“I hope so.” Silvio kissed Domenica on both cheeks. “I’ll see you soon.” He placed his hat on his head. “Your father is a wise man, but he’s wrong about one thing. You’re not a baby anymore. Sei una donna magnifica.”
Before she could thank him for the compliment, Silvio was in the front room shaking Cabrelli’s hand. Wait until she told Amelia LeDonne about the Birtolini boy. Surely, she would remember him.
* * *
Domenica buried her hands in the pockets of her coat as she walked home. Instead of taking the shortcut, she climbed up to the boardwalk. The moon lit a path on the surface of the sea, rippling the waves like ruffles of black satin. She strolled along the pier guided by the blue lights installed by the Italian navy. From the roof of Villa Cabrelli, the boardwalk below sparkled like a sapphire bracelet. Besides Matelda, the blue lights were the only good thing that came out of the war.
Christmas Eve felt like a new start, even though she and Matelda had been back for a few months. Holidays and the feast days of the saints helped Domenica fold back into family life as if she had never left. Matelda was slowly making friends—it helped that she was surrounded by cousins who welcomed her and did not tease her about her funny accent.
When Domenica lived at the convent in Dumbarton, she had brought the custom of La Passeggiata with her from Italy. She took nightly walks after supper on the river Clyde and imagined the Atlantic Ocean as it heaved in the far distance, miles away, with its whitecaps and dark green surf, a reminder of what had been taken from her off the coast of Ireland. Domenica talked to John McVicars on those walks, hopeful he was listening on the other side. She shared stories about Matelda and her work. But mostly she longed for him. Over time, those walks gave her perspective. She learned how to walk with her grief.
The one-sided conversations she had with her husband stopped when she returned to Viareggio. Occasionally she still called his name, or he came to mind when Matelda said something funny, but she could no longer feel him listening. When McVicars died, his love covered her like the heat of the sun; years later, that warm connection had all but faded. She was more alone than she had ever been. “Love changes over time, but so does grief,” the old widows in the village promised her.
As she climbed the front steps of Villa Cabrelli, she had a strange feeling. Domenica stopped on the landing and looked into the window where her sleeping cot had been placed when she was a girl. She remembered the night Silvio Birtolini came to see her before leaving the village for good. Domenica shivered at the thought of his kiss but blamed it on the cold night air. She went inside and called out for her daughter.
* * *
“Add a plate for Christmas dinner,” Cabrelli said to his wife as he threw a log into the fire and stoked it.
“There’s plenty to eat.” Netta crumbled fresh sage over the loin of pork that browned in the pan. “What straggler did you pick up this time?”
“I think you’ll remember him. He went to school with Domenica.”
“Stop right there! You didn’t invite il bastardo did you? I heard he was around. I saw Signora Pipino at the fish market.”
“Signora is correct. Silvio Birtolini has returned to Viareggio and is lodging in her hotel. In a few short years, he’ll be forty years old. I think we can stop calling him il bastardo.”
“Fine, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t one.”
“He grew up, got his training, and he’s excellent. I hired him.”
“In our shop? You can’t be serious.”
“He’s presentable. Silvio has better manners than that fancy cousin of yours from La Spezia who came to apprentice and lasted a few months until he crapped out entirely. You know who I mean, the one with the airs. He did more loafing than cutting in my shop.”
“Ignazio Senci comes about his airs honestly. He multiplied a good inheritance. He did not squander it. Let him have airs because he has the cash. Some families came out of the war with less, and some with more.”
“Nobody was better for having endured it,” Cabrelli countered.
“We have to make up for the time wasted. We lost our savings, and we earned nothing in those years. And what do you do? Hire a horrible boy with an awful reputation in a town that forgives no one.”
“I need Silvio. I can take in more commissions. He’s a fine cutter.”
“Va bene. Don’t overpay him. We have a household to run here.”
“Netta, you have become enamored of money.”
“Try to live without it. I will not be beholden to others for my supper ever again. I have nightmares about that war. Hiding and foraging and begging for scraps in the forest like the animals.”