Читать книгу A Forever Family Collection - Коллектив авторов - Страница 12

EARLY WEDNESDAY MORNING, Belle came awake after a restless night. The tall nameless man in the light blue silk suit who’d tracked her down in the alley last evening was without question the most dangerously striking male she’d ever met in her life.

With those aquiline features, he embodied much more than the conventional traits one normally attributed to a gorgeous man, such as handsome, dashing or exciting. She couldn’t believe it, but she’d been attracted to him. Strongly attracted. It had never happened to her before.

Once he’d called out to her, she’d felt his powerful presence before she’d even turned to study his rock-hard physique. His black hair and olive skin provided the perfect foil for startling gray eyes.

For him to come from the bank armed with information no one could have known meant he was someone of importance. The fact that her inquiry had brought him to the pension convinced her she’d unwittingly trespassed on ground whose secrets were so dark, they had to be well guarded.

Who better than the man who’d suddenly appeared like some mysterious prince from this Renaissance city? Just remembering their encounter sent a shiver down the length of her body.

She was being fanciful, but couldn’t help it. His deep voice with barely a trace of accent in English had agitated her nervous system. Even after twelve hours she could still feel it resonating. Though she’d never forget him, she needed to push thoughts of him to the back of her mind. Her flight home Sunday would be here before she knew it, which meant she needed to intensify her search.

Once she’d showered down the hall, and had slipped on a short-sleeved, belted white cotton dress, she left the pension armed with her detailed street map and notebook. She’d kept a log of every Donatello name so far. Her destination for the last Donatello she could find in the city of Rimini was Donatello’s Garage.

After following the directions she’d been given on the phone yesterday, she talked to the manager, who spoke passable English. He told her a man by another name now owned the shop. The original owner, Mr. Donatello, and his wife had both died of old age. They’d had no children who could inherit the garage.

This was the way it had been going since last Sunday, when she’d started working through the list of Donatellos in the Rimini phone directory. In most cases the people she’d talked to were willing to help her, even going to the trouble of finding someone to help them understand her English.

They were proud of their genealogy. Many of them told her she could come by their house. The others told her their information over the phone, but so far there were no leads on a woman with the middle or last name Donatello, in her late thirties or early forties, who’d been to New York twenty-six years ago. It was like looking for a needle in the proverbial haystack.

Resolving not to be dispirited, Belle thanked him and headed for the library near her pension, to do more research on the other nineteen cities and towns within Rimini Province. They were ten to twelve miles apart and had much smaller populations, so there wouldn’t be as many Donatellos to look up. That could be bad, if nothing was discovered about her birth mother.

En route to the library, Belle stopped at a trattoria for breakfast and filled up so she wouldn’t have to eat until dinnertime. She would be doing a lot more driving over the next few days. Before she left Rimini, she approached the woman in the research department, who spoke excellent English and knew she was looking for Donatello names.

“I have one more question, if you don’t mind. Could you tell me anything about the Malatesta Bank?” The striking Italian who’d shown up at the pension had refused to leave her mind.

“How much time do you have?”

That’s what Belle had thought. “Yesterday the manager of Donatello Diamonds directed me to the bank to get information, but I learned nothing. Why would he do that? I don’t understand the connection.”

“The House of Malatesta was an Italian family that ruled over Rimini from 1300 to 1500. There’s too much history since then to tell you in five minutes. But today a member of that old ruling family, Count Sullisto Malatesta, runs the Malatesta Bank, one of the two largest banks in Italy. They own many other businesses as well.

“Another, lesser ruling family of the past, the House of Donatello, made their fortune in diamonds, but over years of poor management it started to dwindle. Some say it would have eventually failed if Count Malatesta, then a widower, hadn’t merged with the House of Donatello.

“He saved it from ruin by marrying Princess Luciana Donatello, the heiress, whose father was purported to have died of natural causes.” The woman lowered her voice. “I say purported because some people insisted both he and his wife had been murdered, either by another faction of the Donatello family, or by the Malatesta family. Soon thereafter, the count made his power grab by marrying her, but nothing definite came of the investigation to prove or disprove the theories.”

Belle shuddered. The dark stranger from the bank had looked that dangerous to her.

“The Donatello deaths left a question mark and turned everything into a scandal that rocked the region and made the wedding into a nationwide event.”

“You’re a fount of knowledge, and I’m indebted to you,” Belle told her. “Now I’m off to the other towns in Rimini Province to look up more Donatellos. Thank you so much for your time.”

The woman smiled. “Good luck to you.”

Belle was glad to be leaving the city, to be leaving him. Before she left, she would pay her bill at the pension and turn in her rental car. In case the man from the bank made more inquiries about her, he’d be thrown off the scent. Leaving no trail, she’d take a taxi to another rental agency and procure a car for the rest of the week.

She left the library and walked out to the parking lot to get in her car. As she opened the door, she heard a deep familiar voice say, “Signorina Peterson?” Her heart jumped.

It was déjà vu as she looked around and discovered the man who’d been responsible for her restless night. This time he was dressed in a blue sport shirt that made him even more breathtaking, if that was possible. His eyes played over her with a thoroughness that was disarming.

“Why are you following me, signore?”

“Because I overheard your conversation with the librarian and am in a position to help you in your search if you’d allow me.”

“Why would you do that, when you won’t even tell me your name?”

“Because you’re a foreigner who has suffered two frights. The first from me, because I put you through an inquisition yesterday. The second from the librarian, who increased your nervousness just now when she answered your question.”

He’d been listening the whole time? That meant he’d followed her from the pension. Belle held on to the door handle for support. “What makes you think I’m nervous?”

“The pulse in your throat is throbbing unnaturally fast.”

Those silvery eyes didn’t miss a detail. “I imagine it always does that when I’m being stalked.”

“With your kind of beauty, I would imagine it’s an occupational hazard, especially at your workplace.” While she tried to catch her breath, he said, “I had you investigated.”

“I knew it,” she muttered.

He cocked his dark head. “Not in a way that anyone from your store could ever find out. I called headquarters in New York and explained our bank was doing the groundwork to sponsor an American cell phone company in Rimini, to see how it would play out.”

“That was a lie!”

“Not necessarily. American cell phone companies are one asset we’ve had an idea to acquire for some time. When I asked which store manager might be equal to the task, you were mentioned among the top five managers for your company on the East Coast.”

“What did you do? Talk to the CEO himself?” she demanded.

“Actually, I did.”

Good heavens. He was handsome as the devil and just as cunning.

“I find it even more compelling that you started with that company at age eighteen and six years later are still with them. That kind of loyalty is rare. I was told you’re going to be promoted to a regional manager in the next few months. Perhaps it might land you in Rimini.”

What?

“My congratulations.”

Who was this man with such powerful connections? Belle needed to keep her wits. “Just so you know, I have no interest in moving overseas. So now that you’ve learned I’m not one of the paparazzi, I’d like your word that you’ll leave me alone, whoever you are.”

“I’m Leonardo di Malatesta, the elder son of Count Sullisto Malatesta.”

Her heart thudded too fast. It all fit with her first impression of a dark prince, and explained the signet ring with a knight’s head on his right hand. There was a wedding ring on his left. “I understand that name connotes someone sinister.”

His smile had a dangerous curl. “If it would make you feel more comfortable, call me Leon.”

“The lion. If that’s supposed to make me feel any better…”

A velvety sound close to a chuckle escaped his lips. “I want to apologize for my unorthodox method of getting to know you, and frightening you. Considering the fact that you plan to return to the States on Sunday, perhaps if you told me exactly what you’re hoping to find, I could help speed up the process. I really would like to assist you.”

“I doubt your wife would approve.”

Those gray eyes darkened with some unnamed emotion. “I’m a widower.”

“Yet you still wear your wedding ring. You must have loved her a great deal. Forgive me if I’m being suspicious. The truth is, I wouldn’t dream of bothering a busy man like you, one with so many banking responsibilities. The only thing I was hoping to get from the manager at Donatello Diamonds was a little information about the female members of the Donatello family. It would take just a few minutes.”

“So you’re looking for a woman…”

“That’s very astute of you.”

A gleam entered his eyes. “Considering the very attractive female I’m talking to, surely I can be forgiven for my earlier assessment of the situation.”

Don’t let that fatal charm of his get to you, Belle, even if he is still in mourning.

“That depends on what you can tell me,” she retorted with a wry smile back at him.

After a pause, he said, “Obviously you haven’t found her yet. Why is she so important to you that you would come thousands of miles?”

The small moment of levity fled. “Because the answer to my whole existence is tied up with her. My greatest fear is that she’s no longer alive, or that I’ll never find her.” Sorrow weighed Belle down at the thought.

He studied her with relentless scrutiny. “Is she a relative?”

This was where things got too sensitive. “Maybe.”

“How old would she be?”

“Probably in her forties.” Again, maybe. According to Cliff, her adoptive father had called her mother “that Italian girl.” Belle took it to mean she was young. “I learned she was from Rimini, Italy, but that could mean the city or the province.”

His black eyebrows furrowed. “My stepmother, Luciana, was an only child, born to Valeria and Massimo Donatello here in Rimini. Valeria died in a hunting accident on their estate when Luciana was only eleven. As the librarian told you, some people still believe it wasn’t an accident.”

“What she told me sounded positively Machiavellian.”

“You’re right. It was only a few months ago that the police finally solved the case. The shooting was ruled as accidental.”

“I see. It’s still tragic when any child loses its mother.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” he said in an almost haunted voice. Their eyes held for a moment. “My father was fifteen years older than Luciana, and he married her against my brother’s and my wishes. She was only twenty at the time and could never have replaced our mother.”

Four years younger than Belle’s age now. “Of course not.” She could only imagine this man’s pain. Suddenly he’d become more human to her. He’d lost his own mother and his wife.

“She’s forty-two now,” Leon added. “There must be quite a few Donatello women between those ages you’ve met while you’ve been here in Rimini.”

“Yes, but so far I’ve had no luck, because none of them ever traveled to New York in their late teens or twenties.”

Leon’s heart gave a thunderclap. “New York is the connecting point?” he rasped.

Belle nodded.

What had she said in answer to his earlier question about why this was important to her? Because the answer to my whole existence is tied up with her. My greatest fear is that she’s no longer alive, or that I’ll never find her.

As Leon stared at Belle, pure revelation flowed through him. He knew why she looked familiar to him. Had Marcello picked up on the resemblance? Or the manager at Donatello Diamonds? Probably not, or they would have said something, but he couldn’t be sure. Ruggio thought he’d seen her on television.

Madonna mia!

“I told you I’d like to help you, and I will, but we can’t talk here. Leave your car in the library parking lot and come with me. It will be safe.”

“I don’t need your help. Thanks all the same.”

She opened her shoulder bag to get her keys, but he put a hand on her arm. “If you want to meet your mother, I’m the person who can make it happen. But you’re going to have to trust me.”

Her gasp told him everything he wanted to know. Those fabulous blue eyes were blurry with tears as they lifted to his. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Her voice shook.

“Let’s find out. Is there anything in your car you need?”

“No.”

“Then we’ll drive to my villa, where we can talk in private. I have some pictures to show you.”

She moved like a person in a daze as he escorted her to his car and helped her inside. At a time like this, the shape of her long, elegant legs shouldn’t have drawn his attention, but they did. Her flowery fragrance proved another assault on his senses.

“Do I look like her?”

“When I saw you come out of the alcove at the pension yesterday, you reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t place you. It’s bothered me ever since. Not until a few minutes ago, when you mentioned New York, did everything click into place.” He started the engine. “You’ll need to buckle up.”

Leon wove through the streets to the villa, not really seeing anything while his mind played back through the years to the time he’d first met Luciana. He remembered his father telling him and Dante that she’d lived in New York for a year and could help them improve their English. How much had his parent known about the sober young princess he’d brought home to the palazzo, besides the fact that she had money and was beautiful?

Yet even if she’d told him nothing about having a baby, his father would have guessed, if she’d had a C-section or stretch marks. If not, he might still be in the dark. Her terrible secret might explain why she’d always seemed so remote and elusive to Leon.

Before they reached the house he phoned Simona. After learning Concetta was back to normal and playing with her new buckets in the kitchen, he told his housekeeper to prepare lunch for him and a guest. They’d be arriving shortly and could eat out on the patio.

Engrossed in her own thoughts, the woman seated next to him hadn’t said a word during the drive. Once upon a time she’d been a baby, separated at birth from her mother by an ocean. When Leon thought about his little daughter and how precious she was to him, he couldn’t fathom Belle’s or Luciana’s history. Leon had so many questions he didn’t know which one to ask first.

When the white, two-story villa built along neoclassic lines came into view, he pressed the remote to open the gates and drove around to the back. When she saw the flower garden there, Belle gave a gasp of admiration.

Leon helped her from the car and led her up the steps into the rear foyer that opened into the dayroom. “At the end of the hallway is a guest bedroom with bath, where you can freshen up. When you’re ready, come and find me in here, and we’ll eat lunch on the patio, where we won’t be disturbed.”

“Thank you.”

The second she disappeared, he hurried through the main floor to the kitchen, where he found Concetta in her playpen with some toys. She made delighted sounds when she saw him, and lifted her arms. He gathered her up and kissed her half a dozen times against her neck, causing her to laugh. Again he was reminded that his lunch guest had never known her mother’s kiss. Obviously not her father’s, either.

Talia smiled. “She’s had her lunch and is ready for her nap.”

“I brought company, so I can’t give her all my attention, but I will when she wakes up.” He kissed her once more and handed her back to Talia. His daughter didn’t like being separated from him, and shed a few tears going down the hall to the staircase.

Much as he wanted to put her to bed himself, he was aware someone else was waiting for him, someone who’d been waiting years for any word about her parentage.

Simona looked over her shoulder. “Do you want lunch served now?”

“Please.”

He retraced his steps to the dayroom and found Belle holding a five-by-seven framed photo she’d picked up from a grouping on one of the credenzas. Her back was turned to him, but even from this distance, he could see her shoulders shaking.

“I won’t pretend to say I understand what you’re feeling. I can only imagine what it must be like to see yourself in Luciana’s image. Though you’re not identical, anyone who knows you well would notice certain similarities.”

Belle put the picture back and whirled around, her lovely face dripping with tears. She used both hands to wipe them off her chin. “My mother is a princess? Your stepmother? I—I can’t take it in,” she stammered. “In the orphanage I used to dream about what she would be like. I had to believe she gave me up because of a life-and-death reason. But my dreams never reached heights like that.”

Leon put his hands on his hips. “I’m still in shock from the knowledge that she had a baby, yet there’s never been a whisper of you.”

He heard his guest groan. “When Cliff told me my mother was from Italy, I wanted it to be the truth. But I never thought I’d really find her. Why did you bother to come to the pension?” The throb in her voice hung in the air.

It was the question Leon had been asking himself over and over. He rubbed the back of his neck. “I can’t honestly tell you the reason. It was a feeling that nagged at me to the point I had to investigate.”

She clasped her hands together. “If you hadn’t come, I would know nothing, and I would be flying back to New York without ever getting an answer. Thank heaven for you!” she cried. “I’ll never be able to repay you.”

A strange shiver chased through his body at the realization he might not have heeded the prompting. He’d tried to ignore it, until he’d been swimming in the pool. Then it wouldn’t leave him alone.

Belle’s gorgeous eyes searched his. “But now that I see her picture, I think I’m frightened. It’s like that old expression about being careful what you wish for, because you might get it.”

She wasn’t the only one alarmed. Already she was important to him in ways he couldn’t begin to explain.

“Is it because you’ve discovered you’re the stepsister through marriage of the infamous Malatesta family?”

He’d thrown the question at her in a silky voice to combat her pull on him. His attraction to her was sucking him in deeper and deeper. He didn’t want this kind of complication in his life, not after having lost Benedetta. Too many losses convinced him it was better not to get involved. Leon had his daughter. She was all he needed.

His guest stared at him through haunted eyes. “What are you talking about? When the couple who adopted me brought me to their house, they broke their birth son’s heart. He hated me from the first day. If anything, I’m afraid of being the orphaned offspring of the woman your father brought into your home, thereby breaking your heart.”

Her words touched on Leon’s deep-seated guilt, and confounded him. She really was frightened. He could feel it. “You’re pale and need to eat. Come out to the patio with me.”

Leon showed her though the tall French doors on the far side of the dayroom. Simona had set the round, wrought-iron table with a cloth and fresh flowers from the garden. She’d prepared bruschetta and her bocconcini salad of mozzarella balls and cubetti di pancetta ham he particularly enjoyed.

He helped Belle to a seat where she could look out at the Adriatic. With the hot, fair weather, he spotted half a dozen sailboats and a few yachts out on the water. It was a sight he never tired of, especially now with the view of her alluring profile filling his vision.

Once he’d poured her some iced tea he said, “If you’d prefer coffee or juice, I’ll ask Simona to bring it.”

But Belle had already taken a long swallow. “This tastes delicious and is exactly what I needed. Thank you.”

After drinking half a glass himself, he picked up his fork and they started to eat. “I’m assuming Cliff is the son you referred to.”

She nodded. “The Petersons adopted me when I was ten. Mr. Peterson never wanted me, but Nadine had always hoped for a daughter and finally prevailed on him to adopt me. They already had a sixteen-year-old son, who had no desire for a girl from an orphanage to move in on what he considered his territory.”

Leon’s stomach muscles clenched in reaction. He could relate to Cliff’s hatred at that age. Leon had been eleven when his father had installed the twenty-year-old Luciana in the palazzo, a world that had belonged to him and his brother, Dante. No one else.

Now that the years had passed, and Leon had his own home and was a father, he understood better his parent’s need for companionship. At eleven he’d been too selfish to see anything beyond his own wants.

From the beginning he’d rebuffed any overtures from Luciana, but he had to admit she’d never been unkind to him or Dante. Anything but. As the years went by, he’d learned to be more civil to her. Maturity helped him to see that her cool aloofness at times masked some kind of strange sadness, no doubt because she’d lost both her parents under tragic circumstances.

To think she’d had a baby she’d been forced to give up! The knowledge tore him apart inside. He could never give up Concetta for any reason.

“How did it happen that Cliff told you about your mother?”

After putting her fork down, Belle told him what had transpired at the attorney’s office. Leon was astounded by what he heard. For her adoptive brother to take the money before telling her what she’d been desperate to know all her life sickened Leon. What made Cliff more despicable to him was to learn he hadn’t let her keep the money that was legally hers.

“Tell me about your life with the Petersons. I’d like to hear.”

She looked at him for a minute as if testing his sincerity. Then she began in a halting voice. “The day I was taken to their house, Cliff followed me into the small room that would be my bedroom. He grabbed me by the shoulders and told me his dad hadn’t wanted a screaming baby around the house. That’s why they’d picked me. But I’d better be good and stay out of his dad’s way or I’d be sorry, Cliff said. And in fact his father was so intimidating, I tried hard to be obedient and not cause trouble.”

Leon grimaced. “They should never have been allowed to adopt you.”

“Laws weren’t so strict then. The orphanage was overcrowded. You know how it is.”

As far as Leon was concerned, it was criminal.

“Ben was a car salesman who loved old cars and had restored several, but it took all their money. He lost his job several times because of layoffs, and had to find employment at other car dealerships. The money he poured into his hobby ate up any extra funds they had. He was an angry man who never had a kind word. The more I tried to gain his favor, the more he dismissed me.”

And destroyed her confidence, Leon bet.

“Nadine held a job at a dry cleaners and was a hard worker who tried to make a good home for us. She took me to church. It was one of the few places where I found comfort. But she was a quiet woman unable to show affection. It was clear she was afraid of her own son and stayed out of her husband’s way as much as possible. I never bonded with any of them.”

“How could you have under those circumstances?” Leon was troubled by her story.

“One good thing happened to me. As soon as I was old enough, I did babysitting for people in the neighborhood to earn money. I’d helped out with the younger children in the orphanage and knew how to play with them and care for babies. I love them.” Her voice trembled.

There was a sweetness in Belle that got under his skin.

“To tell you the truth, I liked going to other people’s houses to get away from Cliff and his father, who were so mean-spirited. He constantly asked me for money, telling me he’d pay me back, but he never did. I didn’t tell on him for fear Ben would take out his anger on me.”

With each revelation Leon’s hands curled into tighter fists.

“Finally Cliff got a job in a garage after school, and in time bought himself a motorcycle. That kept him away from me, but from then on it seemed he was always in trouble with traffic tickets and accidents.

“He was often at odds with both his parents because of the hours he kept with girls they didn’t know. Sometimes he barged into my room, to take out his frustration on me by bullying me. He never lost an opportunity to let me know I’d ruined his life,” she whispered.

“I can’t begin to imagine how you made it through those hellish years, Belle.”

“When I look back on it neither can I. The day I turned eighteen, I got a job in a cell phone store and moved in with three others girls, sharing an apartment. It saved my life to get away from my nightmarish situation.”

“Did Cliff follow you?”

“No. I left while he was gone. He had no idea where I went, and could no longer come after me for money and badger me. The few times I went to see Nadine, I went by her work at the dry cleaners so Cliff never saw me. She knew things were out of control with him and never pushed for me to come home again, because I was over the legal age.”

Certain things Belle had just said brought home to Leon how mean-spirited he’d been to Luciana when she’d first come to live at the palazzo. He’d been an adolescent and had ignored any overtures on her part. Dante had done the same thing to her, following in his big brother’s footsteps.

“I only ever saw him at the church funeral and the attorney’s office after that,” Belle explained. “When he told me my last name, I didn’t know if it was the truth. But I wanted it to be true, so badly that I flew to Rimini on a prayer, knowing I’d seen the last of him, and was thankful.”

Shaken by her revelations, Leon wiped the corner of his mouth with a napkin. “You didn’t learn anything about your birth father through Cliff?”

She drank the last of her tea. “No. I decided he must have disappeared before my mother took me to the orphanage. What other explanation could there be…unless something horrendous had happened and she’d been raped? I shudder to think that might have been the case, and would rather not talk about it.”

“Then we won’t.” If Luciana had been raped, and Leon’s father knew about it, how would he feel about Belle, the innocent second victim? The more Leon thought about it, the more it was like a bomb exploding, the resulting shock waves wreaking devastation. “What’s the name of the orphanage?”

“The Newburgh Church Orphanage. Why do you ask?”

He put down his fork. “Despite the public’s opinion of the Malatesta family, we give to a number of charities. Your story has decided me to send an anonymous donation to the orphanage where you were raised. That’s something I intend to take care of right away.”

A gift no matter how large wouldn’t take away his guilt over his treatment of Luciana, but he realized the only reason Belle was still alive was due to the generosity of others who gave to charity.

“If you did that, the sisters would consider it heaven sent, but you don’t need to do it.”

“I want to. They gave you a spiritual and physical start in life. No payment would be enough.”

“You’re right,” she said in a quiet voice. “One of the sisters in charge reminded us that we were lucky to be there where we could get the help we needed, so we shouldn’t complain. The priest at the church where Nadine took me told me I was blessed to have a birth mother who loved me enough to put me in God’s keeping.”

Hard words for a child to accept, but Leon could only agree. Whatever Luciana’s circumstances at the time, she’d at least had the courage to make certain her baby would be looked after. His admiration for her choice when she could have done something else changed his perception of her. But why had she given up her baby?

Had Luciana loved that baby with all her heart, the way he’d loved Concetta from the moment he’d learned they were expecting? He knew enough about Luciana’s strict upbringing to realize she would have been afraid of letting anyone find out about her baby, causing a scandal that would tarnish the Donatello family name.

Unbelievable that her offspring had grown up into a beautiful, intelligent woman eating lunch with him, no less! You’re enjoying it far too much, Malatesta.

Luciana had lived through a nightmare, and had gone on to make a home for his father and the boys despite Leon’s antipathy. An unfamiliar sense of shame for his behavior over those early years crept into his psyche. He was now paying the price.

“Their goodness to you needs to be rewarded,” he murmured, still trying to digest everything.

“Sometimes I felt guilty for wanting to know about my parents when the sisters tried so hard to keep our spirits up. When Cliff asked me why I wanted to find someone who didn’t want me, I told him it wasn’t important if they didn’t want me. I just needed to know who I am and where I came from. But I’m not your responsibility, and I’ve taken up too much of your time as it is.”

She pushed herself away from the table and stood up. “Now that I have answers to those questions, I can go back to New York. Needless to say, I’ll be indebted to you for the rest of my life. Thank you for bringing me to your villa, and please thank the cook for the wonderful food. If you’ll drive me back to the library, I’d be very grateful.”

Leon got to his feet. “We haven’t even scratched the surface yet.”

“Yes, we have. You and I both know there are reasons why she gave me up. I would never want to cause her pain by showing up uninvited and unwanted.”

“You could never be unwanted!” he declared. He refused to believe it, but that was the father in him speaking, the father who idolized his little girl. Ever since Belle was born, she’d never known the love of her own parents. He couldn’t fathom it.