Lucia shuddered awake, pulled from a dream she couldn’t remember. She glanced at Matteo, curled in her armpit and breathing softly. But when she relaxed, closing her eyes, she heard something. A faint clatter, coming from the parlor. She stiffened, listening hard. The house was quiet, then something pinged against the window again, hitting the balcony.
She stumbled out of bed, tightening her robe around her nightdress, and walked across the cold floor. She opened the bedroom door, blinking in the darkness. Ping, clatter. Someone was throwing pebbles at her window.
Lucia hurried across the apartment. Was it Francesca, in need of a place to sleep? She pulled the blackout curtain back and looked down over the narrow balcony, squinting at the figure in the street. He raised a hand, waving, and her breath caught. She’d parted ways with Carlo at the corner hours ago. Why had he come back?
When he stepped inside, quiet as a cat, she gestured toward the parlor, and he followed her across the apartment, tiptoeing past the bedroom door. Please let Matteo stay asleep, Lucia prayed. She glanced back at Carlo as he passed a bookcase they’d bought together. In a flash, she saw them, years ago, hoisting the bookcase up the stairs, laughing. He’d righted it against a wall and pulled her into a kiss, his hands on the small of her back. She frowned as an ache rose in her belly. She would not long for him. She was done yearning.
She checked the blackout curtains, sealing the window, and lit a candle. When she set it on the table in front of the couch, Carlo’s eyes caught the light. They were full of fear.
Lucia lowered onto the chair across from him, perching on its edge. “What’s happened?” Again, she glanced toward Matteo’s bedroom door.
“They caught L’Allodola.”
Her mouth dropped open on its own. They’d caught Francesca? Santo cielo. She pinned her eyes shut, and there was the girl, with her solemn face and wide, determined eyes.
“Where? When?” she stammered.
“Earlier tonight. Tommaso came to warn me. He’s running now to everyone L’Allodola knows in the CLN.” He scrubbed his stubbled jaw with one hand. “People talk under torture. Even the strongest people . . .”
“Torture?” Lucia could barely breathe. She wanted to throw up.
Carlo nodded, biting his thumbnail while his gaze traveled the floor. “We’re all in danger, Lucia. I had to warn you.”
His words crashed over her like an avalanche. She understood. Matteo.
“Should I take my boy and go to my parents? What should I do?”
He shook his head. “Bergmann thinks you live there. If she says anything about your position, they’ll check there first.”
“She knows where I live, too. Oddio.” She glanced again at Matteo’s closed door, as if she could see him through the wood. What could she do?
“With any luck, you won’t even come up. They’ll question her about sabotage. They’ll expect to hear about male partisans—I don’t think they’ll lead her down a path that would reach you, and she’ll volunteer nothing. It’s safest to stay here, at least overnight. I’ll wait with you until we know you’re secure.”
She found herself nodding, but her mind veered back to Francesca. The explosions she’d heard with Bergmann—those must have been connected to her. She pinned her eyes shut. Santo cielo—he’d rushed off to deal with the aftermath of the attack. Could he have had anything to do with her arrest?
“Bergmann might be with her,” she whispered.
Carlo nodded. “I’ve thought of that. I won’t sleep tonight—if anyone comes, we’ll run.”
Run where? She lifted shaking hands to her head, breathing deeply. Again, Francesca rose in her mind. How would that slip of a girl survive torture? She pictured Francesca, her frail body concealing a soul as strong and clear as a diamond. Lucia hadn’t realized, until now, how much she admired L’Allodola.
“Poor girl,” she whispered.
Carlo shook his head. “I can’t bear to think about it.” He stood and stepped over to the window, lifting the blackout curtain a bit to peek out. Then he dragged a stool up to the sill and sat, head resting on the pane. For a long time, neither of them said anything. They sat on opposite sides of the room, riding their own waves of fear.
Would Francesca survive this? Lucia swallowed a surge of nausea. Would any of them survive the unending catastrophe? Fascism, occupation, deportation, resistance, the war? She closed her eyes and saw Matteo, with his freckled nose and hopeful stare, and her heart capsized. Her mother’s earlier words rose out of nowhere, somehow connected to the image of her own child’s face. You once had so much potential.
Piero had thought so, too. Growing up, he’d watched over her, delighting when she dared to keep up with him, shielding her when she couldn’t. “Mamma,” he’d say in the grass of a summer day, “Lucia’s a fast runner for a girl.” Or at the dinner table he’d interrupt their father, speaking around his fettuccine. “Papà, did you know Lucia passed her exam?” Her parents had looked on, seeing only Piero’s swift intellect. Piero’s lengthening limbs. Piero’s future.
But, her long-dead brother had seen hers. Piero, she whispered, help us now. Matteo slept in the other room, a tiny copy of her brother, and still, his future wasn’t his own. Would anyone she loved ever be free? Why had all of their lives gone so wildly wrong?
She raised her head in the dim apartment, glancing toward her estranged husband.
“Carlo,” she ventured, pulling his gaze from the window. “What happened?”
She hid the pain welling in her chest.
“She was with Tommaso, striking—”
“Not that.” She cleared the pain from her throat. What would it have been like if he’d stayed? What would it have been like to raise Matteo with a father? To have help, and love, and someone to share him with?
“Why did you leave me? Really?”
He sat very still for a long time, legs bent under his stool, hands in his lap.
“I was a fool.” He croaked it.
She couldn’t respond. She looked to the ground while he found his voice, speaking quietly from across the room.
“I was so taken with you, Lucia. I thought nothing mattered. Not our different backgrounds, our parents’ different political beliefs . . .” He heaved a sigh, raising his eyes to the ceiling as if he might find answers there. “But your parents thought those were all that mattered. And I was tearing you away from them. You recall?”
She did recall. She could still hear her father shouting over the dinner table the night before Carlo vanished. Both men had risen from their chairs, her father hollering something about pride and sacrifice and loyalty to country. Mussolini’s commands shot from his lips with a burst of spittle. “Credere, obbedire, combattere.”
“How can I believe, obey, and fight for Mussolini?” Carlo had stood to his full height, gesturing widely. “Il Duce’s aligning us with Germany! He’s impressed by Hitler, a madman—”
“He’s not a madman.”
“You’ve seen how Hitler treats the Jews, sì? Have you been paying attention?” Carlo narrowed his eyes, holding the older man in the heat of his stare. “Think of your own neighbors, your friends, Signor Colombo.”
Her father’s fist pounded the table like punctuation. “Sometimes the few”—another pound—“must sacrifice for the whole! Our country comes first, before our own ideals—”
“I will fight for my ideals. Fight is the one command I can manage.”
That argument went on and on. Lucia’s mother sipped her wine, her gaze icy, waiting for the storm to pass like all the rest. The only reason that particular dinner was remarkable was because it was the last Lucia had shared with Carlo.
She turned to face him. “But my parents didn’t matter to me. I loved you regardless of their disapproval.”
He shrugged, his limbs loose on the stool. “I didn’t see it that way. What I saw was myself, and my inability to stay neutral. And I saw a family grieving their son, a son who’d died for a leader my family fought against. That I was fighting still. I couldn’t be a different person, Lucia. I couldn’t pretend that Mussolini’s war with Ethiopia was anything but immoral, that his dominance over his own people was forgivable, that all this endless war was anything but tragedy . . .” He held her stare in the candlelight, swallowing hard. “So, I spoke my mind. And I tore you away from them, bit by bit. And I saw how they looked at you when they realized who you’d married.”
Lucia remembered that look. Her mother could still flood her with shame in one hot stare. She pursed her lips and glanced away. “Do you remember when you held me after I told Marco not to fight in Spain? How you said my family didn’t deserve me?”
“They don’t deserve you. But what if I’d become a reason for them to disown you?” His voice was grave. “I began to imagine your life without me, and I believed it would be easier, that you’d be happier. We’d only just married—I thought I could slip away, and you could carry on along the path I’d interrupted. You were so bright and beautiful, Lucia. I was sure you’d find someone else, someone who wouldn’t sever you from your family. And then I got word that my branch of the underground was compromised. I feared what would happen to you if I was arrested. I wanted you to hate me, to think I was gone, maybe dead, so you could move on. Because how would your parents have reacted if I’d been arrested, exiled, when we were newly married? Would you have kept a single friend?” He searched her face. “I thought I’d ruin you.”
“You did, Carlo. You did ruin me.”
He nodded. “I see that now. And I see that I underestimated you, Lucia. When I left, it was because I only saw you in relation to myself.”
When Lucia woke up, it was to anemic morning light. She was spread out on the couch, the candle a puddle of wax, and the blackout curtain partially drawn. Carlo still sat next to the window, slumped on his stool, his forehead against the pane as he watched the street. Lucia sat up. Someone had covered her with a blanket.
“Nothing?” she asked, and he shook his head. Relief flooded her, tailed closely by worry. Nothing yet.
“Maybe we should go out? We could spend the day walking the city . . .”
He shook his head again. “I sent Tommaso to watch Via Tasso last night. He’ll have spied on the front door to see who’s coming and going. I expect him to report here soon, and then we can talk about whose house might still be safe—”
“Mamma?” Lucia spun on her seat bones. Matteo hovered in the doorway, shivering. Carlo sat up straight, a ridge on his forehead from the windowpane. His brown eyes widened.
“Who is that, Mamma?” Matteo asked, padding across the parlor and climbing into her lap. He stared at his father for a long moment, studying his face with his own serious gaze.
“A friend,” she managed.
Carlo stood, glanced at the street again, and walked tentatively across the apartment. He folded his long body into the chair across from Lucia, never taking his eyes off Matteo.
“You look like your mamma,” Carlo said, clearly unmoored.
Matteo nodded his head. He scrunched his freckled nose, thinking, then reached down to scratch his knee under his pajamas. “You’re very tall. What’s your name?”
Carlo swung his eyes to Lucia, clearly unsure of the answer.
She hesitated. “His name is Gian . . . carlo, piccolo. Giancarlo is visiting Rome.”
Carlo may have sat there forever, adrift, but a knock at the door down below made him jump. Lucia stopped breathing, widening her eyes. Carlo leapt up and loped back to the window, craning his neck to see the street below.
“It’s her, Lucia.”
“Who?” Matteo asked, cocking his head.
Lucia stood while Carlo swept by them, out the front door, and down the stairs. Her heart started to pound. She bent before her little son, staring into his eyes. “Matteo, can you please go to your room and draw me a nice picture? Something extra special. Sì?”
He nodded, eyes wide, catching the urgency in her voice.
Not a minute after Matteo had vanished to his room, the front door creaked open. Tommaso and Carlo appeared with Francesca slung between them, struggling to walk.
“You’re sure you weren’t followed?” Carlo asked, lowering Francesca onto the couch.
Tommaso answered. “I’m sure. I took every precaution.”
“Boil some water,” Carlo barked, and Lucia scrambled to the kitchen. She’d stood in line at the public fountain to fill containers yesterday, thank goodness. But cooking gas was rationed, too—would it be on? She hurried to fill the kettle, then turned to the stove, willing the burner to light. It did, and she raised her eyes in relief.
The relief, however, was short-lived. There was only so much hot water and clean cloth could do. L’Allodola was bruised and beaten. A purple mass bloomed around one eye, her scalp was split, and her shoulders shivered in spasms. Worst of all, her hands sat in a bloody heap on her lap. Lucia sickened. What had happened to them?
She left the water to boil and went to the girl, kneeling at her feet. “Cara mia, what have they done?”
For a long moment, Francesca stared at her with her one green, unharmed eye. “They tried to break me,” she whispered, her voice rough. “But in the end, I convinced them that I was nobody. They couldn’t conquer me.” She lifted her good eye to Carlo. “But maestro mio, you have to hide well. They’re hunting you, too.”