So Far: As a young girl, Meredith Bridges turned her father, Hugh, in to the government because he wanted to leave his wife, her mother. Meredith’s choice strained relations with her mother and brother, Manuel. Her father was eventually sentenced to life in San Francisco, the prison city, and Meredith decided to have nothing to do with him. However, Manuel has disappeared and, in desperate to find him, Meredith decided to meet her father face to face. Meanwhile…

The Western Front was anything but quiet on the morning that Sgt. Palance was allegedly blown to smithereens. Pvt. Clemens was carried back to camp, a raving lunatic covered in the Seargent’s blood and bone. During the court martial, he would be unable to speak on his own behalf, which hampered the defense considerably until they hired a psychic who claimed to be able to read Clemens’ thoughts. So convincing was her testimony that Clemens was honorably discharged after being absolved of responsibility for botching the mission up so thoroughly.

The psychic? Adriana DiMaio, well known in Northern Italy for her fortune telling skills. Legend had it that she was, somehow, descended from the pagan oracles of antiquity. The fact was that her family had run afoul of Mussolini and been wiped out. Furious and slightly unhinged, she focused her considerable power against Il Duce.

By the time the trial was over, Madame DiMaio realized that she had fallen deeply in love with the man trapped inside Clemens’ shell-shocked body. They were married just before he was shipped back to the United States for treatment. Adriana said “I do” for both bride and groom.

When his ability to speak finally returned, James Clemens and his Italian war bride almost never spoke. They didn’t need to. Years of direct mind to mind communication had eliminated any need for talk. When they did speak, they often couldn’t understand each other, for she spoke no English, he no Italian.

He didn’t even bother to learn when they were forced to move back to Italy after HUAC had questioned her communist ties. Her explanations, through an interpreter, that she had merely allied with them in order to fight Mussolini fell on deaf ears. Rather than risk jail time, or name names, they fled with little Mira and Arnold to Calabria, where Adriana worked as a strega for a time.

Allison Clemens often suggested that her father’s inability to communicate with her was entirely based on her grandfather’s inability to communicate with him. Grandfather Arnold would often stare at Jacob, her father, as if he just expected Jacob to know what he was thinking. Of course, this has worked for Arnold and James due to the strong psychic bond everyone had shared in their family, but Adriana refused to teach any of the art to Arnold, since he was a boy.

“Son, your family line will end in fire,” she had said on her deathbed. Adriana, of course, had predicted her own death, down to the minute, having outlived Mussolini by two decades.

“But Mira’s line will live on and avenge your granddaughter.”

—

Jacob got the e-mail that Allison had died in a mall bombing on the same day that he received a letter announcing her marriage to Manuel Bridges.

“You’re the first one I’ve told, Dad,” she had written on the white card, “Manuel and I wanted to surprise you all at Christmas, but I couldn’t wait.”

He got on the phone to his Aunt Mira, and she called Diana. That was when things got messy.