Concetto would come by to visit her mother. And he, too, would sit beneath the arbor, accepting coffee and homemade savoiardi. He chattered on like a windmill, but if by chance her mother left for a moment, he stopped talking, and she would blush, becoming redder than those red roses, and lower her eyes, a bit happy, a bit frightened, to find herself alone.

And then when her mother died and they closed up the house in Licata, she went to live in her brother’s house.

New town, new people.

After a year of seclusion when the bereavement period had ended, in the midst of people she didn’t know, surrounded by relatives she didn’t love, she saw Concetto again. The first time was in the morning, she had a clear recollection, and it was in church. Lifting her eyes from her prayer book, she had caught sight of him leaning against a pillar in a ray of sunshine full of gold and silver dust, holding his hat in his hand.

After that, her sister-in-law no longer brought her to the eleven o’clock mass, and she no longer took her out walking along Niviera Street, where he would follow slowly behind them at a distance.

“Bobò, you’ll keep an eye on the women doing the laundry in the courtyard.”

“The farm manager is supposed to come; Bobò will wait for him.”

They still called her Bobò. Time had passed, but the nickname they’d given her back in Licata lingered, like a brief, warm caress. Michelina, her niece, used to call her Auntie Bobò, but now that she was older she just called her Auntie. And Angela, when she did have to refer to her, simply said “my sister-in-law,” or if she was addressing the servant, said “the Miss,” or “your sister” if she was speaking to her husband.

The childish nickname annoyed everyone. One time Angela said: “It’s ridiculous that you still go by Bobò.”

And yet no one could quite manage to call her Liboria. It was habit.

In time, she, too, had grown ashamed of being known as Bobò. But the nickname had stuck, much in the same way that her youthful appearance refused to die. It was true. Her hair was too soft and long and her breasts too full, although she tried to hide them (out of modesty) in dark, stiff corsets buttoned tightly.

Concetto had moved to the town where she now lived. He was a pharmacist. He’d asked her brother for her hand in marriage, but he had refused without even consulting her.

She only found out about it afterward. A servant who had been fired told her.

“Open your eyes, Miss! You’ll be sleeping alone forever while donna Michelina is enjoying your dowry!”

And yet what could be done? Do I say, I want to get married?