Cover

Dedication

per il mio Claudio

il mio amato

Chapter 1

28 October 1942

It was long past time to be heading home. With the help of Sandro, the nicest of the porters at the Casa di Riposo, Antonina had managed to get her mother into a chair, the one by the window, the comfortable one they’d brought from home, and she’d passed the time by brushing Mamma’s hair and describing what she could see in the piazza below. She knew her mother could hear and understand, for didn’t she turn to the sound of Antonina’s voice when she arrived for a visit? Didn’t she hold tight with her good hand, and squeeze her fingers when her daughter whispered that she loved her? Papà was the best doctor in Venice, besides, and he was sure that Mamma could understand them. All the more important, then, to spend as many hours as she could at her bedside.

But the campanile at San Geremia had just chimed five, and Papà would be waiting at home, and it wasn’t safe to be out alone after dark, not anymore.

“I have to go home and help Marta with supper, and if I’m not there to remind him to eat, you know that Papà will keep on reading until he falls asleep at his desk. Shall I help you back to bed? Or would you like to stay here until they bring your supper?”

Mamma nodded, the movement so fleeting anyone else would have missed it, and when Antonina bent to kiss her cheek, she closed her eyes and lifted her face—still unlined, still so pretty—to the last of the sun.

“I’ll be back in the morning. Try to eat up your supper when they bring it, will you?”

Her journey home took her across the still-busy piazza, through the gloom of the Sottoportego de Gheto Novo, and up and down the steps of the bridge. Then a quick turn into a narrow and darkening calle, then another, and finally, perched at the edge of the murky waters of the Rio del Gheto, the slender afterthought of their house, its facade a patchwork of crumbling ocher stucco and rosy brick. The number had faded away long ago, but they’d never felt the need to repaint it. Everyone knew to knock on the green door for Dr. Mazin and he would come, no matter the hour.

Up the stairs she ran, her shoes squeaking on the freshly mopped landing, and along the hall to her father’s study, but the sound of voices within stopped her short. He might be speaking with a patient, or writing down something important, and since she was old enough to walk, she’d known never to barge in.

She knocked twice and waited for the voices to still. “Papà?”