DEAR Elizabeth,
I write this with great joy. Yesterday Nicole gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. He is to be called Stephen, after my father. Nicole insisted on it. She has a very strong sense of family tradition, which is very comforting to me. I know when I am gone, she will be the keeper of all I have tried to set in place. It is meaningful to her.
Every day I leaf through the family history she wrote for us and I can feel her love of it on every page, even to the way she placed the photographs. I hope she will add to it in the years to come, especially the photograph I am enclosing with this letter. Ah, the love and pride on Matteo's face, looking down at his wife and newborn son, and Nicole glowing the same feelings right back at him. It brings happy tears to my eyes.
This was a match truly made in heaven, though God knows they were difficult people to bring together. It was so fortunate they were blessed with a child to make them come to their senses and acknowledge what they were to each other. Well, you saw them at their wedding. Such strong passion between them. There will never be anyone else for those two.
I can rest content now. Alessandro, Antonio, Matteo...they have the right partners. And here I am with four great-grandchildren, two boys, two girls. Antonio and Hannah adore their darling daughter and no doubt she and Stephen will be splendid company for each other, born so closely together.
There is nothing like family. To me it is the keystone of our lives—our past, our present, our future. I know you feel this, too. I enjoy our correspondence very much, and I want to thank you once again for all your wise advice. Each night I lie in bed and I think of our family lines—yours in the Kimberly, mine here in the far north—and I see them thriving for a long, long time, Elizabeth. I go to sleep with a smile.
I am sure it is a smile we share. With love, Isabella Valeri King