“You mean my mom, right?”
“Let me finish. So I met this woman, and I fell completely head over heels in love with her. I’d never felt that way about anyone before—it was like I'd been looking for her all along and just hadn’t realized it. I knew I had to do everything in my power to make her feel the same way, so I started by being her friend. I took an Italian class I didn’t need just so I’d have some extra time with her—”
“The beginners’ class?”
“Shh. Lina, listen. We took Italian together, I sat in on the rest of her classes, and I even worked my way into her circle of friends. But every time I tried to summon the courage to tell her how I felt, I turned into a blob of Jell-O.”
“A blob of Jell-O?” I said incredulously.
“Yes. You know, the gelatin—”
“I know what Jell-O is!” Apparently “good guy” does not equal “good storyteller.”
“What I mean by that is that I liked her so much it literally tongue-tied me. And then I found out I was too late. While I was bumbling around, carrying her books to class and pretending I liked to go out dancing, some other man had swooped in and carried her off.”
“Matteo Rossi.”
He flinched. “How do you know his name?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
He hesitated. “Anyway. I told myself that if this other guy was someone great, someone who really cared about her and made her happy, I would leave it alone. But I knew Matteo, and I knew what he was really like. Unfortunately, your mother was blinded by him for a long time, and even though we tried our hand at a relationship, she ended up choosing him. That’s how you came to be—her relationship with Matteo. But when your mom got sick, I was the one she asked to step in. And so I did. Because I loved her.” He nudged me. “And you’re kind of growing on me too.”
I groaned again. “Okay, nice story. But you got some of it wrong, and why did you and my grandma tell me you’re my father if it isn’t true?”
“I can see now that that was wrong, and I’m sorry. I wasn’t planning to at first. Your grandmother and I started communicating after Hadley passed, and a few weeks in I realized that your grandmother assumed I was your father. I knew it wasn’t true, but I worried that if I told her the truth, she’d change her mind about sending you, and your mother had made me promise to bring you here. I also thought it might be better for you. I thought that if you believed I was your father it would make you more likely to come here and give me a chance.”
“Except I was a total brat.”
“No. Under the circumstances, you were actually pretty great.”
“Liar.”
He smiled. “I guess I just didn’t know what else to do. Your grandfather was already struggling, and I didn’t know what the situation was with Addie’s family. I was worried you wouldn’t have anywhere to go. So when your grandmother asked if she could tell you that I’m your father, I said yes.” He shook his head. “I planned to tell you sooner rather than later, but after that night at the pizzeria, I thought I’d let you settle in first. But you don’t seem to be much of the settling-in type. I should have known you’d see right through it.”
“You’re like twice as tall as me. And you have blond hair. We look nothing alike.”
“True.” He paused. “So now it’s my turn. How long have you known?”
“About a day.”
“How did you find out?”
I picked up the journal from the steps and handed it to him. “This.”
“Your journal?”
“No, it’s my mom’s. It’s the journal she kept when she was living here.”
“This is her journal? I noticed it looked similar, but I thought it was just a coincidence.” He turned it over in his hands.
“She wrote about everything that happened between her and Matteo. Only for most of it she just called him X, so at first I thought I was reading about you. But then you didn’t know about the secret bakery.”
“Wait a minute. The secret bakery? The place Ren asked me about?”
“Yeah. He was trying to surprise me by figuring out where it was.”
“So Ren knows about all this too?”
“Yes. He actually helped me track down Matteo.” I looked away. “We, ah, met him.”
He levitated like half a foot. “You met him?”
I kept my gaze on the ground. “Uh-huh.”
“Where?”
“Rome.”
He was looking at me like I’d just told him I was actually half-ostrich. “When did you go to Rome?”
“Yesterday—”
“Yesterday?”
“Yeah, we took the express train. First Ren picked me up. Then we went to FAAF and I called Francesca—”
“Francesca Bernardi? How did you even know about her?”
“The journal. She told me what Matteo’s last name was and we found him online and went to his art gallery and it was . . . well, a disaster.”
His mouth was literally hanging open. “Please tell me you’re joking.”