Matelda thanked her grandparents for their hospitality. They seemed nice. There was something very familiar about them. Domenica had told her daughter stories about their family, Carnevale, and their neighbors in Viareggio. They were the last colorful thoughts Matelda had before sleep, so they sat like jewels in gold in her subconscious. Matelda would add details to the stories, creating her own world from bits of her mother’s.
There were tales of hidden treasures, stolen maps, and bullies on the beach. Matelda learned about Cabrelli’s jewelry shop. The child understood soldering, grinding, sawing, lapping, sanding, and polishing of the gems. She knew about the bruting wheel and cobbing rough stones before measuring them. Matelda learned the shapes of the finished gems: briolette, baguette, marquise, and round brilliant. She understood that her grandmother could make anything delicious out of chestnuts. Her grandparents, whom she had never met before, had been as real to her as her own mother because of Domenica’s bedtime stories.
“I want to see the ocean, Mama.” Matelda pulled on her mother’s sleeve. “You promised.”
Domenica leaned down. “Wait until you see it. When the clouds go, you’ll see it’s as blue as your sash.”
“We will take her to the promenade.” Her grandfather extended his hand. “It’s true. When the rain stops, the sea turns blue again,” Nonno confirmed.
Netta took Matelda’s other hand. “We made a feast to welcome you home, Piccianina!” And just as it went in every small Italian village, Matelda was given a nickname. Going forward, the white-haired Viareggians would call her Picci.
It was only her father, John McVicars, and his people, the Scots, who would fade away in time. Eventually, Scotland became a fragment of her past, like a gold thread dangling from an ancient tapestry that would be neither knotted nor pulled for fear of destroying it altogether. The story of their years in Scotland and her father’s demise would remain untold for the next seventy-seven years of her life because there would be no looking back. The story had taken a turn. Matelda was an Italian.
Christmas Eve 1945
Dottore Pretucci opened the brown paper box tied with a ribbon. Netta Cabrelli’s chestnut candy glistened in the box like whiskey diamonds. “My favorite!” Pretucci helped himself to a sugar-drenched chestnut and offered the box to Domenica. “Your mother is so kind to us—even during the years you were away. She’d drop off a cake or a loaf of fresh bread.”
“That was her way of keeping my position open.”
“It worked.” Pretucci handed her an envelope. “For the holiday.”
The envelope jingled when Domenica placed it in her pocket. “Thank you, but I wish you wouldn’t. You made the arrangements to bring my daughter and me home, and we will never be able to repay you for all the trouble.”
“It is not a debt to be paid. You’ve done your penance. I’m happy to have you back in the clinic.”
Domenica pulled on her coat. She followed Pretucci out the door. “I don’t know how you did it.”
“It was about timing, as most things in life,” Pretucci began. “Once the war was over, the new priest was happy to help. Evidently the clerics are, as advertised, in the redemption business. The redemption of their own reputations, of course. I believe they were embarrassed at the way you were treated.”
Pretucci tucked the box of candy under his arm and walked home. Domenica locked the door of the clinic. It wasn’t helpful to hear that her banishment had been a mistake. Domenica liked to believe that there was order in the universe. Her punishment had been strict and unfair. She sipped the cold air and shivered. It felt like it might snow, even though it rarely did in Toscana. She hoped it would for Matelda. Her daughter longed for the snowstorms at Dumbarton and the sunny winter days that followed when the Lowlands were covered in white diamond dust.
Viareggio was also enchanted in winter. Candles twinkled in the windows of the houses on the hillsides above the beach. The doors on the shops along the boulevard jingled as customers went in and out. Their storefront windows would fog, framing the glass in ice crystals.
Domenica held the door to her father’s shop open. A woman emerged with a parcel. She wore a stylish wool coat with balloon sleeves and mohair cuffs with brass buttons.
“Signorina Cabrelli?”
“Signora McVicars,” she corrected the lady politely. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I know you.”
“Monica Mironi.”
Monica was elegantly turned out. Her leather boots were polished. This was not the put-upon mother of three Domenica remembered.