Page 340 - The Grotesque Children's Book

Chapter 55.
The inevitable

Santi wasn’t sure how much longer he could put off Allesandro Allori. But that point
turned out to be moot, as it was something else altogether which forced Santi’s hand to steal the
jewels on Monday, August 15th, 1581.

Two nights earlier, on that Saturday night, Santi’s father, Jacopo del Meglio, died. It was
a blessedly sweet death, filled with silence and serenity, rather than the blood and coughing
which Santi had feared for so many months. Jacopo had grown so weak in the days leading up to
his death, he was no longer able to speak, but Santi had held his hand and spoken gentle things
for the both of them, filled with hushed envy that Jacopo was going once again to be with his
beloved wife, Isabella, Santi’s mother, as well as Santi’s young wife, Guilia. Santi described a
celestial landscape of hills and mountain peaks, not unlike Guilia’s bucolic hometown of
Vierspitzen which Jacopo had so longed to see. Santi was brave and strong, holding back his
tears, summoning a wall of smiling confidence that his father was soon to be better off, and that
Santi looked forward to being with them all again very soon. But when Jacopo actually breathed
his last, Santi’s bravura left him, and he broke in half, giving in to a grief he had been
suppressing for a year. He wept not only for his father, but his mother and his wife, indeed for
the entire del Meglio family, for he was the last of them. He was alone now.

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