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“But there was no accident,” I remind her.

“Mamma, you took me to the cemetery. Papà is there.” Mauro is confused.

“My father placed a marker on a memorial for all the workers on the mountain who perished in the quarry. My father put the plaque there, hoping I would get through my grief if I had a place to go and cry. And I did. For about a year, and I didn’t go back until you were ten years old. And then I never went again.”

“But I go, Mamma. Every Sunday,” Mauro admits. “I didn’t want to forget him. Now it appears I didn’t have to,” he says. “This is a tragedy. Twice.”

“I had been the perfect daughter, very obedient. You see, Giuseppina, Luigi wasn’t the only young person who was brought up to follow the strict rules of the church—but after I fell in love with Luigi, I changed. I became my own person. Love freed me and made me defiant. I wanted to choose how to live my life, while my father was holding on to the old ways because he could not accept the new ones. But Papà was the final word. And he was until the day he died.”

“It was difficult to make your own choices,” I tell her.

“I had no choice. The world was changing, but not Italy. And girls had a role, and you did not venture beyond the boundaries that were set for you. That was that.” Claudia dabs her tears with her handkerchief. Signora LaFortezza, like my mother, missed the cutoff date for feminism, for freedom. They aged out of the old ways and were too young to reap the benefits of the new ones.

Mauro gets up from the table. “I would have liked to have known my father. It was my highest dream to know him.”

“I can share everything I know,” I tell Mauro. “Whenever you’re ready.”

I feel terrible for Mauro and wish that Uncle Louie could have had both of us in his life, but fate did not play out that way. I was the beneficiary of Mauro’s loss.

“Giuseppina didn’t want to tell you, Mauro,” Angelo says. “She was afraid she would hurt you, that you would be angry.”

Mauro doesn’t respond to Angelo. Instead, he asks me, “May I have the photographs?”

“Of course. Take them.” I gather the stack of photographs and place them in the envelope. I give them to Mauro.

“I need to get back to work,” Mauro says. He kisses his mother on the cheek and leaves without saying goodbye.

If I needed proof that Mauro was Louie’s son, this was it. UncleLouie removed himself from any situation that made him uncomfortable too. Mom called it “Lou’s vanishing act.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say to Claudia.

“The truth is worse than Mauro imagined. And it is terrible for me too. I didn’t think my son would grow up and want to go anywhere near the quarry. Instead of avoiding it, Mauro used his grief about the father he never met to fuel his ambition. He wanted to be alegnarololike Luigi, and today he manages the mountain. He always had something to prove to himself.”

“We’ve taken enough of your time, Claudia.” Angelo stands.

“Where is the cemetery?” I ask.

“It’s on the road to Avenza.”

“San Michele?” Angelo asks.

She nods.

Claudia does not walk us out, as she did the day of our lunch. Her mind is elsewhere. In the past.

Angelo knows theway down the mountain to Avenza, an enchanting village that curls along the base of the Apuan Alps like a sleeping cat. Spikes of blue evergreen trees cover the hillsides as they protect the stucco houses clustered in pink stacks in the valley below. The sky, the color of circus peanuts, peeks through a veil of tufted white clouds. I lean out the window and take a photo. I post:Candy-colored sky.

Chiesa di San Michele is an ornate Romanesque church set in a field outside the entrance of Avenza. The bright noonday sun reveals the glittering gold veins in the marble, which ironically happened to be Uncle Louie’s favorite cut of stone. Angelo parks near the entrance to the cemetery. Grand marble mausoleums anchor theperimeter of the cemetery, set among ornate columbaria, outdoor altars, stone crypts, and statuary. White marble angels loom over the cemetery plots like guards.

“You take that side. I’ll take this one,” Angelo directs.

We split up. I am intrigued by the altars, which form a fence line around the cemetery. Each has a different personality. I find an altar that celebrates the trade of the family business with gilded carvings of chisels and hammers. The Rillo family are evidently marble miners.

“Giuseppina!” Angelo waves. “I found him.”

I climb over the markers and through the morass of marble memorials to join Angelo at the far end of the cemetery. A wall is filled with the names of the men who lost their lives on the mountain, carved on bricks of gray marble. Angelo runs his hand over my uncle’s name.

LUIGI CAPODIMONTE