You can’t go back. Everything changes. Your brothers have another face. Your mother another voice. Other women have taken your place while you were away. And each one of them welcomes you the way they’d welcome a passing stranger.

Vanna listened to the solemn words in the pitch black night.

“Oh, sea of my childhood!” she murmured, entwining her hands behind her neck. “I’ve passed you twice with a heart full of hope, when I left home and when I returned. My sea! You were the only one who welcomed me the night I came back…. Can I pass you one last time with just a little hope in my heart?

• • •

“Here,” she said, holding out the letter, still wet with ink. “I’ve written him.”

Her face was a little more pale than usual, and you could tell she’d been crying. But her expression was sweet, the way it always was.

She read in a strong voice to the family—everyone was there because they were waiting for dinner to begin—those few words asking her husband for forgiveness and begging him to come and take her back.

Folding the sheet, she scrutinized each of their faces.

Everyone was silent. Maria, who was in the back of the room, wept quietly.

“Except,” said Antonio, his voice breaking with emotion, “I’d leave out the last part. Why tell him that you want to return? That’s up to him, if he wants you to.”

Viola shot her brother-in-law a look of reproach. Vanna noticed it and said calmly, “What good is it just to ask him for forgiveness? Forgiveness for what? You all know I did him no wrong. The point is this: I have to go back.”

“But no!”

“You’re in your own home!” they all said at once.

But their voices sounded unconvincing, almost intimidated.

Vanna headed back to her room. Passing Maria, she put her arm halfway around her growing waistline. “You silly thing! Why are you crying?” And she pulled her, still smiling, toward her bedroom, the “cat’s room.” There, where the others couldn’t see, she wept, too, with her face on Maria’s breast.

“It had to be,” said Antonio. “Vanna’s twenty-two years old. She can’t start her life off with a scandal.”

They all wanted to convince themselves that they’d done their duty. But they felt uneasy, disquieted by a strange apprehension.

Only Ninetta was happy. She hurried off to explain to her godmother and her friends that Vanna was leaving, called home by her husband, who adored her and couldn’t live without her.

Since no one was the head of that house, no one had the courage to be sincere; none of them dared say what was really in their hearts.