It was mid-morning when Matteo got the phone call. His wife and children were asleep in New York City, and he was at work in Trieste, Italy, a new city in a home country that felt foreign after decades abroad. He knew what his brother was going to say, on the other end of the line: Their ailing father was nearing the end.
Matteo left the office and set out to drive the 300 miles separating him from the childhood home where the father he idolized was not going to see another morning.
