The Lombardi Emeralds – Episode 30
The Lombardi Emeralds by Margaret Mounsdon.
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- 1. The Lombardi Emeralds – Episode 30
“My mother isn’t dead, is she?”
“No.”
“Is that what Vin came to tell you?”
“Florence is fine,” May reassured her, “but they need to do a check-up.”
“What were you and Vin whispering about in the corridor?”
“We’re to stay here until your grandmother arrives.”
Rebecca grasped May’s hand.
“You may not want to stay with me when I tell you what I have done.” “Try me.” May smiled encouragingly.
“I wanted you to break down in the car, not Vin. I took the petrol and I told Nonno Lombardi you had stayed out all night. I was jealous. Vin likes you more than he likes me. My mother was cross. We argued.”
“I think I can live with that,” May assured Rebecca.
“And you don’t hate me?”
May pushed the girl’s damp hair away from her face and looked into her troubled brown eyes.
“I don’t hate you,” she assured her, “and I’d like us to be friends, so why don’t we start again?”
“Nonna!” Rebecca let go of May’s hand and jumping to her feet ran towards her grandmother.
May rose to her feet in shock.
“Betta?”
“What has been happening here?” Betta demanded, her dark eyes aflame with anger.
“You’re Rebecca’s grandmother?”
“Vin said there has been an accident.”
“Florence’s car spun on the horseshoe bend.”
“Is this your doing?” she accused May.
“No, I was with Auguste when it happened.”
“Why my daughter has to prove herself like this I do not know. She should leave car driving to the men. How badly hurt is she?”
“She has been taken to the hospital for a check-up.”
Betta looked unconvinced by May’s explanation.
“And what have you been doing to distress Rebecca?”
“The accident was my fault,” Rebecca began sobbing again, “and I have upset Nonno Lombardi, too.”
Betta muttered something unintelligible under her breath and cradled her granddaughter to her bosom.
“It is always the same with those Lombardis. They cause all the trouble. The Gemelli girls, too; you and your mother and her friend.”
Stunned into temporary silence, May watched Betta console her sobbing granddaughter.
“I’m sorry,” she apologised in a quiet voice, not wanting to further distress Rebecca.
“Your mother had the sense to stay away. Why did you have to come stirring things up?”
“Nonna, please,” Rebecca implored, “can we go home?”
“Of course, my angel.” Betta turned her back on May and without a further glance in her direction put her arm around her granddaughter’s shoulders. “First we go home then we visit the hospital.”
The thunder rumbled a reminder that the storm wasn’t completely over as Betta opened the office door and led her weeping granddaughter out of the office and down the stairs towards the exit.
* * * *
You had no right opening an invitation addressed to me.” Tish looked so angry on the screen May knocked over a padded velvet stool as she took a step backwards away from her dressing table.
After checking up on Auguste and being assured by his housekeeper he was resting and quite comfortable and that she would contact May immediately if there was any change in his condition she decided she could no longer put off contacting her mother.
“I always deal with your mail when you’re away,” she replied in an attempt to justify her action.
“Anything personal you know you should forward to me.”
“Tish . . . ” May began.
“Perhaps it’s time you started calling me Mother,” Tish responded in a cold voice, her aquamarine eyes glinting in anger.
She no longer looked like the fun-loving older sister she often pretended to be when the two of them were out together.
May, too, was now growing angry.
“And perhaps it’s time you told me about my other parent, my father, or had you forgotten he existed?”
The familiar shuttered look came over Tish’s face.
“Is that what this is all about – your father?”
“In a way. I knew you’d never tell me about him so I decided to take things into my own hands.”
“I told you you were born in Milan.”
“Because you had to – but you’ve never told me anything else.”
“You don’t need to know anything else.”
“Are you ashamed of my father?”
“No.” Tish screwed up her face in anguish.
“Why won’t you tell me about him?”
