The One Who Always Stood Behind

Valentina and I are twins, born eleven minutes apart, on the same seventh of March, with the same face — so alike that our nanny had to tie different colored ribbons around our wrists just to tell us apart when we were small.

But by the time we turned eight, something shifted — not in our faces, but in how the adults looked at them.

Valentina had a small, graceful mole near the corner of her mouth, and her smile tilted slightly to one side in a way that made grown-ups soften without even meaning to.

At a dinner at the lake house on Lake Como, one of my father’s guests let slip: “Valentina’s going to be a real beauty when she grows up. Chiara seems to be the smart one.” That sentence became a quiet verdict that hung over my entire childhood.

From that day on, my mother, Serena Romano, never needed to say a word — her hand simply reached toward Valentina first, every single time, whenever there was something both of us wanted, like a reflex she never had to think about.

The advanced ballet spot only ever had Valentina’s name on it.

The nicest gown in our shared closet always went to my sister first, while I got: “You’ll look just as lovely in something else, dear — darker colors suit you better.” In the family portrait hanging in the main sitting room, Valentina always stood at my father’s right, while I stood tucked behind my mother’s shoulder — no one ever asked if I wanted to stand there at all.