"Yes. It just wasn't working out. I know you liked him very much. But I feel sure it was the right decision for both of us."
Gino nodded. "It's your life to live, Julia, but Michael is a good man. Your mother loved him."
"I know she did, but I… I didn't. Not enough to marry him. That wouldn't have been fair."
Gino sent Alex a speculative look. Her father was probably wondering the same thing she was, Liz thought, if Julia's feelings about Michael had changed with the introduction of Alex into her life.
"I don't want to stay here," Julia added. "I don't want to put you in danger."
"But you don't mind putting this man in danger? It's not appropriate that you're staying with him." His voice took on a sharp edge. For all his kindness, their father was traditional in his views toward men and women sleeping together before marriage.
"Alex's apartment was broken into yesterday, too," Julia said.
"Are you serious?" Liz asked, stunned.
Julia nodded. "Yes, I think I was followed there."
Liz gazed into her sister's eyes and saw regret, but Julia obviously wasn't sorry enough. "So they could be outside right now," she said, "waiting to do the same thing to this apartment. How could you come here and put Dad in danger?"
"We weren't followed," Alex interrupted. "I'm sure of it. We took separate cars. We changed over to a friend's car in a crowded parking lot before we came here."
Liz sniffed, determined not to let on that she was at all impressed by their cloak-and-dagger maneuvering.
"I also told the police everything," Julia said. "They're going to be watching this apartment, too, just in case."
"You need to stop asking questions," Liz said. "Then we'll all be safe again."
"We won't be safe until we find what they're looking for." Julia turned back to Gino. "Are the papers in the second bedroom?"
"Yes. The room is in chaos. I'm sorry. I haven't had the energy to clean it up. I'll let you get to it, then." He meandered down the hall to the kitchen, probably to refill his glass, Liz thought. When he was gone, she turned on Julia, her anger and resentment coming to the fore. "Dad is drinking himself to death, Julia. Don't you even care?"
Julia took a step back in defense. "Of course I care, but I'm a little busy at the moment."
"Too busy for your own father? That's great."
"Liz, please."
"Please what? He's been drinking orange juice and vodka since he got up. He hasn't been to work. He hasn't gotten dressed in days. Did you even notice?"
"Well, you're here," Julia retorted. "Why don't you stop him, Liz? As far as I can tell, you're doing nothing. In fact, that's pretty much all you've been doing the last few months."
Liz didn't like the way Julia had turned the tables on her. "What are you talking about?"
"You keep waiting for everyone else to do something. You want me to stop looking for my past. You want Dad to stop drinking. You want me to intervene in that. What about you? What do you want? Ever since Mom got sick, you've been drifting along, whining about how everyone else is disappointing you. Are you going to finish college or just work at the cafe for the rest of your life? Don't you have any dreams of your own?"
"I—I don't know." Liz felt overwhelmed by the hard-hitting questions. A flood of tears pressed against her eyes, and she forced herself to hold them back. She did not want to cry in front of Julia and Alex. But suddenly she couldn't contain her emotions, so she ran.
She didn't stop running until she was halfway down the street. She was furious. She was hurt. Most of all she was stunned to realize that Julia was right. She stopped walking to wipe away the tears that were streaming down her face. God! Julia was right. She'd put her life on hold the second her mother had been diagnosed with cancer. She hadn't been able to see the future—because the future would be without her mother. And that was too painful to consider. In the months that had followed, she'd never taken her life off hold. She had no plan, no purpose, no nothing.
And as she looked around, she also realized she had absolutely nowhere to go.
"I can't believe I just said that. I should go after her." Julia stared at the door Liz had recently slammed, feeling incredibly guilty that she'd taken out her frustration on her sister.
"It sounded like you needed to say it."
"I hurt her feelings."
"Probably," Alex agreed.
She shot him a dark look. "You're supposed to say, 'No, you didn't. Don't worry about it'."
He shrugged his shoulders. "I don't have a sister or a sibling. I don't know the protocol."
Frustrated, Julia waved a hand in the air. "Liz has been on me so much the past few days. She wants to run my life, and she criticizes every decision I make. I guess I got tired of it. You're lucky you're an only child."
"I agree." He paused. "Are you going after her or are we looking for the papers?"
She debated for a long moment. She seemed to be doing that a lot lately. Making decisions had once been easy for her, probably because she'd never had anything really important to decide. Now, every day there seemed to be new, compelling, distracting choices. She'd spent most of the night before weighing the risks and benefits of inviting Alex back into his own bedroom. In the end, she'd taken the safe route and done nothing. She'd slept alone in the bed, with Alex on the couch in the living room. She was still mad at herself for that.
One of these days she would have to do something bold, something completely out of character. Maybe she'd start with letting Liz stew awhile instead of immediately trying to be the peacemaker, as she usually did.
"We're here. Let's search," she said decisively. "I'll talk to Liz later. Maybe if I find out something, it will be easier to make up with her."
"Don't count on it," he said pessimistically. "I have a feeling we've just hit the tip of the iceberg. This situation is going to get worst before it gets better."
"Thanks for that sunny thought," she said as she led him down the hall to the second bedroom.
"I'm a realist. In my job I have to be. The camera doesn't lie."
"But people do. And that's what we have to figure out now. Who was lying and what were they lying about?" She paused in the doorway, not surprised to see the clutter of boxes, books, and clothes. "This will take some time. At least with two of us, it will go faster."
Alex glanced around the room. "What is all this stuff?"
"I'm not sure. My dad sold our family home right after my mom died, and the market was so hot, the house sold in a day. We put some things in storage, because we weren't up to going through it all. I guess the office stuff and my parents' bedroom things are what's in here. Where should we start?"
"Let's work our way into the room."
She knelt down and opened the first box. "It's weird how in the end our lives boil down to things."
"Some really ugly things." Alex held up a statue of a deformed man. "Don't tell me this was on your coffee table."
She laughed. "My mom made that in a sculpting class. It was the first thing she ever made. We took the class together at the recreation center. I wanted to do something artistic, and she wanted to do something with me." Her smile faded as she thought about how much time they'd spent together with all the lies between them.
"Don't do that," Alex said. "Don't replace all the good memories with doubts."
She gave him a curious look. "How did you know I was doing that?"
"Experience. It's a waste of energy. It won't get you anywhere."
"I guess you're right, but it's hard."
"Look at this," Alex said, holding up a manila file folder. He pulled out a piece of paper. "Your birth certificate."
She took the paper out of his hand. She'd seen it before when she'd gotten her driver's license and on other occasions. But now she read it more closely. There was no father's name listed, just her mother's and hers, and the hospital, St. Claire's, Berkeley, California. "It sure looks like I was born here. It has an official State of California stamp."
"It looks authentic," Alex agreed, "but papers can be bought and paid for, especially if a governmental agency is involved."
"That's what the reporter told me. I didn't know it was so easy to make up an identity for someone."
"If your mother did that, she had help."
Julia dug into her own box, which consisted mostly of scarves, gloves, and other accessories. Nothing there. She turned to the next one.
A moment later, Alex whistled. "You were a chubby little girl."
She frowned, slipping the photo from his hand. It had been taken at her eleventh birthday party, and she was definitely bulging. "They fed me a lot of Italian food," she complained. "My family thinks the more you eat, the happier you are, and I hadn't lost my baby fat yet."
"You're carrying more than a baby there," he teased. "And look at those railroad tracks on your teeth."
"Oh, shut up. I'm sure you weren't always this attractive."
"So you think I'm attractive?" he said with a charming wink.
"I think you're full of yourself, that's what I think."
"You like me."
"I don't." But she was still smiling when she tossed the photo back into the box. "Concentrate on what you're doing."
Slowly but surely she progressed through the boxes and moved across the room, finally landing on a box of costumes. Now that she knew her mother had traveled to Russia as a seamstress, the costumes took on new meaning. She pulled out the red cape she'd worn when she'd played Little Red Riding Hood in the third grade, then the angel costume she'd sported one Halloween. "We always had homemade costumes," she said. "My mother loved to sew. She never said she'd done it professionally, though."
"Of course she didn't," Alex replied. "She obviously wanted to hide her past in every possible way."
"Which means we probably won't find anything here."
"Keep digging. Sometimes people get careless."
With a sigh, Julia set back to work. The next box held Christmas cards and letters and an address book. The floral-patterned address book had been by her mother's bed the day she died. Her mother had wanted to let people know she was sick and was thinking of them, so she'd spent most of the last month writing brief notes. When she was too tired to hold the pen, Julia and sometimes Liz had written them for her. Unlike most of the other items in the room, which were from happier times, the address book reminded Julia of how bad that last week had been, watching her mother fade away before her very eyes. She was glad that she had been with her, but sometimes she was sad, too, because the image of death occasionally overpowered the other memories. She didn't want to remember her mother sick; she wanted to think of her happy and healthy.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor, she opened the address book and skimmed through the pages. There were three letters stuck in the back of the book, addressed and stamped and ready to go. Liz was supposed to have mailed them the day they were written, but she must have forgotten. The first one was to Pamela Hunt, the mother of a close friend of Julia's. The second was addressed to Grace Barrington, one of the waitresses who had worked at DeMarco's for at least a decade. And the third… Julia held the envelope up to the light, realizing that the writing was definitely her mother's, the letters weak and somewhat messy, making the name almost illegible. It took her a moment to decipher the writing.
"This is odd. It's addressed to Rick Sanders. I've never heard of anyone by that name."
Alex came to her side, squatting down next to her. "Why don't you open it?"
"Do you think I should? It's my mom's personal letter. She meant to mail it the day before she died. I remember watching her struggle to write it, but she said she had something important to say."
"Maybe a confession," Alex suggested. "Go on, open it."
"Why would she confess to someone named Rick Sanders?" At his pointed glance, she slid a finger under the flap and opened the envelope. There was one piece of notepaper inside. Julia took a breath and began to read. "Dear Rick. I know we agreed not to speak, but I must let you know that I'm very sick. I don't think I'll make it another month…" Julia's voice faltered as she realized she was reading some of her mother's very last words. "I can't." She held the paper out to Alex.
He took over. "I'll think of you fondly always. I know you were angry with me for what I did, but it worked out the best for all of us. Julia is a beautiful woman now. And I have another daughter as well. My life turned out to be very happy. I hope that you, too, were able to find some happiness. I know you made the ultimate sacrifice, but I was never surprised by your actions. You were and are the most heroic man I've ever known. Love, Sarah."
Alex lifted his head, his gaze meeting hers. "Who do you think it is?" she asked. "Who is Rick Sanders?"
"Maybe we should ask your father."
"I don't think so. I don't believe he would want to read a letter like this from my mother to another man, one signed with love."
Alex turned over the envelope. "The address is in St. Helena. That's about an hour and a half from here, isn't it?"
"Just north of Napa. You're not thinking of going there, are you?"
"Why not? You said your mother wrote this letter just before she died, and that it was important. I think we should deliver it personally."
"It's odd how she spoke of me by name, as if the person would know me, but not Liz," Julia mused. "You're right. We need to go there."
"What about work? Do you have a show tonight?"
"That was the call I made earlier. I've already arranged to cover my job for a few days, so I can devote my time to figuring out what's going on." She paused. "We haven't completely finished here."
"It doesn't look like these boxes are going anywhere."
"You're right about that. I'm sure my dad hasn't set foot in this room since he moved in." She hesitated. "I should say goodbye to him. And I should probably talk to him about the drinking he's doing. Liz is right. I have been shirking my responsibilities in that regard."
"That sounds like too long a conversation to have right now. And one you should probably have when your father is one hundred percent sober," he pointed out.
"True. I guess it can wait. I just hope my mother wasn't having an affair with Rick Sanders. My father would be devastated—" She stopped abruptly, clapping a hand to her mouth. "Oh, my God. You don't think Rick Sanders is my real father, do you?"
Julia had two hours to ponder that question on the drive to St. Helena, a small town in the wine country north of San Francisco. She'd been focusing so much on her mother that she hadn't thought about her biological father, but it made sense that her mother would have written to him just before she died. What didn't make sense was that she'd kept him a secret, never told Julia who he was or where he lived, which wasn't all that far from where she'd grown up.
As Alex turned off the freeway, Julia rolled down the window and let the fresh air blow against her face and through her hair. It really was a beautiful area, she thought as they passed apple orchards and fields of grapevines from which were made some of the best wines in the world. Growing up in an Italian family, she'd certainly tasted her fair share of red wine, but she'd never actually toured the wine country. Her father and uncle had gone a few times, but her mother had never been interested.
Why? Because the wine country was too close to someone of significance in her life?
"You haven't said a word in about an hour," Alex commented. "What's on your mind?"
"I keep wondering if I'm going to see my father in a few minutes. What will I say? What will I do?"
"You don't know that Rick Sanders is your father."
"I know my mom mentioned me specifically and then added that she'd had another daughter. He has to be someone she knew before she married Gino."
"That still doesn't make him your father."
"I need to be ready just in case. I used to think about meeting my dad, especially when I was a teenager. I'd look in the mirror, and I wouldn't see my mother in my features. I kept thinking
that there was someone else in the world who looked like me. Of course, I didn't imagine that it was a little girl in a Russian orphanage," she said with a halfhearted smile. He grinned back at her. "Good. You still have your sense of humor. That's important."
"Why is that important?"
"Laughter can get you through life. I've spent a lot of time in Africa, in villages where half the parents are gone, dead from HIV and other diseases. I couldn't believe these people could find anything to smile about, but every time I took out my camera, that's just what they did. They smiled in the face of unspeakable poverty." Julia turned in her seat to look at him. His eyes were on the road, but she could tell his thoughts were in the past.
"I gave this one little boy a pen and a piece of paper," Alex continued. "You would have thought I'd just handed him a million dollars. He couldn't stop smiling. He played and drew all day long until there wasn't a centimeter of empty space on that piece of paper."
"Did you ever see him again? Do you ever see anyone again—the people whose pictures you take?"
He shook his head. "Most of the time I don't go back to the same location. Occasionally I do. I did return to that village about a year later."
"Please don't tell me he was dead." She hated to think of such a sad thing.
"I don't know what happened to him. The whole village was gone, wiped out by a flood. They said some people got out, but they had scattered to other villages. No one knew about that particular boy."
"So maybe he's still there playing with your pen and smiling."
He offered her a tender smile. "You have a soft heart, Julia. That could get you into trouble."
"I suspect it already has."
"Is that why you let things drag on with Michael? You didn't want to hurt his feelings?"
"Partly. I do care for him, and he treated me well. I never wanted to hurt him." She paused. "But I wasn't referring to Michael. I was thinking about my mom, how I never had the guts to ask her the questions I'm asking now. I let her put me off, because I didn't want to make her mad or upset her. And look where that got me."
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