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“I believe we are, and I know she believed it, and the resemblance is there. She always said the Sforza family was where our money came from. She never worked a day in her life, so I think it’s true.”

“I think it’s true, too. I know it’s true, in my heart.”

“That said, where I differ with my mother is what it means to be descended from the Sforzas.” Fiamma pursed her lips. “My mother was obsessed with Caterina, always looking back to the past. It made her snobbish, and she built her identity around it, you see from the frescoes in this house.”

“Right.”

“Me, I’ve learned to look forward, not past. I believe that as an artist, my job is to create myself.” Fiamma’s blue eyes calmed like a sea. “I think we’re all artists, and we create ourselves. The past does not create you, the present does, and in return, you create the future. Your future.”

Julia thought it was a wonderful sentiment. “I get it. If Caterina stood for anything, it was that.”

“Yes, she invented herself. She was ahead of her time.”

“So, how did your mother know where I was?”

“I’m sure she kept looking for me. She hired people. I always suspected she knew where I was and that she knew about your adoption, or even had a hand in it.”

“How?” Julia asked, surprised.

“The agency I used was a private charitable organization in Bologna. They handled me with kid gloves. I always wondered if she’d made a secret donation. You would never believe what my mother got away with because she was rich.”

Julia couldn’t ignore the bitterness in Fiamma’s tone.

“She knew I would never speak to her again, but I believe she kept track of you. She would have found out where you went, who adopted you, all the things I couldn’t bear to know.”

It hurt to hear, but Julia understood.

“I understand how, and why, she left you her estate. She couldn’t have known where I was. After I gave you up, I left Italy, I went into a depression, missing you. I experienced grief, I couldn’t shake it.” Fiamma looked at her plaintively. “I hope that doesn’t sound self-indulgent.”

“No,” Julia answered, since it struck an uncomfortable chord.

“I traveled through Scotland and Ireland. I didn’t have any address, I was staying with a series of artist friends.

‘Couch-surfing,’ they call it now. Even my mother couldn’t have found me.

” Fiamma straightened. “Losing you became my turning point, and I went back to Italy, changed my name, and got back to school.”

“Why do you think she didn’t go after you, try to meet with you?”

“Because I’d run away again. She knew I didn’t want to see her.”

Julia’s mind raced. “Maybe she left me the estate because she hoped I would find you, and we would find each other.”

Fiamma blinked, as the revelation dawned on her. “She was trying to reunite us?”

“Yes, exactly. She couldn’t find you, but I’m not hard to find, even in the US. She found me and sent me after you. She willed us back together again.” Julia felt a lump in her throat. “It’s lovely, isn’t it? She wanted to reunite us, and here we are, because of her.”

“Ha!” Fiamma smiled, her eyes shining. “I guess that’s true. She put us together.”

“Kinda smart, huh?”

“She was something.” Fiamma shook her head, amused. “I guess I have to hand it to her.”

“Me, too.”

Suddenly Fiamma’s expression darkened, lapsing into angry lines, like a lithograph etched with acid. “And so my mother, ever the master manipulator, did one good deed in her life.”

Ouch. “Really?”

“What? Should I forget that she locked me in a cell? Never let me off the property? Wouldn’t send me to school? Wouldn’t let me have friends?”

Julia’s heart broke for her. “Do you know why she did all that?”

“Yes,” Fiamma shot back. “She wanted me to herself. She conceived me to fill her own needs, to be her constant companion, her confidante, her best friend. She lived alone so she manufactured company. Me.”

Arg. “Are you sure?”

“Of course.”

“Sit down, would you?”

Julia sat opposite Fiamma at the kitchen table, and between them lay the three photographs of Rossi’s deterioration, the two passports, the strands of hair, and the Polaroids of Rossi’s abuse.

Julia told Fiamma about her visions, about how she was drugged and maybe Rossi had been, too, about how Caterina showed her the underground cell and how she found the watercolors, the well, and the strongbox.

She held back the Polaroid of the broken baby arm.

She didn’t know if Fiamma could handle it, since the other photos had shaken her.

Fiamma blinked tears away, holding the Polaroid of Rossi’s bruised neck. “You say you found this photo in the well?”

“Yes, in a go-bag. I think your mother was protecting herself from her abuser. I think that’s why she used a false name and put you in that cell, too.”

“My God,” Fiamma said, anguished, her eyes filmed and her expression drawn. Her topknot had fallen to the side. “So she was beaten?”

“Yes, almost strangled.”

“She was protecting me?”

“Yes, I believe so.”

“I used to say to her, what did I do, what did I do?” Fiamma rubbed her forehead, leaving pinkish streaks. “It wasn’t because I did something wrong? Like a punishment?”

Julia felt a stab of pain for her. “No, not at all,” she answered, comforting her mother as if she were her child.

“Do you think it was my father who abused her?”

“I don’t know. What do you know about your father?”

“Nothing, only that she hated him. She never wanted to talk about him, so I never asked again.”

Julia understood, only too well. Her parents never wanted to talk about her birth mother or father, so she’d never asked, either.

She wondered if every family should start talking about the things they were afraid to discuss, to start saying the unsayable.

Keeping secrets hurt people, but so did keeping silence.

Fiamma picked up her passport and opened it to her picture. “And this is me? This is my real name? Patrizia Ritorno?”

“Yes, I believe so. What did she tell you your name was?”

“Felicia Rossi. I started calling myself Fiamma Settimi after I ran away. I wanted to hide from her, and reinvent myself.” Fiamma set the passport down, shaking her head. “You know what is so awful about it all? The most awful?”

“No, what?”

“That my mother suffered such physical abuse, but then she inflicted it on me.”

Julia blinked. “What?”

“It’s true. I didn’t want to tell you, but she broke my elbow, when I was just a baby.

” Fiamma gestured to her right arm. “I’ve had four operations.

It still aches sometimes. I think of it every time I paint, with every stroke.

I hate her for it, I always will. Of all the things she did to me, it was the worst.” Fiamma shook her head, her eyes glistening anew.

“To break the arm of a baby ? She was sick .”

Oh no. Julia braced herself to reveal the truth. “What if she wasn’t the one who broke your arm? What if it was him ? Look.” She set down the Polaroid of the baby with the broken elbow. “I got this photo from the strongbox, too. I think this is you.”

Fiamma gasped, looking down at the photo. Her hand flew to her arm. “That’s where my break is.”

“What if she didn’t do it?”

Fiamma shook her head, stunned. “The doctors told me it happened when I was a baby, and she was the only parent I had.”

“But she wasn’t the only adult around. Her abuser was there, too, at some point.”

“I didn’t know that.” Fiamma moaned. “I didn’t remember him, I don’t remember him.”

“I really think he did it.”

“You do?” Fiamma looked up, her eyes unmistakably hopeful. “Why?”

“Look at the photo, in context.” Julia gestured to the photos and passports from the go-bag.

“He must’ve abused her, and then, when he started abusing you, she left with you.

She took pictures of her injuries and yours, for evidence.

She bought a villa in the middle of Tuscany and hid you both away.

She changed your name and hers. She kept your passports in case he found you and you both had to run.

She did everything she could to keep you safe.

That’s why she kept you inside. That’s why you couldn’t go to school. ”

“No, no, this can’t be, no.” Fiamma’s hand went to her cheek, her fingers trembling. “But why the cell? Why that?”

“For protection? Maybe when she heard he was in town or was looking for you?” Julia puzzled it out, considering what Fiamma had just said.

“Maybe he was a powerful man with a lot of money. Maybe he hired investigators to find her , just like she did to find you . Just like I did, to find her and you .”

“Oh no.” Fiamma’s glistening eyes flew open. “I had it wrong? I had her wrong, all this time? How could I?”

“You can’t fault yourself. You couldn’t have known.”

“Why didn’t she tell me about him? Why didn’t she say why she was putting me down there?” Tears filled Fiamma’s eyes. “She could have explained everything, I would have understood.”

“It’s not the kind of thing you tell a child, is it?” Julia kept her tone gentle. “If I were in her position, I wouldn’t tell you, either. I would just protect you.”

“I suppose.” Fiamma nodded, wiping her eyes. “It was a terrible decision, but she must have been so desperate, so frightened.”

“Yes, and she wanted to keep you alive.”

“I wish I had known, I wish I had understood it. I never gave her the chance to explain it when I got old enough to understand. I so wish I had, while she was still alive.”

Julia watched guilt and regret wash over Fiamma. “I’m sorry.”

“When she wasn’t putting me down there, we were happy.

She read to me, she taught me to read, and to draw and paint.

We played with the dogs and the ducks. We picked grapes and pressed flowers in books.

She loved me, she was loving to me.” Fiamma smiled sadly, at the memories.

“She could be so much fun, so delightful really, but then she would put me down there, I couldn’t understand why. I thought she was crazy, truly crazy .”

“Who knows what that means, Fiamma?” Julia asked, speaking from the heart.

“We throw that word around all the time. I do, too, it comes too easily, but who says what’s crazy and what’s not?

Who says what’s normal and what’s not? I’ve experienced so much here, I’ve changed, and what I think is real or crazy or normal has changed, too.

It’s grown, it’s expanded .” Julia realized the truth of her words.

“I don’t know if she was crazy when you lived here, all I know is that she loved you enough to keep you safe.

She imprisoned herself, too. For you . Is that a mother’s love? You tell me.”

Fiamma’s eyes filled with tears.

Julia had another thought. “Are you and your mother so different? You let me go because you wanted me to have a better life. She kept you because she wanted you to have a better life. You’re mother and daughter, just as you and I are mother and daughter. We’re the same and different, both at once.”

Fiamma picked up the photo of a young Rossi, and a sudden sweetness softened her smile. “Mamma?” she whispered, a tear rolling down her cheek.

“Yes,” Julia said, trying not to cry.

Mamma .