On our second day in Nizza we began unpacking our trunks. Cautiously, like a wild animal investigating something new, Mamma Garibaldi would come around us. When she thought I wasn’t looking, she would reach out and play with Ricciotti, tickling his belly or letting him wrap a firm fist around her finger. She wasn’t sure about Teresita, given her energetic outbursts, but I often caught her looking sideways at Menotti. Her brows knit as she silently scrutinized him.

In the morning of our fourth day, José pulled me aside. “I have a surprise for you.”

I looked at him curiously as he slipped his arms around my waist and whispered in my ear, “I found a way around my mother.” I put both hands on his chest and gently pushed him away, looking at him in surprise. “Be ready to leave just before dinner.”

“But the children, we can’t leave them alone with her.”

“I hired a nurse. She’ll help my mother. I want her to get to know her grandchildren. Spend time alone with them, see how wonderful they are.”

We stole away that evening while the children played with the nurse. We made our way to the ship, where José had a delicious dinner laid out for us on the deck. We ate by the glow of the setting sun, enjoying our time alone together. When dinner was finished, we retired to his cabin to finally have the freedom of being man and wife.

Forty-Nine

February 1849

In the months that followed we settled into our lives in Nizza. This included staying on José’s ship a couple of times a week. I wasn’t happy with our arrangement but believed José when he promised a house of our own when this war was over.

One morning I woke up in our cabin to the familiar pungent scent of salt, old fish, and ocean. The smells brought me back to Brazil. As I stirred in our bed, feeling disoriented, a pang of homesickness struck me. In Brazil I was a fierce soldier, in Uruguay and Genoa I could mobilize the women, but here, here I was trapped in a gilded cage with pink cushions. After years of purpose, spending day after day in my mother-in-law’s parlor made me feel like a limb that had withered from lack of use.

I rolled over and watched my husband sleep, my eyes tracing the scars that fanned out over his chest as it rose and fell with each breath. My fingertips grazed the puckered ridge of skin on his biceps, a harsh reminder of a bullet that missed its mark.

In the quiet of the early dawn, when only the lapping of the waves against the hull could be heard, I realized I longed not for Brazil but for the people we had been while in Brazil. Before the children. Before the glory. When it had been Anita and Giuseppe chasing the wind.

My stomach pitched and churned like the sea during a storm. I ran out of our cabin and rushed to the railing, making it to the edge just in time to lose all of its contents. Wiping my mouth on my sleeve, I began counting as realization seeped through me. José walked up behind me, tenderly rubbing the space between my shoulder blades.