Chapter Five

Isabella believed that was the end of it.

She honestly tried to put behind her the woman’s words—They know who killed your bastard husband—and to slot back into her old life, knowing that Rosa was beginning a new one in the care of the nuns. That was what was meant to happen, wasn’t it? You just had to get on with things—like learning to walk again and breathing and doing whatever it is you do to fill each day. She’d done it once before ten years ago; she could do it again.

But it wasn’t that simple. The day that was meant to be a day of sorrow for Luigi had cracked open and allowed the past to flood in. Isabella lay in bed that night, tossing and turning, her legs fighting the bedsheets and her head pounding. Allegra Bianchi’s suicide was a hard thing to live with in the dark. Her words had cut open old wounds.

All night Isabella listened to the wind whipping itself up into a fury and roaring across the flat floodplain from Cisterna to Terracina. It was rattling the shutters, scraping the dry bones of its knuckles over them, making her skin crawl until she could stand it no longer. She kicked off the sheet and gave up on the night.

“What are you doing?”

“Scrubbing.” Isabella was on her hands and knees.

Her father looked down at the soapy brush in her hand and at the spotless kitchen flagstones and walls, and sighed with an exaggerated shudder.

“Oh, Isabella.”

He removed her scrubbing brush and tossed it with disdain under the big enamel sink. “Come, mia figlia, sit and drink coffee with your father.”

They sat down at the table. Isabella had already laid it for breakfast with freshly baked rolls, prosciutto, and moon-shaped wedges of melon. But her father reached for his favorite, the hard fette biscottate, which he proceeded to dip into his coffee. He regarded her over the top of his spectacles with disfavor.

“Let it go, Isabella.”

“Rosa is all alone. I’m worried about her.”

“No, she’s not. Sister Consolata and the nuns are taking good care of her because that’s what they do. That’s why they have the school. They help children who have no parents. It’s not your job, it’s theirs.”

“I know.”

She drank her coffee and stared mutely into the bottom of the empty cup as if it might hold the answers she needed. She wasn’t in the mood for a lecture, not today, not when the image of a sunken forehead had lodged itself behind her eyelids.

“Do you, Isabella?”

“Do I what?”

“Do you know? Do you understand? Do you realize what happened yesterday?”

She glanced up and found him waving his biscuit at her and chewing fiercely on his mustache as if he would bite his way to the truth if it killed him. Dr. Cantini was a great upholder of truth at all times. Sometimes, just sometimes, he was so blinded by the glare of truth that he didn’t notice who or what his large feet were stumbling over in the dark shadowy world of compromise and half truths where most people lived.

Isabella loved him. Despite the interminable lectures. Despite the fact that he could see no one else’s point of view but his own and had a temper like a firecracker.

She loved him because he had looked after her ever since her mother’s death from poliomyelitis when Isabella was six years old. She used to follow him around like a pet dog, leaning against his strong legs and clinging to his laughter as she grew up. But everything changed after the shooting.

It was hard to explain. Even to herself. After the shooting they were both angry at the world or at God or at anyone who even looked at either of them the wrong way, so they took it out on each other for a while. Though he never put it into words, he blamed her for having married what he called “a filthy Blackshirt,” and for a while she could not bring herself to speak to him because he had refused to let her die alongside Luigi. It was only after her third operation that she came to her senses. So she gave him a smile now, reached behind her for the bottle of grappa that sat ready on the sideboard, and poured a slug into his coffee.

“Tell me, Papa, tell me what happened yesterday?”

“Isabella, we live in a Fascist state.”

She rolled her eyes at him. As if she didn’t know that.

“In a Fascist state,” he continued, “the state controls every aspect of our lives. It believes it knows better than we do what is good for us.”

Isabella sighed. She had heard this before.

“Isabella,” her father said more sharply, “I would remind you that those who oppose Fascism in Italy are punished. Mussolini has bestowed the title Il Duce on himself and has his secret police and his Blackshirts to do his bidding. He needs only to whisper his thoughts and someone will make them happen. That’s the kind of power he has.”

“Papa, don’t—”

“Listen to me, Isabella. What happened here yesterday was a slap in the face to Fascism and an insult to Mussolini’s proud new showcase town. I warn you, they won’t let it pass without retaliation.”

“Against the child? No, Papa, you’ve got it wrong. They won’t hurt her.”

He frowned. “You believe that?”

“Yes, I do. Be reasonable, Papa. It’s 1932, a new modern world. Look at this beautiful town. Look how far Italy has come. Only seventy years ago we were just a jumble of warring nation states, trampled over by foreign powers. We didn’t even become a united country under one king until 1861.”

Papa smiled. “I know all that, Isabella.” He pulled his pipe from his pocket, cradling it in his hand. “Just remember that Benito Mussolini is not a man to overlook a deliberate insult to one of his precious new towns.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “So you really believe young Rosa is safe?”

Isabella’s chest suddenly became tight. “Don’t you?”

“What I think, Isabella, doesn’t matter.”

She felt a thud of unease. She knew that her father believed that what he thought certainly did matter.

“What matters at the moment,” he said, “is that you steer clear of her.”

“But, Papa, I need to speak to her. To make sure she’s all right.”

“No, Isabella.” His cheeks were growing flushed, always the first sign of anger in him. “Stay away from that girl. If you want to keep your job.”

“What?”

He shook his head impatiently. “You can’t afford to stir up any trouble, so don’t go near the child. I insist on it.”

Isabella sat wordless, stunned into silence. She stared at her father, but he jabbed his unlit pipe back into the pocket of his crumpled jacket and rose from the table, his heavy frame moving quickly for a big man.

“What do you mean, Papa? I am a respected architect here.”

“This business has not ended and I don’t want you involved.”

He snatched up his medical bag from its place beneath the coat hooks and stalked out of the front door. Isabella heard the mosquito screen bang shut behind him.