When Maria tried to talk humbly about Vanna to Remigia, the latter would cut her off, saying that Vanna really had gone too far and that it was her brothers’ duty to write Rome and notify their brother-in-law.

Once Vanna found out, she begged Nenè not to write. It was useless and mean. Her husband didn’t know; he couldn’t have any idea where she was. Why tell him?

“I won’t bother you,” she murmured, frightened. “I swear it.”

“You clever little thing, right out of a novel!” said Nenè, smiling. “Don’t tremble like that. I’ll just tell him that you gave us all a pleasant surprise. Okay? But he still needs to know precisely how things stand.”

Reading over the letter, Vanna felt a bit more reassured.

But soon, just seeing the postman pass under the terrace made her nervous again. He was the same postman, rather old, who had delivered her fiancé’s letters. She had waited for him so many times on the terrace, on certain beautiful mornings that she had never again seen, when the sun was brighter and the sea bluer, when the sounds that came from the sky, the sea, and the street were deep and deafening like the beating of her heart; when everything was smiling and fresh like her lips that repeated: “Please God, let him have written!”

He was the same postman. But now she watched him pass full of trepidation, hoping that he wouldn’t stop for her. She was afraid of the response from Rome, and yet she had no idea of exactly what it was she feared.

She spent leisurely mornings under the rose arbor next to Maria, who was working. They recalled small, insignificant moments in a not-too-distant past.

“Do you remember,” asked Maria, “when you wanted to try on my wedding dress? It fit you like a glove. And I was convinced that would bring you good luck.”

“That’s right…. I was eighteen, and you were twenty-four. We were the same height. You see? I stopped growing so I could always be like you.”

Maria was sewing a layette. Vanna helped her now and then, weaving a ribbon or attaching lace. At times, her mind drifted off with the tiny garment on her lap.

One morning she said in a hushed voice: “I was expecting, too … do you remember?”

“Yes, my poor Vanna. We felt so bad, all of us did.”

“I would have loved him so much … but he disappeared, too, before he had a face, even an expression I could remember. What little outfits I would have made for him! It must be something so sweet,” she added, bowing her head slightly. “I think a mother’s heart must melt when her baby’s little searching hands brush against her face…. Him? No. He doesn’t like children.”

Maria was crying, and Vanna looked at her amazed.