Luca was five years younger than Cosima and Allegra was nine years younger than her older sister, four years younger than Luca, and hated being treated like a baby. She couldn’t wait to grow up and discover a broader world. Luca hated spending time with his family and preferred to be with his own friends. He had a wild side in his teens. His parents struggled to curb it with little success.
At twenty-three, Cosima had one year of law school in Rome left to complete. She arrived at the family home in Sardinia after working at the store for a month during her school holiday, as she always did. She worked in the administrative offices, not with the customers, and won high praise every year for her efficiency. She had the precise mind of a future lawyer, and also her mother’s blond beauty. Allegra and Luca had their father’s dark hair, and Cosima and Allegra both had their mother’s deep blue eyes. Tizianna was from Florence, and Cosima had her typically Florentine fine-featured beauty. Luca and his father had classic aristocratic faces that belonged on a Roman coin.
The summer before Cosima’s final year in law school, she arrived in Sardinia just as her parents were about to leave for a weekend in Portofino with friends who had a home there and had just bought a new speedboat. Luca was supposed to go with them, but a party in Porto Rotondo given by friends of his changed his mind at the last minute and he decided to stay in Sardinia. Cosima stayed in Sardinia with him. She was tired after having worked six days a week at the store for the last month. So her parents left for the weekend and took fourteen-year-old Allegra with them, since their hosts had a daughter the same age. They had a son close to Luca’s age too, but Luca found him dull and was happy to escape the weekend in Portofino. Even the lure of the new speedboat didn’t sway him.
The house was quiet after they left. Luca disappeared immediately with his friends, and Cosima relaxed and lay in the sun and was happy to have some time alone. She knew they were expecting a house full of guests the following weekend and her parents would expect her to help entertain them, so she was happy to have time to read and take it easy before they came back.
The weekend in Portofino ended in disaster. The hosts allowed their exuberant, reckless nineteen-year-old son to drive them all in the new speedboat. He collided with another boat at full speed, going dangerously fast in the new boat he wasn’t familiar with. The two boats crashed and exploded in midair. Both sets of parents were killed instantly, as were the hosts’ son, who had been driving the boat, and daughter. The only survivor was Allegra, badly burned on much of her body and with a spinal cord injury so severe that she had to be airlifted to Rome for surgery.
Cosima got the call on Saturday afternoon. She came into the house from the pool to answer the phone. Twenty minutes later, she was dressed and waiting for a cab to take her to the airport to fly to Rome to be with Allegra. Her parents were dead, and she was in shock, unable to believe what had happened. She was torn between grief for her parents and terror for her sister after the accident. Everything rested on her now, and the responsibility for her brother too. She was suddenly faced with adult decisions. She couldn’t reach Luca, who was on the family’s boat in Porto Rotondo, before she left. She had to leave him a note with the terrible news. He called her crying when she got to Rome and they sobbed together about their parents and Allegra.
Cosima spent the next weeks at her sister’s side as Allegra recovered from surgery and was kept in a medical coma while she healed from the burns. It gave Cosima much time to think and grieve for her parents. After the surgery, the doctors told Cosima that Allegra would never walk again. Her spinal cord had been severed. It was yet another terrible blow after losing their parents.
Cosima left Allegra only long enough to plan and attend her parents’ funeral in Venice and returned to her sister at the hospital in Rome as quickly as she could. She let Luca return to Sardinia after the funeral, as he wished, since she had no time to spend with him while Allegra was in the hospital, and he didn’t want to spend the rest of the summer in Rome.
Luca was greatly subdued and in deep grief over his parents at first. But as he began to feel better, he returned to his old ways and by the end of the summer was going wild with his friends, who came from all over Italy to visit him with no supervision. Cosima was in Rome, couldn’t control her brother, and didn’t want to leave Allegra alone. She was struggling with the loss of her parents too, and the use of her legs. Cosima left her only for very brief periods of time to go to her father’s office and attempt to understand what she needed to know. Her father’s assistant and the family attorney, Gian Battista di San Martino, were both very helpful, trying to impart as much information as they could in a short time. They brought papers to the hospital almost daily for Cosima to sign. And Gian Battista was a constant presence and strong support for Cosima to rely on. He took her out to dinner sometimes just so she would get a change of scene from the hospital.
It was two months later, in September, when she got Luca back into some semblance of control, and back to Rome. He refused to return to the university where he’d been studying, and insisted he needed time to “mourn” their parents, which in his case meant going to every party in the city, being out every night, and consuming large amounts of alcohol. But he was back at their apartment, and she got him to check in with her several times a day, so she at least knew where he was, although he often stayed out all night and came home in the morning. She suggested that he work at the store, which he refused to do, and with no set activity, he did whatever he wanted. He stayed out late, slept half the day. She didn’t have time to force the issue with him. She was busy with Allegra. And Luca became harder and harder to control. He was enjoying having no parental supervision at eighteen, and paid little attention to Cosima and her rules.
Allegra’s progress was slow but steady. She’d had several skin grafts and painful surgeries, but she was surprisingly brave, and philosophical about her injuries. She was quieter than before, after the loss of her parents. But unlike her older brother, she was back in school by Christmas, with a remarkably positive attitude. She would be in a wheelchair forever, but Cosima nursed her as lovingly as any mother, and without parents, the two sisters were even closer than before. Cosima had hired a man to carry Allegra up the staircase to their apartment. Luca was almost never there to help them.
Within six months, Cosima was more serious than ever, still mourning their parents, and had been catapulted into full adulthood. She was running the business, learning as she went. It was the hardest year of her life, and once Allegra was out of the hospital, Cosima went to Venice as often as she could to oversee the store there. Sometimes Gian Battista went with her when he had the time. When he didn’t, the palazzo in Venice, where they had spent holidays and family time, seemed achingly empty. It was painful to remember how vibrant it had been when her parents were alive, and how sad it seemed now. Cosima had no time to see her friends or do anything except work at the stores and take care of her sister. Gian Battista was the only source of support in her life.
Allegra was determined to be as independent as she could be once she came home from the hospital. She still talked about designing for the store one day, as though to confirm she had an active future ahead of her. Their longtime housekeeper, Flavia, helped Allegra when Cosima was at work. When she wasn’t working or with Allegra, Cosima was chasing Luca down and trying to help him find a sense of direction. He took full advantage of the lack of parental control and fought Cosima on every point.