“So explain it to me. Tell me how you’re feeling, tell me what it’s like.” Elisabetta felt her eyes fill with tears, but she held them off because they were his to cry, not hers. “First, getting thrown out of school, then this new law—”
“The one that says there’s no intermarriage?”
“Yes, everything about the law is wrong, all of it.”
“I don’t have the same rights as everybody else anymore. I can’t marry anyone I want. I can’t marry a Gentile, you’re officially my better.”
Elisabetta felt stricken. “No, don’t say that, it’s not true. I’m not, and the law doesn’t matter to me.”
“Of course it does, it’s the law.”
“The law doesn’t matter between us.” Elisabetta held his gaze. “The law wasn’t here a month ago, and who knows whether it will be here a month from now.”
“I do, and it will.”
“You don’t know that.” Elisabetta didn’t know how to reach him, or even if she could. “You don’t know what the future holds. It could be better.”
“It could be worse.”
“I’m saying the law is only politics. It will come and go. But these feelings we have for each other, they’re not going away, they’re here. I’m here, for you.”
“What does that mean?”
“I love you,” Elisabetta answered, meaning it with all of her heart. “I love you, and I will love you when this law passes, and when we get older, and whatever else happens or whatever time brings.”
“You mean you’re choosing me?” Sandro blinked. “Not Marco?”
“Yes. It’s you, Sandro. It was always you.”
“Your timing is impeccable, Elisabetta. Just when you can’t have me, you want me.” Sandro frowned, shaking his head. “The irony is too much. The law forbids it. My parents forbid it and—”
“None of that matters to me.” Elisabetta stepped closer, resting her hand on his arm.
“It does to me. This ends.”
“It never ends. It goes on and on, it’s love.”
“Not anymore, not for me. I don’t feel the same as I used to about you, not anymore.” Sandro straightened, setting his jaw. “I’m sorry.”
Elisabetta’s chest tightened. “You’re just saying that.”
“No, I mean it.” Sandro regarded her, a chill in his blue eyes. “You made a choice, but I have one, too.”
“Sandro, do you really mean this?” Elisabetta asked, her heart breaking.
“Yes, I do.” Sandro glanced at the door, and the clamor of students echoed in the hallway. “My class is coming back. Please, don’t make a scene.”
“I’m begging you, give us a chance.”
“No, Elisabetta. You need to go.”
Elisabetta ran from the classroom, wiping tears from her eyes, and hurried down the hallway past the students. Her heart was in tumult, her gut wrenched. She loved him, but she had decided too late. It was all her fault. Sandro was lost to her now.
Elisabetta ran from the school and hurried through the Ghetto, holding back her tears. She ran to Trastevere, reached the house, and flew inside, avoiding Nonna’s bedroom downstairs. She raced upstairs and ran to her bedroom, where she collapsed on the floor.
Finally letting the tears flow.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Sandro
November 1938
Sandro sat at the table, too nervous to grade papers. His mother gazed out the window, undoubtedly feeling the same way. The first course of dinner, concia di fiori di zucca, fried squash flowers, cooled aromatically on the table. His father was late, and Sandro knew it would drive his mother more crazy than usual, for good reason.
A white envelope sat on the table, still sealed, having been delivered in the day’s mail. The return address was the Demorazza, which was the government agency that administered the Race Laws, so the envelope must contain the agency’s decision on their family’s exemption. His father had filed an application for one on their behalf, and they all hoped the exemption would be granted. They had been awaiting the decision and prayed that the agency went their way. Sandro would have opened the envelope, rather than sit in suspended animation and guess about its contents. But his mother believed the envelope was his father’s to open.
So they waited.
His mother smoothed out her dark sheath, fiddled with her pearl necklace, and linked her elegant hands in front of her. He put away his papers in silence, giving up on getting anything done. The fate of his family lay within the envelope. If they weren’t granted an exemption from the Race Laws, they would lose their house, for Jews could no longer own property under those laws. His father would lose his law practice, too, as Jews could no longer own businesses, either. If his father couldn’t work, it would cut their family income. Worse, it would break his parents’ hearts to lose a house that had been in the family for generations.