A Tale of Two Centuries (26 page)

Chapter Twenty-seven

I don’t know why I never thought of this before.

No wonder Cat has been so on edge all morning.

I stare at her steepled hands, the long, slender fingers so much like my own, and wonder how I could have missed the signs. From the first moment I saw Cat step out of the carriage that brought her to my home two years ago, I have felt a strong connection with her. Everyone loved her, of course—Mama, Father, Cipriano—but it was the two of us who bonded so quickly and so well. I teased her that we were blood relations and I could decipher her thoughts as well as my own, and perhaps this is why. She comes from my own blood.

For the past twelve hours, my only concern has been myself…well, myself and Austin. Not once did I stop and truly think about how my decisions would affect those who come after me. Cat is right. My actions tomorrow night could erase an entire lineage, including the descendant sitting beside me whom I’ve grown to love as a sister.

“Oh, Cat, I am so sorry,” I tell her, reaching a hand out and then hesitating and drawing it back. “I-I didn’t know… I didn’t think—”

“Princess, it’s all right.”

Austin’s words hang in the air. Astonished he could dismiss the subject so lightly, I gasp. Cat blinks—I only assume as baffled as I am—and we both turn our attention toward him.

“Excuse me?” she asks, dropping one of her hands to the table. It lands with a
smack.
“You did not just say it’s all right. I mean, I’m sorry for getting all heavy and freaked about my own demise, Mr. Laidback, but you know, some people actually value their lives.”

Austin shrugs, letting the insult and her sharp tone roll off his shoulders. “But you’re not part of Alessandra’s line. No demise to freak about.”

With an incredulous look, Cat’s head falls into her other hand, as if the day has already exhausted her, and it isn’t even lunchtime. Feeling similarly drained, I rest my elbows on the table. “And how can you sound so sure?”

“It’s easy. She’s related through her mom, right, because of the name?” he asks calmly, already knowing the answer. On the ride here this morning, we filled the boys in on all we knew, including how her birth mother’s last name of Angeli is the Americanized version of my real last name D’Angeli. I nod and Austin continues. “But your descendants would have your last name. The last name of whatever guy you
married
.”

Austin’s lip curls around the last word as he says it.

As Cat stares blankly ahead, obviously absorbing the information, I search my mind for any holes in his reasoning. But it makes perfect sense. My body sags under the enormous relief, and my head falls onto the tabletop. “Oh, thank heavens.”

Cat releases a shaky laugh. “You can say that again.”

“Oh, thank heavens.”

She laughs again, only this time for real. “Now you’re learning.” I hear her sigh and then feel the weight of her head press against my shoulder blade. “Girl, I’m sorry I’ve been such a bitch all morning. I was just scared, but I wanted to help, and I didn’t know what to do.”

“You could have begun with telling me,” I say, my voice muffled by the tabletop. I lift my head, and Cat sits up; I turn so I can look in her eyes. “You do know that as much as I want to stay here, I would never even think about doing so if it meant hurting you, right?”

“Of course I know that,” she says. “That’s why I didn’t tell you. I wanted to find out for myself if it were true, and then only tell you if I absolutely had to.” She grins. “We only needed one family member hyperventilating in the bathroom this morning.”

I cringe, envisioning her doing just that while I grabbed a bowl of those delicious multi-colored circles for breakfast. “From now on,” I tell her, holding my little finger out as she’d showed me once. “We are a team. No more secrets.”

“No more secrets,” she repeats, hooking her finger with mine. As we tug, the tension between us drains away.

Austin nudges my foot under the table, attesting to that fact that while I may not have all the answers yet, I at least have the people I love in my corner, helping me.

One disaster averted
, I think, nudging him back. Then I dive back into my book, my thoughts remaining on the rest of my possible descendants.

A few minutes later, Lucas returns with a broad smile. “I’ve got intel.”

He flips a chair around and sits down, setting his phone and an open notebook in front of him. “That was a friend of mine back in Milan. Figured they may have better resources on Italian history there, so I asked him to check things out for me. Basically I had him focus his search on any future world leaders, scientists, or Nobel Prize winners that were in your line. I thought that could be our loophole for Reyna—if no one affected history in a big way and you choose to stay, you can argue that any children you have here have the potential to do more for humanity.”

Lucas shrugs and sort of rolls his eyes, as if his idea is nothing more than a shot in the wind. But right now his theory is our best—and only—option.

“No, that could work,” I say, leaning forward in my chair with renewed optimism. “What did your friend find?”

“It turns out we got lucky. Records from the sixteenth century aren’t that easy to find for just everyday, regular people, but the guy you married was in government, so my friend was able to find a trail.”

Out of everything Lucas just said, one detail stands out from the rest as if it were lined with the many-hued lights that illuminated the streets of West Hollywood. It appears Austin agrees for he asks, “Wait, you know who she marries?”

I flinch at his use of the word
marries.

Whenever the topic of my potential spouse has arisen so far, Austin has always been very careful to use the past tense, as if we were discussing something that happened long ago and has no effect on us now. And in a way, he is right. For him, these things are history, and depending on what we discover today, we may have the chance to change any of these things from happening.

But everything we are learning are also things yet to come for me. My possible future. And the fact that Austin didn’t just ask who I
married
makes me think that for him, things are now getting real in a way they hadn’t before.

Lucas hesitates before picking up his notebook and narrowing his eyes to read his tight scrawl on the page.
“Domenico Bencini,” he reads before lifting his eyes to me. “Ring a bell?”

My stomach clenches, but whether it is from surprise or fear, I do not know.

In my mind’s eye, the image of a tall man enters, his dark brown hair shot with gray. The premature color makes him appear older than his thirty-two years, but from the air in which he carries himself, the proud angle of his jaw, this man revels in that fact.

The D’Angeli and Bencini families have long been a part of the same social circles, attending the same dinner parties and events, so of course I know Domenico. I recall even being subjected to a dance with him at a recent ball. (Luckily, my feet recovered with time.) And although the two of us never really held a conversation other than the most basic of pleasantries, I have always thought him…amiable enough. Quiet. Reserved like Father. Only where Father is kind and has a wonderful sense of humor, Domenico is, well, boring.

Could it have been a love match that brought us together?

I try to picture myself kissing him and shiver in disgust.

No, definitely not.

“Domenico enters into government?” I ask, not completely surprised. He wasn’t a member when I left, having just reached the required age for some of the smaller offices, but the senior Bencini has long been in service and has groomed his eldest for the same his entire life.

“Yeah.” Lucas consults his notebook again. “The
Tre Maggiori.”

My eyes widen, and Lucas turns to the others to explain. “My friend said they were the highest executive offices of the Florentine Republic, which is why we lucked out. Because this guy was so powerful, his birth records were saved, along with some of his personal letters, which made our job a lot easier.”

Austin’s stiff nod makes the hair on the back of my neck rise, and I almost ask Lucas to stop. But then uncontrollable curiosity takes over, and I say, “Tell me what you learned.”

Lucas grabs his notebook, settles back in his chair, and begins telling us—telling
me
—all about the life I may or may not ever have. “From what we can tell, Alessandra never had any children. It was common back then for fathers to declare their children, especially their sons, in the records as early as possible just in case they ever wanted to hold a public office. And in Domenico’s personal letters, there are also several mentions of—” Lucas looks away and scratches the side of his neck. “Miscarriages.”

My hand flies to my throat.

I always imagined myself with a large family. At the very least, two children like my parents had. A daughter named Lena with my auburn hair, pointy chin, and sense of wonder, and a son named after my father, Marco, with his dark eyes and strong sense of duty.

As the reality of Lucas’s words crash around me, I cannot help but mourn that dream and the children who will never be. At least not in that life.

Beside me, Cat blows out a breath. “Wow.” She squeezes my hand and glances at me but then quickly away, instead choosing to look at Austin sitting across from us as she says, “Well, I guess we found our loophole.”

Even in my disoriented state, I register his hope-filled nod of agreement.

Cat grabs Lucas’s notebook out of his hands and reads over his notes. “I mean, if Less doesn’t have any… I mean, if the line ends with her, then history can’t change that much if she stays.” She glances up. “Right?”

This last question she directs at Lucas, who mumbles a soft, “Bingo.” Then he lifts his chin in my direction and asks, “Alessandra, are you okay?”

I open my mouth and then close it, my mind an endless tumble of thoughts. But in the midst of my confusion, I know there is still one thing I have yet to learn. So instead of answering I ask, “Did Domenico’s letters say anything about me?”

When Lucas’s first response is to bite the corner of his lip, obviously hesitating, I regret the impulsive question.

“There was a brief mention here or there,” he says, dragging the words out as if reluctant to reach the end of what he has to say—another bad sign. “There are a handful of letters he wrote to you when you were staying with your family. Apparently your father became very sick, and you moved back home for a short time to help your mother take care of him”—he clears his throat—“before he died.”

Father.

As I try to grapple with this impossible reality, Lucas stops to scratch the side of his neck…and I realize that there is even more to the dreadful story.
The story of my life
. “What are you not telling me?” I force myself to ask, my heart still with my father.

Lucas leans back and runs his fingers through his hair. “There’s also a letter to your brother about…about how
you
died.”

Cold fingers of dread creep down my spine.

I swallow the fear and push it back where it belongs, roiling in my stomach with the rest of my emotions. It sounds like someone else’s voice coming out of my mouth when I ask, “How?”

Lucas folds the top corner of his page, not looking at me. “He told Cipriano that you contracted a fever shortly after returning home from your father’s deathbed and died of the same breathing ailment a few weeks later.”

I nod, not exactly sure why because none of this even feels real—it is as if we are discussing a character in a book. But I need to react somehow. “And how old was I when I died?”

“Thirty-five.”

Lucas says it matter-of-factly, no hemming or hawing over the cruel facts that took my life, and I appreciate his honesty. It was what I asked for, after all.

Thirty-five
. It may not be a terribly long life, but it is longer than some. My cousin Patience’s parents died much younger than that from an epidemic. And while it does not sound as though I lived the great life of possibility that I could here, the Alessandra in the history books seems as though she lived a good life. She was taken care of, provided for, and had a husband who wasn’t altogether awful. She had connections and society.

And at least for a short time, she had her family.

My heart begins to hurt.

It’s strange. I know I just heard about my life, or rather my future (past?) life. I know that I am sitting at a table in a library in the twenty-first century, trying to find a way so I can stay here. I know there’s a chair under me, a ceiling overhead, and friends all around. But inside, I feel numb. Almost as if I’m in a dream, or watching the world outside myself. My thoughts are fuzzy, and I can’t seem to grasp what it is I should do next.

I want to hug my father, even knowing that doing so is probably what got me sick in the first place. I want to comfort the strong man who always comforted me, who always sang me songs when I had a cold and bought me dresses to cheer me up. I want to go back home and make sure he knows how much I love him…but will my presence change the outcome or save him? Will I be doing it for him, or for me?

Closing my eyes, I lower my head into my opened hands.

Choosing the right path is suddenly much more difficult than I imagined it would be.

“Stop it,” Austin says, his raised voice startling me. “I see what you’re doing. You’re reverting to that girl you used to be, aren’t you?”

“No, I—”

“Yeah, you are. I get that you love your father. I mean, it’s no secret I hate mine, but I love that you care so much about him. But you’re doing it again, worrying about everyone else and what’s best for them. For once, can’t you think about what
you
want? Or do you even know?”

“Austin, it’s just not that simple.”

“Yeah, it is,” he says, his voice suddenly desperate. “And if you can’t figure that out, all this”—he sweeps his arms out, taking in the library and beyond—“will be gone. Reyna’s holding a ticking clock, and it’s getting louder. It’s so freaking loud it’s like a time bomb, counting the seconds until you’re gonna be forced to choose. And you
will
have to make a choice, Alessandra. There’s no getting out of it. So tell me, what do
you
want to do? Stay here with me?” he asks. “Or go home to
Domenico
?”