Waterfall (2 page)

Sighing, I followed my mom up the trail. If we didn’t stay right behind her, this crazy path was likely to spring closed, and the woods would swallow her and the guide up like fairies in the forest. Finding these ruins had become like an obsession to her, some crazy connection to my dad.

“C’mon, Lia,” I grumbled over my shoulder. My sister liked these hikes less than I did and tended to fall behind, examining a flower or particular branch, always planning another sketch in her mind. If I let her, she’d sit down right where she was and draw, as lost and absorbed as our mother became in a dig.

“Wait up, Gabi.”

Frowning at her slow pace, I looked back then forward again. I had a moment of panic as the trees closed in around me. In most parts of Tuscany, the trees were farther apart and older; grand old oaks and pines dominated more space. Here the saplings were young, fighting one another and the underbrush for their place in the sun. But then my mom popped into view, climbing a large boulder behind the goatlike farmer.

We paused beneath them and looked up.

The old man looked back at Mom with a mixture of curiosity and triumph in his eyes. “It is good, no?” he said.

My mother seemed to find her voice. “Good,” she said with a cough. “Very good.” I could tell by her voice she was really excited but trying to guard her reaction. She knew better than to let her enthusiasm show in the midst of bargaining for land to excavate.

“What is it?” I asked, a bit put out to not be in on the discovery.

“What’d they find, Gabi?” Lia asked.

“I don’t know.”

Mom wasn’t listening to us, so I picked my way through the remaining brush and then climbed the rock.

The old, sturdy farmer reached down to help me, and then my sister, up. My mother was already making her way forward through the bramble. The forest thinned here, and bigger trees dotted a field before us. But I knew that was not what had captured my mom’s attention-it was the rounded burial mounds, covered in thousands of years of soil and grass, nearly swallowed forever.

As we battled our way forward, I glimpsed the remains of an old medieval castle on the next hill, undoubtedly the domain of a lost lord of Toscana, now barely more than a few standing walls and the slight curve of one tower.

My mother ignored it. She had eyes only for her guide and these ancient curved tumuli-like none we’d seen other than a site south of Roma. He led her to the nearest mound and beckoned me and Lia forward. As we got closer, we could see that the top had been opened, like a wax seal on a clay jar.

Hurriedly, my mother shrugged off her day pack, her eyes shining in the sun. I did the same, studying her intense expression as her long, elegant fingers found her flashlight and she moved out, leaving her backpack open. Clearly, she thought we’d found the elusive colony.

The one Dad had been looking for when he died.

I fished for a bottle of water as she gingerly moved forward. These old tombs were inexplicably strong, given that most of them were over a couple thousand years old. But that didn’t mean they weren’t just as likely to collapse as stand.

“Gabriella, come help me,” Mom said over her shoulder, her eyes focusing on me, really focusing, for the first time. I surged into action, just steps behind her.

Mom crawled up and over the arc of the structure, which was little more than thigh-high, it was so buried, and then reached back to pull the flashlight from her waistband. I took hold of her belt as she leaned over and then into the hole, her head and torso disappearing as she hung halfway into the old tomb.

“Mom,” I warned, anxious that it wasn’t safe.

“It’s okay, Gabs,” she called, her voice all muffled and echoing.

I held my breath as her body shifted left, but still, the old tomb held.

“Okay, pull me up!”

We knew as soon as she straightened and we saw her face, but still she announced it. “Fourth century!” she cried, grinning and falling into my arms, reaching out to include Lia. I hadn’t felt that much joy from her in months. I didn’t want the hug to end.

Fourth century. She meant BC. As in, Before Christ. Seriously old.

She’d found it. The lost city of the Etruscans.

She moved out to take a closer look at the other eleven mounds, and I sat down on a rock beside Lia. Gradually, I felt my smile fade. I looked around and over my shoulder.

I wanted to be happy for her. I did. It was her dream, this. But it also meant that my entire summer was now claimed.

By this place.

The middle of nowhere.

Where the nearest unattached boy appeared to be about seventy years old.

Okay, fast forward. Over the next few weeks, my mom settled in, finding us a lame apartment-probably built in the 1970s, judging by the burnt-orange and avocado decor. It was outside Radda in Chianti, which, trust me, was not a happenin’ town, and still a thirty-minute drive down stomach-bending roads and a hike into the archeological site. Did I mention she made me and Lia get up at 5:00 a.m. every morning to come with her? The only good thing about that was that we gladly hit the pillow early each night, and I was able to dream of better places for a teen to spend her summer.

Things progressed on the tumuli “campus,” as my mom called it, as expected, with two of the old tombs already largely free of the five feet of soil that once surrounded them, and all trees and brush cut down and pulled away from the remaining tombs. The rest would be unearthed by volunteers trucked in from Roma and Firenze, as well as American university campuses, in the coming weeks. But my mother had been all excited about getting inside these first two-the one the farmer had broken into-“Tomb Two”-and the other, the one she referred to as “the mother ship.”

She wouldn’t let us near them. Sure, as usual, she was happy enough to hand us a shovel and pail and tell us to get within six inches of the structure. But inside? No. She and my dad had always been like that at a dig. Worried we’d “compromise” a site. You practically needed a doctoral degree to enter, until everything was documented from top to bottom, sketched, photographed, videotaped, logged on paper. Then, a couple weeks later, they’d let “the kids” in.

Basically, I was sick of it. I was seventeen. I felt ignored. Used. Just how much damage could Lia and I do to the place? And I was curious. Had this site really been worth my dad’s life?

So I was a little bit grumpy when we drove up that morning and tiredly blinked in the pink, early-morning light. The new dirt road was blocked by two uniformed guards and a jeep with the words Archeologica Societa Archaeologico dell’Italia emblazoned on the side. Whenever these guys showed up, it inevitably meant delays and trouble for my parents.

A man stepped out of the back of the jeep, wearing khaki slacks and a starched white shirt that was rolled at the sleeves, as well as expensive leather shoes. He looked like the slick, rival archeologist in the first Indiana Jones movie-yeah, my parents loved those old flicks-and my mom reacted the same way Indy had, muttering the man’s name like a curse word.

“Manero.”

I knew if she could she’d bang her head against the steering wheel. I glanced over at Lia, in the back seat, and raised my brows. We hadn’t run across Dr. Manero for more than a year, but the last time …well, it wasn’t pretty. Dad almost decked him, he was so mad.

Could Manero shut her down for good this time? The upshot would be we’d have to go home to Boulder-or at least to Roma or Firenze for a time-but Mom would be seriously bummed.

“Doctor Betarrini,” Dr. Manero said in a thick Italian accent, as my mom rolled down the window.

“Doctor,” Mom returned with a nod, her voice even, polite.

“I’ve reviewed your documentation in the Commune”-by Commune, he meant Siena-“and discovered you haven’t filed forms 201 B or D for this dig,” he said, crossing his arms.

“Imagine you, digging around in our paperwork,” Mom muttered. She still had a habit of referring to projects as ours, the result of two decades of working alongside my dad. I wondered how long that would last. I’d kinda miss it when she stopped.

“What was that you said?” Manero asked, leaning down toward her window opening.

“I can’t imagine we didn’t file the right paperwork,” Mom amended. “We filed over fifty documents.”

“It seems a common problem for you,” he said with a thin-lipped smile. “Always one or two missing, it seems.”

“And you appear to have appointed yourself as our personal guard dog,” my mom said, losing patience.

“This isn’t about you,” Manero said, standing erect again. He gestured behind himself. “I guard Italic’s treasures. That is my only goal.”

My mom looked up at the ceiling of the car as if she wanted to scream.

“Please,” Manero said. “I’ve set up a tent beside your own. Let us discuss what must happen for you to continue your work here.”

“You mean, in order for you to horn in on the glory,” Mom said.

“Please,” Manero repeated. “Let us sit down and discuss this as fellow scholars. I have espresso in a thermos….” He smiled, clearly trying to kiss up.

“Espresso?” my mom said, her tone softening.

“Si.” Dr. Manero’s slight smile moved across his handsome face. He reached for the door handle and opened it. “Sounds inviting on this chilly morning, does it not?”

Mom ignored his outstretched hand and climbed out on her own, slamming the door. She brushed by him. Dr. Manero hurried to catch up with her.

“C’mon, Lia, let’s go see it,” I said.

“See what?” she said, frowning as if in a fog.

“The tomb,” I said, eyes wide. “We won’t get another chance for, what-another month or two? While they debate it, let’s go see what the fuss is all about.”

Lia paused on the other side of the car, door still open, and frowned at me. “I dunno….”

“C’mon,” I said, irritated by her hesitation. What was the risk? If we were going to spend our summer here, we might as well know what the sacrifice was for. I, for one, was going to see it, with her or not.

I trudged past the new guards that had arrived with Manero, pretending like I was following my mom, and after a bit, glanced back to see that Lia was coming after me. I smiled smugly to myself. I could always get her to do anything-especially if she felt like she was getting left behind.

My mind whirled with memories of my parents’ hushed, excited conversations, shared in an intimate tone. It had always been an affair of the mind between them, as well as the heart. They’d been connected like no other couple I had ever known.

I’d loved it. And hated it.

Sure. I was glad that my parents loved each other, but we always felt left out. It was like Mom and Dad were always in the same orbit, Lia and me in some constellation around them, never quite intersecting. I wanted to know what it was like, to share the same airspace, even for a moment. And since Dad died …well, it was like Mom wasn’t even in our galaxy at all.

So I trudged forward, ignoring the questioning glances of a couple of students heading in the opposite direction. The sun was gaining now, cresting the trees in the east, casting long, dusty streams of light across the field, illuminating the tops of wild lavender, spiraling upward, and the domes of the tumuli.

I ignored my suddenly speeding heartbeat and went directly to the nearest tomb, as if my mother had sent me there on a mission. Lia was right behind. Pausing for a moment at the entrance of the tunnel, I took a deep breath, bent down, and crawled through, glad I had my jeans on. I hoped Mom had left an electric lantern ahead, as she often did on site. In a moment, I bumped into it, and eagerly fumbled for the switch.

I was inside Tomb Two. I swung my legs around as the halogen bulb caught and flickered on, casting blue light all around.

I gaped at the artwork inside. Mom had gone on and on about it, but her voice had become like a buzzing bee, and I’d tuned her out. The colors were magnificent, some of the best we’d seen. Bright. And so many of them…. Men and women, black stick figures depicted feasts, hunts, battles.

I lifted the lantern and cruised along one wall and then another, mouth agape, as my sister came through the tunnel.

“Gabi, we really shouldn’t be here,” she said, standing there as if she hadn’t already made the decision to join me.