the little fork. He cut the pancakes into careful squares while Teresa watched him with an expression I couldn't quite bear to look at.

Sophie accepted the plate.

"Thank you. You made them very small."

"Was that a complaint?"

"It was a compliment."

Marco looked toward the window. His shoulders moved once.

Alessandro handed Sophie a napkin, then returned to Teresa.

"Did Isabella leave anything about Margaret? Letters?"

"She wrote to her. I remember that much."

My stomach tightened.

"My mother kept letters in a biscuit tin. I went through it after she died. There wasn't anything from Isabella."

I had kept everything: birthday cards, grocery lists with her handwriting, a receipt from the last lunch we had eaten together. For months I had been incapable of throwing away proof that she had once made ordinary plans.

Alessandro's eyes stayed on my face.

"There may be another explanation."

"I know. I just don't understand why she wouldn't tell me."

Sophie looked up from her pancakes.

"Maybe she forgot."

I managed a smile.

"Maybe."

She studied me, then climbed down from the sofa and put one sticky hand on my knee.

"Don't cry before breakfast, Mommy. It makes your nose hurt."

I laughed and kissed her forehead.

Alessandro looked away, giving me the small privacy of not watching while I wiped my eyes.

After breakfast, Teresa took Sophie to find a proper hairbrush and something less glittery to wear.

I stayed in the study.

"I would like to keep a copy of the photograph," I said.

"Of course."

"And if there are letters, I'd like to read them."

"So would I."

His answer surprised me. I had been so busy thinking about my own mother that I had forgotten he, too, was learning something about a person he could no longer ask.

"You didn't know she was searching?"

"I knew some of it. I thought there would be time for her to tell me the rest."

He picked up a pen, put it down again.

"I was away often. Working."

I knew better than to tell him he couldn't have predicted an accident. Grief had probably heard that sentence until it was meaningless.

Instead I said, "My mother used to say she'd explain things when I was older. Then I got older, and I assumed she'd already told me everything."

He looked at me for a long moment.

"Stay until we know more," he said.

I straightened.

"I'm not making that decision because you tell me to."

"I'm aware of that. You made your position clear on the driveway."

"I was frightened."

"You were quite articulate."

I looked at him, uncertain whether I was being teased.

His mouth moved almost imperceptibly.

"I would prefer you stayed," he said. "Is that better?"

It was.

Far better than it should have been.

As he reached for the door, something gray slipped from his pocket and landed on the rug.

He bent and picked it up immediately.

Sophie's pebble.

"You kept it," I said.

His fingers closed around it.

"I was given instructions."

I smiled before I could stop myself.

He watched me for a moment, then turned toward the corridor.

At the end of it stood a closed cream-colored door.

Teresa had told me never to open it.

Alessandro took a small key from his desk drawer.

"Come with me," he said. "If Isabella kept those letters, I know where she would have put them."