Now Umberto did something horrible. He remembered that Diane had told him about Professor Tolomei’s research and a statue with gemstone eyes, and, because he was sick with jealousy, Umberto told the story to some people back in Naples. It was not long before his boss heard about it, too, and pressured him to look up Professor Tolomei and find out more, and so he did, with two other men. They waited until Diane and the twins were away from home before knocking on the door. The professor was very polite and invited them inside, but he soon turned hostile when he discovered why they had come.
Seeing that the professor was unwilling to speak, Umberto’s two partners began putting pressure on the old man, and he ended up having a heart attack and dying. Umberto, of course, was terrified about this, and tried to revive the professor, but it was all in vain. He now told the others he would meet them back in Naples, and as soon as they had left, he set fire to the house, hoping to burn all the professor’s research together with the body and put an end to the story of the golden statue.
After this tragedy, Umberto decided to break with his evil past, and to move back to Tuscany, living on the money he had made. Some months after the fire he looked up Diane and told her that he was now an honest man. At first, she didn’t believe him, and accused him of having had a hand in the suspicious fire that killed her husband. But Umberto was determined to win her over, and she eventually came around, even though she never fully believed in his innocence.
They lived together for two years, almost like a family, and Umberto even took Diane back to visit Castello Salimbeni. Of course, he never told his parents the truth about the twins, and his father was furious with him for not getting married and having children of his own. For who would inherit Castello Salimbeni, if Umberto did not have children?
It would have been a happy time, had not Diane become increasingly obsessed with what she called “the curse on both our houses.” She had told him about it when they first met, but he had not taken it seriously at the time. Now he had to finally accept the fact that this beautiful woman-the mother of his children-was by nature a very nervous and compulsive person, and that the pressure of motherhood only made it worse. Instead of children’s books, she would read Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to the little girls, over and over, until Umberto would come and gently take the book away. But no matter where he hid it, she would always find it again.
And when the twins were asleep, she would spend hours in solitude, trying to re-create Professor Tolomei’s research into family treasures and the location of Romeo and Giulietta’s grave. She was not interested in the gems; all she wanted was to save her daughters. She was convinced that, because the little girls had a Tolomei mother and a Salimbeni father, they would be doubly vulnerable to Friar Lorenzo’s curse.
Umberto did not even realize how close Diane was to figuring out the location of the grave when, one day, some of his old buddies from Naples showed up at the house and started asking questions. Knowing that these men were pure evil, Umberto told Diane to take the twins out back and hide, while he did his best to explain to the men that neither he nor she knew anything.
But when Diane heard them beating him up, she came back with a gun and told them to leave her family alone. Seeing that they did not listen, she tried to shoot them, but she was not used to the gun, and she missed. Instead, they shot and killed her. After that, the men told Umberto it was just the beginning; if he did not give them the four gemstones, they would come for his daughters next.
At this point in the story, Janice and I both burst out, simultaneously, “So, you didn’t kill Mom?”
“Of course not!” Umberto snapped. “How could you think that?”
“Maybe,” said Janice, all choked up, “because you’ve lied about everything else until now.”
Umberto sighed deeply and shifted around again, unable to find comfort. Frustrated and tired, he resumed his story and told us that, after the men had killed Diane and left the house, he was heartbroken and didn’t know what to do. The last thing he wanted was to call the police, or the priest, and risk some bureaucrats taking the girls away. So, he took Diane’s body and drove it to a deserted place, where he could push the car from a cliff to make it look as if she had died in a car accident. He even put some of the girls’ things in the car to make people think they had died, too. Then he took the girls and left them with their godparents, Peppo and Pia Tolomei, but drove away before they could ask him any questions.
“Wait!” exclaimed Janice. “What about the bullet wound? Wouldn’t the police notice that she was dead before the car crash?”
Umberto hesitated, then said reluctantly, “I torched the car. I didn’t think they would dig into it that much. Why would they? They get their paycheck anyway. But some smart-ass journalist started asking questions, and before I knew it they had me framed for all of it-the professor, the fire, your mother… even you two, for God’s sake.”
That same night, Umberto went on to tell us, he had called Aunt Rose in the States and pretended to be a police officer from Siena. He told her that her niece had died, and that the little girls were left with family, and he also told her they were not safe in Italy, and that she had better come and get them right away. After the phone call, he drove down to Naples and paid a visit to the men who had killed Diane, and to most of the other people who knew about the treasure. He did not even try to hide his identity. He wanted it to be a warning. The only one he didn’t kill was Cocco. He couldn’t bring himself to kill a boy of nineteen.
After that, he disappeared for many months, while the police were looking for him everywhere. In the end, he went to the States to find the girls and see that they were well. He did not have any specific plans; once he found out where they lived, he just hung around waiting for something to happen. A few days later he saw a woman walking about in the garden, trimming roses. Assuming it was Aunt Rose, he approached her and asked if she needed someone to help her with yard work. That was how it started. Six months later Umberto moved in full-time, agreeing to work for little more than house and board.
“I don’t believe it!” I burst out. “Did she never wonder how you just… happened to be in the neighborhood?”
“She was lonely,” Umberto muttered, clearly not proud of himself. “Too young to be a widow, but too old to be a mother. She was ready to believe anything.”
“And what about Eva Maria? Did she know where you were?”
“I stayed in touch with her, but I never said where I was over the phone. And I never told her about you two.”
Umberto went on to explain that he had been afraid that if Eva Maria found out she had two granddaughters, she would insist they all move back to Italy again. He knew very well that he could never go back; people would recognize him, and the police would undoubtedly be on to him right away, despite his false name and passport. And even if she didn’t insist, he knew his mother well enough to fear that she would somehow contrive a way to see the girls, thereby compromising their safety. Failing that, Eva Maria would most certainly spend the rest of her life pining for the granddaughters she had never met, eventually die of a broken heart, and undoubtedly blame Umberto. So, for all those excellent reasons, he never told her.
As time went by, however, Umberto began to believe his evil past in Naples was buried for good. But that ended abruptly when, one day, he noticed a limousine coming up Aunt Rose’s driveway and stopping in front of the door. There were four men in the car, and he immediately recognized Cocco among them. He never found out how they had located him after all those years, but suspected they had bribed people in the intelligence community to trace Eva Maria’s phone calls.