Francesco Bergamaschi lived with his wife in a stone villa in the coastal town of Piombino. When I spoke to his wife on the phone, I learned that he had just been discharged from the hospital after a serious bout of pneumonia. Marco was kind enough to drive me there the following morning.

“Thank you for agreeing to see me,” I said to Francesco’s wife, Elena, who answered the door with a friendly smile and invited me inside to a wide entrance hall with a rustic wrought iron chandelier overhead. “What a lovely home you have.”

“Grazie. Benvenuta. Francesco is just outside, resting on the back terrace. Can I get you anything? Espresso? Wine?”

“Espresso would be very nice. Thank you.”

Elena led me into the kitchen, where she stepped through a back door onto a white stone terrace overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea. The sunlight sparkled blindingly upon the turquoise water.

Seated at a small bistro table, an old man with thick, wavy white hair swiped at the screen of a tablet on his lap.

Elena touched his shoulder. “Francesco.”

He jumped and pulled out his earbuds. “Cosa c’è?”

“She’s here.”

With a bony, blue-veined hand that trembled, Francesco set the tablet on the table and slowly managed to rise to his feet.

“Please, you don’t have to get up,” I said, but he did so anyway.

He was tall and slender with a slightly hunching posture. At first, he appeared angry. His bushy eyebrows pulled together into an intense frown. But then he regarded me with wonder, and his eyes filled with warmth.

“Miracolo.” He reached out and kissed me on both cheeks and gestured toward the other chair at the table. “Sit, per favore.”

“Grazie.”

He stared at me in awe, and I felt like a colorful fish in a glass bowl.

“You look so much like him,” Francesco said. “In his younger days. Your eyes . . . like his. It’s extraordinary.”

My heart began to race, and I looked down at my lap. “You’re not the first person to say that to me.”

He sat back slightly, seeming out of breath from the exertion of getting up. “I never imagined I would meet you. If only Anton could see us now, God rest his soul.”

Astounded by Francesco’s familiarity with me—and feeling completely in the dark about the nature of my conception or the reason for my existence in the world—I set my purse on the terrace floor and forced myself to face Francesco directly. “I’m sorry to hear that you were ill.”

He waved a hand dismissively. “That was nothing. I’m fine now, as you can see. But I was sorry to miss the funeral.”

“Me too,” I replied. “I didn’t get here in time for that.” We sat in silence for a moment or two, then Elena appeared with two small cups of espresso. “Thank you so much,” I said to her and took a careful sip before setting the cup down in the tiny saucer. “So you’ve known about me?” I said to Francesco. “For how long?”

“Many years. I knew about you before you even came into the world.”

I sat staring at him, stunned, staggered, and shaken by this newfound connection to the past. “I’m glad I found you,” I said, “because no one in Anton’s family or at the winery seemed to know I existed—at least not until this week. And no one has been able to answer questions about what happened between him and my mother. She wasn’t able to tell me anything before she passed, so needless to say, I’m curious about that.” I gazed out at the distant blue horizon. “And thank you for being so welcoming this morning. I haven’t been very popular with certain family members back at the winery, so I appreciate this.”

“Because of what was written in Anton’s will,” Francesco said perceptively, gazing out at the water as well. Seagulls screeched in a flock as they circled a fishing boat just off the coastline. “I confess,” Francesco said with hearty laughter, “I would have liked to be a fly on the wall when Connor and Sloane learned what Anton had done.”

I regarded him with surprise. “You didn’t like his children?”

“It’s not that. I loved them because they were Anton’s, but they grew up to be very lazy and ungrateful. They expected to inherit the whole world without ever having to lift a finger and without ever giving anything to their father in return, and God knows he tried to be a part of their lives. They must have been flabbergasted.”

“They were,” I told him, “but they’re not going down without a fight.”

He looked at me curiously. “A fight? What sort of fight?”

“They want to prove that Anton was unduly influenced,” I explained, “or pressured into changing his will. They can’t understand why, after thirty-one years, he would leave the bulk of his estate to me—an illegitimate child he’d never met. I’m surprised too. Anton was never a part of my mother’s life for as long as I was alive, and she only told me the truth because she was dying. She wouldn’t share many details. She was hanging on by a thread at that point, so I always assumed it was something . . . I’m not sure how to say this, Francesco. I assumed it was something . . . unpleasant.”

Francesco’s head drew back as if I had swung a punch at him. “You thought Anton forced himself on her?”

I chewed my bottom lip. “I don’t know. Maybe I thought that. I was only eighteen when she told me that my dad, who I adored, wasn’t my real father. It was a shock, and I didn’t know how to process it, and then she died within hours, so I didn’t get a chance to have a proper conversation with her about what happened.” I reflected upon my thoughts and feelings over the past twelve years. “I was too young for all of that. I was grief stricken and angry. It was a shock to hear it, and I felt betrayed—for myself and on my father’s behalf. Maybe I still feel betrayed.”

Francesco watched me with sympathy. “I was sorry to hear about your mother’s passing.”

I looked up. “Did you know her back then?”

“Sì. She was a very important person at the winery, and important to Anton.”

“In what way?”

He regarded me with a frown of disbelief. “Do you really know nothing about what happened between them?”

I shook my head. “All I know is that she spent a summer in Tuscany so that my dad could research his first book and that she worked at the winery as a tour guide.”

Francesco tapped his finger on his temple. “She was much more than a tour guide. She had a real head for business and a great nose for wine.”

“Really,” I replied, surprised. “I only ever knew my mother to be a caregiver to my father. She occasionally worked outside our home, but only part-time, temporary positions. She never revealed any personal goals or career aspirations.”

“If it weren’t for your mother,” Francesco said, “Anton might never have gained a foothold on the American market for his wines. He was one of the first European winemakers to really understand how to sell effectively in North America.”

I sat forward. “Are you telling me that he felt he owed my mother something for the success of his wine business? That she was responsible for it? Is that why he left it to me?”