A dank chill seeped through Rachel as she lay on the bed. She stretched. How long had she allowed herself to relax? It seemed foolhardy when the day before the Germans and Allies hurled artillery at each other around this very place. Yet after the full day it had taken to travel the ninety kilometers, she’d felt jostled to pieces and in desperate need of a moment to rest.
She reached into her bag to pull out the sketchbook. Then stopped. Of course, it wasn’t there anymore. She knew better, but this seemed the place to study the drawings. From what she remembered, this was the type of location where the sketches could have been produced. The sweeping hills. The wide-open sky. The feeling the land and buildings had stood for centuries and would continue to. What would it be like to belong to something so lasting, so permanent?
No matter how long she thought, an answer wouldn’t come. All she’d known was her small family with Momma. And when Momma died, even that tiny bit ended.
“Stop it.” The words echoed toward the high ceiling.
She needed something to distract her. Florence.
The city was so close, she could see it as a dot on the far horizon if she found a tall enough hill to stand on. She grabbed her momma’s diary from its spot hidden in her bedroll. Now that someone had gone through her bags, it seemed the best place to protect her remaining treasures.
She held the book a moment, fingers stroking the cover as she longed for her momma. The pages had become as familiar to her as a favorite book. If Momma joined her here, would she finally tell the story of her time in Italy? Would she offer it with a smile, or would a cloud of sadness tinge the story?
Momma’s letters spilled onto the bed across Rachel’s lap. They’d arrived in trickles, each letter shorter, as if a reflection of failing strength. She leaned against the pillows and headboard, letting the letters feel like an embrace of her momma’s love. She closed her eyes, tears slipping down her cheeks unstopped. No one was here to see so she let them flow. After a few minutes she stopped the silent course. Now she’d read the diary.
Today I met someone. He has a passion for life that is breathtaking. On the whole I expected to find this in most Italians, but they seem to carry a weight. Left over from the war, perhaps? It’s a mystery, but this man has escaped the weight. Instead, he vibrates. Whether teaching a class or escorting me to the next museum, he brings a verve for every situation that must be equal parts exhilarating and exhausting. All I know is I long for that. Or something that will spark me out of this melancholy.
I miss home. I miss the wide-open farm country of Pennsylvania. The excitement of our town house in Washington, D.C. Seeing the different sights, walking the Mall to sit on the steps of the brand-new Lincoln Memorial. Here I feel alone with nothing but my dreams. Then I am with him.
The pen left a squiggly mark as if she had left it there for several moments while she daydreamed or imagined what to write next.
And everything changes.
I am alive.
I feel.
I want more of both.
Rachel released her breath trapped by the passion of the reading. Her momma had hesitated to show such depth of feeling. Instead, she was a steady personality with few passions Rachel had observed. To see this side of her momma unsettled Rachel.
This was a side of her momma that mattered. Without that rush of passion, Rachel would never have breathed. Never discovered the joys and pains of life. Her own existence wouldn’t have slipped from the shadowed worlds of potential. The thought could shatter her. Because here she was—fatherless, alone, maybe motherless and unknowing. Her mother had lived with TB for years until it changed to a relentless course. The thought stabbed Rachel.
Who would she be when alone?
Would she return to a world of shadows without someone who loved her?
The thought pained her to the core of her being. There had to be more to life than wavering in and out of lives. Struggling to know and be known. Always holding back from the real fear that if she exposed who she truly was, the rejection would follow in a rush. She would always be the fatherless one others avoided because of Momma’s questionable morals.
Rachel had developed a story about her daddy dying, but it wore thin like the lie it was. Explaining sounded weak, like defending the actions of another. Instead, as an adult she’d learned to hold her head high and act the part of one who never cared what others thought and hesitated to share her full story. Then she’d met Scott and wanted to be known.
She turned the pages, hand on Momma’s necklace as she read.
Tonight he gave me a heart locket. He said to reflect his great love for me.
Then he took my hand and led me to see the stars.
He said it was to sketch me under a new light. Starlight. To craft a new page in the book that is us. To stroke a pencil across the page as he longed to touch me. Even as I pretended to believe, I knew there was more.
I still can’t write his name, as if the very act of doing so will cause him to evaporate like the mist. I can’t because when I am with him, I am alive. It is as if I hold my breath until the next moment he is with me. Too long and I feel sick as if I will expire from lack of air.
Tonight there was more.
We were more.
We were complete.
It was beautiful. Fearsome. So much more and less than I’d hoped and imagined.
What it means, I know not. Only that my love for him seems more complete and emptied.
Strange. And wonderful.
He took me to see the stars.
Rachel continued to read, inhaling the prose and wondering why her momma had never written for publication. What had stolen this gift from her?
Today my world shattered. The other girls in class giggled when I walked in. They whispered, telling secrets but saying them loud enough to ensure I heard. I told myself they were merely jealous. Upset that I was chosen while they were not. Then the truth confronted me, exposing me, my foolishness.
Tonight he appeared at the graduation party. With his fiancée.
My world erupted into a thousand pieces. My heart disappearing in the sparkle of her ring.
He had another. But took me.
I watched, a growing sickness in me. I had done everything my father warned me to avoid.
And now instead of returning with a ring or a husband, I return with a child within. A child the father shall never know.
This I vow.
The last words splotched across the line as if the author had cried even as she etched them on the page.
Rachel shut the book after that last entry. It was as if with penning those words, admitting the depth of her fall, Momma could write no more. As far as Rachel knew, she’d never kept another diary. Instead, her writing ended with that moment.
Momma had been alone for an extended period and influenced by a country known for romance and passion. It wasn’t surprising she’d been swept along. Her thoughts turned to Scott and his gentle ways. The way his strength came from seeing people and understanding them beyond a surface level. That drew her to him, made her wonder what a future with him could be like. Add in the crucible of war, the reality that life could end with the next shell, and Rachel could imagine how easy it would be for the loneliness to give way to passion. The desire to be seen and understood sweeping aside the restraints calmer times enforced.
Could she ever love a man with the passion her momma had felt?
For years she’d thought no. She’d always held back, wondering if men saw her or focused on the fallen status of her family.
Then Scott collided with her carefully ordered world. Of course, it happened in Italy. Where else did the Justice women lose their hearts?
With Scott it didn’t seem to matter. He hadn’t probed, nor had he changed the way he looked at her with the revelation she’d grown up without a father. Instead, compassion had colored his features, and he treated her with even more kindness.
Thrust into a situation where so much of her time was spent with one, very appealing man—she could imagine the direction her emotions would travel if she let them spin unchecked. Instead her momma’s life was a cautionary tale. A living example of what happened the moment she lowered her guard.
The sound of singing lured her to a window to seek its source. She stacked the letters inside the diary cover, then wandered to the small window. Standing on the lone chair positioned beneath it, she peeked out. She couldn’t see much but heard the dulcet sound of children singing a sweet tune. One she wanted to hear in person. She returned the diary to the bedroll and grabbed her camera. After it was around her neck, she exited the room, closed the door, and pocketed the key that had been in the doorknob.
After a few false turns she made her way back to the courtyard.
Fires circled the courtyard with women leaning over them stirring different pots. The children had been shooed away from danger, but she noticed the curious light in their eyes as they watched her. She eased closer, pointed at her camera, then raised it to her eye and pantomimed clicking a picture. She shrugged as if asking permission, pointing to them then her camera.
The children giggled and nodded in excitement. She gestured for them to squish together, and they did with laughter and the light of children who don’t understand anything but war. She snapped a couple shots, then turned to shoot photos of the adults strewn around the court. They carried desolation and fear in place of the children’s joy. After several tries she found the perfect shot of a woman standing by the fire, her husband slouched behind her with a couple soldiers speaking in the background. When a ball rolled across the frame as she clicked, she knew it was perfect. It captured the layers of war perfectly.
After taking an extra shot, she turned to walk outside the castle’s courtyard to a place where she could watch the sun sink beneath the horizon. A low wall built of rocks extended from the back of the courtyard. She walked along it, fingers brushing the rough surface. The heat cloaked her like a blanket, and the sounds of children mixed with the barks of a couple dogs wrestling under a bush. The faint scent of something sweet drifted from a flowering bush on the other side of the fence.
If she stood right there, eyes closed, she could imagine the war had been a horrible dream rather than a reality that exploded kilometers down the road.
And she could imagine the Tuscany her momma had loved.
Tyler slipped away before a quick gander at Venus, and Scott watched Renaldo pace the hall, wavering side to side. The man must be beyond exhausted. The stress, long walk from Florence, and lack of food couldn’t have helped. Scott slipped into Italian, a courtesy for the man he respected, one of the men he’d taken the sketchbook for. “Are you sure you shouldn’t rest first? Venus will wait thirty minutes.”
Renaldo spun on his heel and stormed back toward Scott, finger raised and stabbing. “You do not understand. Any moment one can disappear.”
“We’re here.”
“So were the Germans. They assured they safeguarded. The first troops did. Then the SS and paratroopers arrived as the others pulled back. They had no respect. So where is safe? Austria? Germany? For you, the United States?”
Scott stepped back, shocked by Renaldo’s passion. “Only for the war.”
“So they say too.”
“We mean it.”
“Words.” The man got within a foot of Scott, so close he could smell the garlic of whatever hearty Tuscan dish Renaldo had last eaten, then stopped. “Words mean nothing.” He paused and seemed to gather his emotion. “Tell me about the young woman with you.”
“Rachel?”
“That is her name?”
“Yes. She’s a photographer with newspapers in the States.” What should he say? He wanted to understand Rachel, but she hadn’t let him in far enough to understand why Renaldo was important.
“Ah, an artist.” Renaldo squared his shoulders. “She is beautiful.”
“She is.” Renaldo continued to stare at him as if seeing into his soul. “She has inner beauty too. But I don’t know much about her except she’s from Philadelphia and the most amazing woman.”
“I see.” Renaldo turned from his questions and moved down the hall. “Come.”
Guess he would meet Venus tonight. “When did you develop the idea for the series we exhibited in January?”
Renaldo’s steps hitched but he didn’t turn. “The series you protect?”
“Yes.” Scott bit the word out, already tired of the recrimination he sensed from Renaldo. Things must be much worse than he imagined for the man to exhibit such bitterness.
“I was young. Maybe twenty-one, twenty-two. This way.” He barreled down a hallway that led to darkness and shadows beyond.
“Did anything trigger the inspiration? A person? An idea?”
“Why the questions? All art grows from inspiration.”
“What served as yours?”
The man waved an arm toward a closed door on the first floor. An Indian soldier from the Mahratta battalion stood guard and saluted as they approached. “Maybe she remains. Her size precludes easy taking.”
Was the man so distracted by his charges he couldn’t carry a simple linear conversation, or was it intentional deflection? The Renaldo Adamo he knew and studied under had been open and free with his thoughts and opinions. Had the war altered that part of his character? So far the man dodged certain questions. Maybe because it related to his creative process. Some artists held those thoughts and ideas very close, even after the creation had ended.
Maybe the last months and years of protecting the art, of creating the artful dodge, made it second nature.
“So? Open the door.”
Scott nodded. “Of course.” It must be an amazing painting if Renaldo was acting this intent about how Scott first viewed it. “Remember I’ve visited the Uffizi. I’ve seen her collections.”
“Not close. Never like this.” Renaldo handed him a large brass key. “You may open it.”