DELUGE (15 page)

Dad remained impassive, crossing his arms. As I looked back and forth between the new guys, I decided it was their eyes that made them recognizable as family. There was something about their eyes that reminded me of Gabi’s and Dad’s.

“We came by accident,” Orazio said. “It has been family lore that your family disappeared from an Etruscan dig site and never returned.”

“There were Etruscan ruins near our farm,” Galileo said. “And we’d always searched them, pretending we were like our famous American relatives.”

“Shh,” Dad said, and gazing worriedly to the door. He sat down on the table between the settee and the young men. “Please, whisper,” he said in a whisper himself. “The walls likely have ears.”

I nodded, and moved to the other side of the table. He was right. Doge Dandolo had promised an hour of privacy. He had not promised he wouldn’t listen in. And the word
American
would be an odd thing to be bandied about, since there was no such discovered land at the moment. Nor were there likely any Betarrinis in Ravenna, way back yonder in the fourteenth century. Marcello moved a chair closer, as did Luca, and Gabi and Mom moved into our tiny circle.

“Go on,” Dad said to Orazio, when we were all settled again.

“My father, he is a farmer. And in plowing the fields this fall to leave them fallow for the winter, he discovered a new Etruscan tomb. It was perfectly preserved.”

Mom and Dad shared an excited look.

“And?” Mom said.

“It was a family grave, with many ossuaries, and a skeleton still on a stone in the center, his hands around a sword.”

“But it was the handprints in the frescoes that were all around us that caught our attention,” Galileo said.

We all stilled.

“Handprints?” Gabi said, her voice sounding strangled. “All around you?”

“
Si
,” said Galileo, looking at her. “And stars. A whole nightscape, it seemed.”

“And angels, too,” Orazio said. “But it was the handprints that we were drawn to. The only other place they’d found handprints was in a tomb field near where you were last seen, before you drove off in a Jeep and were never heard from again. Between two castles—Castello Greco and Castello Forelli.”

Gabi sat back slowly, her fingers on the arms of her chair, pinching so hard they were turning white. “Castello Greco. You know it as Castello Greco.”

“
Si
,” Galileo said slowly, wondering what she was after.

“He is right,” Mom whispered to us. “Angels, and even stars appear elsewhere. But the only place that Ben and I ever saw handprints were in Tomb Two.”

“Tomb Two,” Orazio repeated, frowning. “How did you know that? You disappeared before it was discovered.”

“Because,” Mom said slowly, “I discovered it.”

“No, some other guy discovered it. Just a couple miles from your husband’s last known dig site,” Orazio said, nodding toward Dad. “I’ve read tons about him and the dig. It made him super famous.” He tapped his forehead. “What was his name?”

“Doctor Manero?” Dad asked dully, his brown eyes moving to watch their reaction.

“Yes, yes.
Manero
. That’s it!”

The breath left Mom with a
whoosh
. Her biggest discovery ever had been commandeered by the jerkiest jerk we’d ever met, Doctor Jerk-Face Manero.

“Don’t you see?” Gabi asked her. “It makes sense. We changed everything when we went back and nabbed Dad. You were never there, the year you found the tomb field with Lia and me. But since you’ve been here, you’ve done your fair share of excavation—”

“Which made it easier for Manero to find it,” Mom finished numbly, rubbing her temples. She looked wan, as if the guy had ripped her off again, somehow.

“Yes,” Orazio said tentatively, aware now that he was in tender territory. “He used a drone over the forest. Found it, and then became famous.”

“Enough about Manero,” Dad said briskly. “Get back to the handprints.”

“Right,” Galileo said. “Well, we visited the Forelli site, which is what they call it now, given the castle and all. We saw a pair of handprints there.” His eyes flicked to Marcello. “I have to say, it’s beyond strange to meet you. Who knew that we were somehow family?” He shook his head as we all waited. “Anyway, we noticed that there were only two handprints, and different sizes. So when we got home, we looked for handprints like them, and we found them there in our tomb, too, side by side.”

“And when we touched them, they were warm,” Orazio said. “Or one was. For me. And the other for him.”

“Just like for us,” I murmured.

“Really?” Orazio asked me.

“Really. And when you touched them together…”

“
Boom
. We were here,” Galileo finished, hands splayed outward. “Well, not
here
-here, but on our land. In a different time.”

We stared at them for a long moment, all wondering the same thing. Could we trust them? Could they possibly be playing us, having found out our method of time travel somehow?

“What year are you from?” I whispered.

Galileo’s brown eyes settled on mine. “2089. And God help me, I’m praying you can help us return.”

I looked at his clothing, but it was clear that his
Back to the Future
duds were long gone. 2089? Seriously?

“Please don’t tell us we’re stuck here like you,” Orazio said, brows curving upward. “Is there a way to get back?”

“We’re not
stuck
,” I said quickly, feeling his word as an affront for some reason. As if he was dissing us and all we had here.

Then I looked at Luca. I meant it. Suddenly, I understood. I didn’t feel
trapped
. I was exactly where I wanted to be. Couldn’t imagine going back. To our era, or these boys’. The idea of it…

I rose and paced away, thinking. It was what I had known all along. I loved Luca. I didn’t want to leave him, or even medieval Italy, now. Certainly not my family. But there was something about meeting Galileo and Orazio, the idea of another open time door somewhere, that made it seem more possible to return home. To safety. Security. But was it truly more secure?

As I thought on it, that option came to lack security, too. There were unknowns, any which way I turned.

But it was possible. I could make the leap.

And in that
possibility
, I realized how
impossible
it would be to leave Luca. To leave
us
, and our future together.

I looked to him and found him staring at me. He really was so dang amazing, in so many ways. More manly than when I’d first met him. With those green eyes that seemed to teem with life itself. And the way he was so aware of me, constantly looking out for me…I didn’t know how to explain it. But in that instant, I was sure of it. That I had to take the risk. Regardless of the cost to me or him or my family.

Hadn’t every single risk we’d taken paid off so far?

“Che cos’é? Che cosa é successo?”
he mouthed.
What is it? What has happened?

I only smiled. Smiled so broadly that I thought I might start laughing. He gave me a quizzical look, which only made me think him ten-times hotter.

I’m going to marry this man.

I was going to marry him and take whatever came at us, hand in hand with him. Mrs. Luca Forelli. Evangelia Forelli. Lia Forelli.
Yeah, I could get used to that.

I focused again on the conversation at hand.

“So we need to get you fellows back to your tomb and home,” Dad was saying.

But the guys just shook their heads, miserably. “They destroyed it behind us. When we came out…” Orazio said, and looked to his brother.

“We were so surprised, so completely shocked, we didn’t have time to come up with an explanation.”

I looked to Gabi. We knew that feeling well. When we first arrived in medieval Italy, I think I’d just repeated something like, “I’m not from here,” to Cosmo Paratore in the days after my arrival. And gradually, I figured out that to claim I was from the future would land me in some sort of fourteenth-century psych ward.

“It was our rotten luck to emerge in this time just as a priest and four nuns were passing by on a wagon,” Galileo said. “They took one look at us and you’d think they’d seen aliens or something.”

“Well, we did walk out of the tomb,” his brother said.

“Still. That priest hit the reins across the back of that mule so hard the nuns practically tumbled out the back onto the road.” He smiled and shook his head, then ran a hand through his thick, curly hair. “We set off in the opposite direction, deciding that the priest and nuns weren’t likely to make nice as friends, and came across a town that gave us a pretty good idea of what time period we’d landed in.”

“We got scared then,” Orazio said. “Reality was setting in. But in the dark, we knew we couldn’t make it back to the tomb without getting lost.” His expression became gloomy. “When we returned there, come morning, it was nothing but a burned-out shell.”

“What?” Mom asked, rising, looking pale.

“It was that priest and those nuns,” Galileo said. “We crept close enough to hear some villagers talking. They thought we were demons, rising from the grave. Or warlocks. They destroyed it to drive us away.”

“Little did they know it would keep us here forever,” Orazio said forlornly.

“We set off walking,” Galileo said. “Our only other thought was that we had to get to the Forelli tomb.”

“Because of the handprints,” Marcello said.

Galileo nodded.

“Indulge me,” Marcello said, rising and going to Gabriella. He took her hand and helped her rise and led her to the center of the room. Then he gestured to Galileo, the taller, but younger, brother.

“It was your left hand, yes?” he asked Gabi. She nodded and lifted her hand, palm up.

Eyes wide, Galileo lifted his to lay it against Gabi’s. A perfect match.

Marcello waved Orazio closer as he came over to me, doing as he did with my sister, leading me to the center of the room. There seemed to be an electric charge in the air, and I felt a measure of fear before I lifted my palm to match against Orazio’s. As if this might change everything…as if somehow, we four might disappear.

I lifted my trembling hand to set it against his.

Again, a perfect match. From the tips of our fingers to the base of our palms.

Our hands grew warm as we stared at each other for a long moment, and again it was his eyes that made me think I knew him from somewhere, that we’d met, somehow, before. But that had to be the Betarrini blood running through his veins. A common gene, reappearing down the family line. The same that made Gabi and Dad look alike, just as Mom and I did.

Slowly, we all let our hands drop, but we only moved a few steps away from one another.

“So…” Dad said, pacing excitedly, chin in hand. “Betarrini blood, both pairs, siblings…Are you two years apart?”

“Yes, sir,” Orazio said, looking dazed as he stared at me and glanced down at my hand again.

“When are your birthdays?” Mom asked.

We all tensed, waiting for some other cosmic freakishness. But they weren’t the same as ours, just a similar span apart.

Dad looked to Mom. “Maybe that’s all it takes,” he said in English. “The right gene, the right genetic connection with a sibling, and the right sized hand, access to an Etruscan tomb with the prints, and
boom
, you’re a time traveler.”

“Benedetto,” Marcello warned with a sigh of frustration. Gabi quickly translated for the rest as Mom and Dad kept on in excited conference. I knew from experience that it was hard to break into their small circle when they got like this, chasing down a hunch together.

“Gabi and Lia weren’t the first travelers,” Mom said, shaking her head. “That’s what those other symbols in our tomb mean. Why there is a Greek and a Roman beside the angels. I thought they’d been added later, by people from those cultures who somehow wanted to leave their own mark on the tomb. But they appear to have been made at the same time as the rest of the frescoes, by
Betarrini
ancestors. It never made sense to me, either way. Except in this context.” She looked around at me and Gabi. “You weren’t the first Betarrinis to travel,” she said again.

“Nor are you likely the last,” Dad said, looking to our new cousins.

“But
we
might be,” Orazio said, “if something happens to your tomb and the tunnel is lost to us forever.”

“There might be others,” Mom said, now pacing the room with Dad. “In our time, many tombs had been bulldozed or otherwise destroyed. But in this time, who knows how many tombs there are?”

That thought gave me both hope and a little dose of fear. The last thing we needed were more Betarrinis popping up everywhere. Not if we wanted to stay here. At some point, they’d be bound to round us all up and waterboard us until we spilled our secrets. I moved over toward Luca again, and seeing my look of fear, he gave me a gentle, reassuring smile. Tentatively, he took my hand. It felt good, so good, for him to hold it again. I never wanted to let him go.

“Please,” Marcello said, gesturing toward Galileo. “Resume your story. You were saying your tomb was destroyed?”

“Yes. We set off in the direction of what we hoped was Radda-in-Chianti, which we remembered was near your castello. We had our second batch of bad luck when we met up with a group of actors moving from town to town. They fed us, gave us wine, allowed us to ride some on their wagon, in exchange for a story each night. After a little too much wine one night…” He paused to give his older brother the evil eye. “Orazio here began telling stories of people flying in airplanes and on rocket ships.”

Orazio sighed heavily. “And suddenly, we were the favorite storytellers of medieval times. Before we knew it, we were heading north, not south, and we were beaten, gagged and chained when we tried to leave. That is how we ended up in the doge’s court. Once here, after a couple of days, we knew we were just digging our own graves, and we refused to say anything. That was when the doge threw us into prison for our disobedience.”

“He gets a bit frustrated when his demands go unmet,” Galileo added.